“Luckily, I’m a subscriber to MobileMe, Apple’s $99/year service which includes a handy feature called Find My iPhone. Saturday night, after losing my iPhone, I logged into Me.com/find and immediately had chills running down my spine,” O’Grady reports. “My iPhone wasn’t on the Hollywood Studios property (or any Disney property for that matter) but instead in an apartment complex about 15 minutes north.”
O’Grady reports, “My first instinct was to arm myself and retrieve my stolen property, old-school style. Luckily, I took a deep breath and instead decided to use a little tact in my pursuit… On Sunday night, I checked Find My iPhone and got chills again. My iPhone had moved from the apartment complex to a supermarket parking lot about two miles away.”
Full article, in which O’Grady asks readers what to do next, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Send a Push Notification that states: “The Orlando Police Department is currently tracking you. Leave the stolen iPhone at the supermarket’s service desk and walk away now or face arrest.” If that doesn’t work, continue tracking and sending Push Notifications that prove that you know the exact location of the person carrying the stolen iPhone at all times. Every two minutes. And, if that still doesn’t work – hello? – tell the police that you’re tracking your stolen iPhone 4, so they can go get it back for you.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Track ‘im down and cap his ass. Done.
Do you think Orlando Police can help in Holiwood?
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does the find my iphone thing work if i were to shut down a found phone and restore as new? i doubt it
I’d skip MDN’s first steps and go straight to the cops. Waiting for help from an online report may take quite a long time.
I disagree – sending notifications only serves to warn the person with the iPhone that they are being tracked. turning off location services and or the iPhone itself are two ways to easily defeat the tracking.
“Disney Hollywood Studios” is the new name for Disney MGM Orlando. It’s not in “Hollywood” Ca. Just an FYI for anyone else who may have been confused.
Gary
Find him and bitchslap him
Hollywood Florida, it is an actual location and one here in Cali too.
How about taking his arse to the police station and show them the location. They can dispatch a patrol car. Better that is moving so it has a loction to reference to.
Or a fake lotto win and a number to call-
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Put away the SIM card dude!
Do what they did on Burn Notice. Follow the location, and start writing down all the cars you see (remember faces too). Sooner or later you will start to see a repeat vehicle. Your job will be easier if you can get the signal in a less crowded area. Michael Weston would be proud. Also as mentioned above, don’t send a message! I would bring a gun so you can force return. If it where me I would knee cap him once he returns your phone.
Get a fake policeman’s uni and go track the perp down.
I’d buy an Android phone and offer to exchange it for the stolen iPhone 4. Aren’t Android users cheapskates and dirtbags anyway?
Have the Pentagon institute a surgical strike with the gps coordinates.
The FIRST thing I would do is lock the phone. That way they can’t turn off location services, but of course they can still turn the phone off altogether.
I would contact the police immediately. You’ve only got a day or two before the batteries die (and I suspect they didn’t walk off with your charger as well). Hopefully the police will help you in tracking down the phone.
Once you & the police have the location narrowed down to a manageable area, then you can post a message on the screen saying “You are surrounded. Place the iPhone on the ground and walk away slowly with your hands on your head. No sudden moves.” I’d love to see the guy’s face if you did that.
Why in the world is this guy just watching his iPhone move around?!? Call the police and you’ll have it back in 30 min. That’s what Find My iPhone is for!
Thanks for the Info, I was lost with Hollywood Cali.
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All any thief has to do is remove the SIM and replace it with another and you’ve lost your phone forever. Luckily for him, the thief was too stupid to know that…
Grab the police and hunt that thing down! I’ve had several friends either go Dirty Harry or snag a law dog to assist in the pursuit.
Same thing happened to my daughter and her iphone. I just followed it around in my car for a day on a day off recently. After a couple of hours I figured out that it was a toyota truck that I was seeing everywhere.
Waited for him to park, parked behind him so he couldn’t drive away, and then walked up and asked him for the phone and said the police were on their way. The only way he was getting to leave before the police got there was to give up the phone.
The college kid, (turns out he was in one of her classes), gave it up immediately. I then sat in the car for about 5 minutes till the police got there. (sue me, I lied) He got his info taken and a bit of a scare when they made him sit in the back seat of the patrol car with his hands cuffed for about 1/2 an hour. They said it would be hard to prosecute because I had taken possession of the phone, so we let him go with a scare.
If it would have been some rough looking dude I wouldn’t have confronted him myself. I would have just called the the police and let them pull him over. He was just a little punk white kind wanna be a rapper driving daddy’s car who needed a shower and to pull up his pants.
Find My iPhone is one great invention. Just love Apple.
The person who took it knows it wasn’t his or hers. It it was sold, the receiving person—because of a no-doubt cheap price —had to know they were receiving property. So…
Tell the police. If they act, great. If they don’t…
Get a big, BIG bad-ass to accompany you to confront the person when they are outside, off their own property. They you say “Give me my iPhone or this guy will beat the living crap out of you and finish you off with an atomic-wedgie to humiliate you so we have an even better story about wiping this parking lot with your semi-conscious body.”
You tell them that when your face is 18 inches away from theirs and you do so without blinking.
It’s a win for you no matter what. Either they hand you your iPhone and you tell them “thanks,” or your goon liberates it from them. Thieves understand this sort of “language.”
Anyone who goes it alone on the retrieval is a complete idiot.
All it takes is for that perp to have a gun and you’re fraked.
That’s chicken-shit talk and your “complete idiot” comment just shows that you have high self-esteme; it doesn’t establish you as someone who so wise beyond all comprehension and is intolerant of fools.
If one has no street smarts whatsoever, like you, YouCan’tFixStupid, then just shrug your shoulders and wimp out when the police don’t act. Note that my first point above was to call the police and THEN if they don’t act, take care of it yourself.
The average person who takes an iPhone is just a stupid young turd. Use some common sense before approaching. And if you also take my advise and bring along your own, big-ass goon, then when the stupid fool tries to pull out a gun, your goon liberates it from him, breaks at least three fingers on his gun hand, and then you call the cops; they’ll come for sure to arrest the turd for brandishing a weapon just because someone asks (doesn’t touch) to have their gun back.
Baseball bat.
Also, Jason O’Grady just lost his Philly street cred for having to ask ANYONE what to do when someone has taken your shit. See above.
…to have their phone back. (oops)
Maybe it was the WaWa sandwich guy who stole it.