Woman says photos of iPhone thief’s family showing up on her iCloud Photo Stream

“A Houston woman doesn’t know where her iPhone is, but she’s pretty sure she knows who has it,” Drew Karedes reports for KHOU 11 News. “That’s because someone is using her stolen iPhone to take pictures, which are showing up on her computer.”

“Alnesa Horton said the thief was smart enough to turn off her phone tracker, but wasn’t bright enough to cover his tracks entirely,” Karedes reports. “Horton was soon shocked to find photos of a man, woman and children on the iCloud account that is synced to her phone.”

“Horton was livid, but her first thought wasn’t to call police,” Karedes reports. “Instead, she was determined to expose the man on social media by posting many of the photos. ‘Their kids are in here, their family, having fun with my phone,’ she said. ‘I was just mad. I immediately got on Facebook asking everyone for help.’ …[She] has now filed a report with Houston Police.”

Read more in the full article here.

32 Comments

  1. She’s not too bright herself. How is it, that someone could “turn off” find my iPhone, especially if it’s stollen? You need to sign in to do it.

    Regardless, police would be the first place I would go.

    1. That’s a great idea. I’m sure there are several people here who are curious how this thing is going to unfold, but it would require a lot of incompetence on the part of the local law enforcement to leg this guy slip.

      1. I was hoping someone would bring up the photo location meta data. Yes, I would like to know how this turns out too. It would be a good lesson for the kids to learn because the adults never got it when they were growing up.

        Remember when most people had character and integrity. They were looking out for others and were taught “Thou shalt not steal” in church, home and school.

        1. Nope can’t remember that. Must have been before my time. Almost half of the population under 30 grew up in a broken home bouncing backwards and forwards between two family’s learning to look after them self first. Not defending the theft of the phone, just not all that surprised by it.

      1. If you read the article that MDN links to, the lady states that the guy said, “nice car” to her and then took the phone out of her car when she was inside the gas station paying. She sees him in several of the iCloud photos. The whole Facebook/social media thing was her attempt to let him do the right thing and return it. That hasn’t happened so she’s turned the pictures of the guy over to the police.

  2. So, not only did she not put a pass code on her phone but she left it on the seat of her unlocked car after somebody checked it out. Some people don’t deserve to have nice things.

  3. Plus, she is making the assumption that the person taking the pictures is the one that stole it. If I bought a used phone (Craigslist, eBay, etc.) and it turned out to be stolen, I would be pretty upset if they original owner did this to me. Calling the Police first was the right thing to do – She could find herself in trouble for this.

  4. Give us the photos. I’m sure there are a few MDN users from the Houston area who may be familiar with the scumbags who stole your device. I hope you get your phone back. In the future, I’d suggest using a pass code. Let’s not make it easy for the thieves. You could of remotely bricked your phone if they were prevented from accessing your account. Also, never, ever leave your iDevices somewhere where someone can snatch them. Much to tempting to people with no scruples.

  5. I hope for her sake that she was able to remotely wipe her own address details off the phone. She sounds like the sort that puts a key under the flowerpot by the front door just in case she locks herself out.

Reader Feedback

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.