
When Hitting ‘Find My iPhone’ Takes You to a Thief’s Doorstep - kanamekun
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/us/when-hitting-find-my-iphone-takes-you-to-a-thiefs-doorstep.html
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pskittle
Something similar happened to me. It was a thursday , I was slightly under the
weather and decided to take a cab to college as i had an imp exam that day. On
my way I was doing some last min revision and i 20 mins the cabbie dropped me,
I found my wallet to pay him for the ride and got off.

Less than and a minute later i realized that i left my phone in the cab. I
could still see him driving off and decided to just run incase he got my
attention, but the guy sped away.

I walked back to the college gate and found my friends who were wondering what
had got into me and why was i running. On explaining them what happened my
friend offered me his phone. I Used his phone to call my cell atleast five
times , hoping the cab guy would realize that there was a phone in the back
seat and come back. Unfortunately that didn't happen. I went and sat for my
exam , but was annoyed at my carelessness.

Tried my phone again only to find it switched off. This time was more than
annoyed. I went to the police and also spoke to the other cabbies near the
area i got a cab from telling them what happened. A few months had passed , I
got another phone and forgot about it.

interestingly enough had the same exam but finals this time and was on my way
to college. I spotted the cab guy who previously took my phone parked waiting
for a passenger to hail his cab. I went upto him and confronted him . he said
he didn't hav it and maybe I was mistaken. I knew his face and told him i
wasn't and asked him to return my phone. This time i took down his cab no and
told him if he didn't i would just hand his details to the cops .

He hesitated and said he would bring it back the next day , as he had given it
away . I asked him to whom and he plainly said ,"Ma'am I'll bring it back to
you. He gave me his no voluntarily".

I did get it back but it was slightly broken.

~~~
skelsey
And then you reported him to the local taxi commission, right?

~~~
pskittle
nope! he was like i have young kids and i didn't really pursue it after that.
was happy i got my phone back.

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strictfp
Soo... The police won't help you get your stolen property back and encourages
you to drop the issue altogether. Doesn't that count as encouraging crime? I
would hope that they would start taking the smaller crimes more seriously, as
they did in New York.

~~~
protomyth
The college where I work has a bit of a reputation now for sending police to
the thieves door with a nice printout of where the phone / iPad is. It also
helps we have a good set of security cams. I have noticed we seem to have had
a long period now where the little thieves know not to take any Apple product.

I figure its a big city vs little town thing.

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psykovsky
> “This would all be moot if we had an industrywide kill switch,” Mr. Gascón
> said.

And there you have it, the real purpose of the story, to push the killswitch
agenda. Let's give the government full unfettered access to our mobile phones.
What can go wrong with that?...

~~~
raldi
The kill switch, as designed by the civic agencies asking for it, would be
undoable by the owner:

[http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/sen/sb_0951-1000/sb...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/sen/sb_0951-1000/sb_962_bill_20140206_introduced.htm)

A key quote: _" The rightful owner [...] may affirmatively elect to disable
the technological solution"_

It's nothing like "giving the government full, unfettered access to our
phones."

~~~
JTxt
Thanks for adding the link!

Here's the latest version:
[http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?...](http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB962)

A part I'm concerned about: "(d) Any request by a government agency to
interrupt communications service utilizing a technological solution required
by this section is subject to Section 7908 of the Public Utilities Code."

Skip to 7908 here: [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-
bin/displaycode?section=puc&gr...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-
bin/displaycode?section=puc&group=07001-08000&file=7901-7912)

So, this kill-switch may not be 100% controlled by the device owner.

I'd be OK with a required/opt-out kill-switch _only_ if I was the only person
that could possibly brick my device with it. (That's a hard problem to make
user-friendly and educate people about. A private key I create and store
physically/securely somehow?)

Otherwise, I don't really own my device.

See also:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing)
"TC is controversial as the hardware is not only secured for its owner, but
also secured against its owner."

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lalwanivikas
Not iPhone, but it's related to my stolen MacBook Pro. 'Find My iPhone'
doesn't always work and I think we can have a better solution. This is my
story:

A few weeks back, there was a theft at my place and I lost all my valuables
(cash, credit cards, headphones) but most importantly my laptop. I'm tired and
frustrated of going to Police station to inquire about it. I want to fix it!

Here is what I propose:

We can use the power of crowd to locate ​lost devices. I think most stolen
laptops are sold ​second-hand in grey ​markets. ​If we can tell ​a buyer​
somehow​ that the laptop he is about to buy is stolen, ​there is a high
probability that he will not buy it.

We can make a ​mobile app/​website where anyone who has lost a laptop can
enter basic details of ​his device ( ​Serial No., ​Model etc.) and whenever
anyone is about to buy a second-hand laptop, ​he can check our app/website
​and immediately know whether the laptop ​is stolen or not. This can help
​people locate ​their lost device​s​ and can lead ​them ​to ​the ​thieves.

What do you ​guys ​think? This is just ​one idea that can help people recover
their lost devices. ​ There might be many other ways, and we can brainstorm
them here.​ Let's shoot!

PS: ​Please drop me a line if you are interested in working on this problem!

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "If we can tell ​a buyer​ somehow​ that the laptop he is about to buy is
stolen, ​there is a high probability that he will not buy it."

I don't think this is true. People buying cheap laptops on the grey/black
market care about 1 thing - price. Most know int he back of their minds there
is something shady about the deal but it doesn't bother them enough to say no
to a low price.

~~~
bananas
This. I've sold a lot of second hand thinkpads over the years and no one ever
asks where I got them from (usually stock auctions - who can pass up 20x T400s
for £20 each with a market value of £140+.

~~~
DanBC
Do you have a contact email address? You don't have one listed in your profile
information. (Please contact me by my email address, in my profile, if you
want to keep yours off HN).

~~~
bananas
If you're after cheap thinkpads I've got no stock at the moment (other than a
dead T420)

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bdcravens
My iPhone was recently stolen. Within seconds, I had a pretty good idea of who
had it. The insurance I had from carrier meant I'd have a new one in 2 days
for a $249 deductible. What are the odds of a confrontation costing me more
than $249? Even going to police has the potential of costing me more than $249
in lost time, and that's _IF_ I can convince them to do my personal bidding.

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Zigurd
It is disingenuous to position a "kill switch" as the best alternative. Kill
switches can be circumvented. Phones can be sold for parts. And it's an excuse
for police to be unresponsive.

Whereas if phones can be located, it seems like a great opportunity for
repossession companies to offer a phone retrieval service, and for police to
aggregate data on recovered phone to identify theft rings.

~~~
PeterisP
I believe that kill switches. In my area at around year 2000, when
'dumbphones' were common but still rather pricey, theft or mugging of phones
was a common crime. It dropped significantly overnight when IMEI blacklists
were implemented and reported stolen phones wouldn't work on local networks.
There were still some thefts of luxury phones, where it made sense to export
them abroad, but it was a huge reduction.

Even if kill switches can be circumvented and phones can be sold for parts -
it significantly reduces the incentive for someone to steal phones, as selling
them is more effort and less money; such changes do affect behavior of
criminals.

~~~
JTxt
The idea of a kill switch is great if it can only be controlled by the owner
of the device. (The person that purchased it to use.) But we have not solved
that problem yet.

We are still using short passwords instead of strong private keys; we give
unencrypted access of our data to cloud providers to make things easier for
us. How can ultimate authority/access of our property be made user friendly
enough for joe user/sixpack?

~~~
im3w1l
One solution could be to prompt "do you want this computer to be able to
killswitch the phone" first time you connect the phone to a computer. Under
the hood it creates a shared secret that when sent to the phone bricks it.

------
mieko
As ineffective as biometric unlocks (TouchID, etc) are in targeted data
retrieval scenarios, I'd wager their wider adoption would effectively kill
casual smartphone theft.

Every 5S owner I know actually uses TouchID. I'd guess around half of the 5/5C
users I see bother to use the four-digit PIN, because it's a longer process to
unlock.

Smartphones unattended on a bar will be a less attractive target when the
default assumption is that it's locked, and would be a large undertaking to
put it into a state useful for the thief's personal use or resale. Making
locking convenient enough that _everyone_ does it (and the phone's physical
security strong enough that it's an actual ordeal to bypass) would build a
herd immunity for smartphone owners.

~~~
lnanek2
I don't think any current locks prevent clearing the device for resale, which
is the main thing needed by thieves. An iPhone, for example, you just hold
down power and home and connect to iTunes in recovery mode.

Apple may in the future decide to do this, but I don't think any other OEMs
could. They all have romance the carriers to get into stores and the carriers
want good serviceability since the way you make money at places like AT&T is
by cutting costs down to the bone. More unrepairable, unrefurbishable devices
that need to be replaced with new units causes the opposite.

~~~
mieko
Yeah, for this scheme to work, a locked phone would need to be a brick, short
of desoldering the flash. Unauthenticated recovery modes destroy this.

I can see a scheme where each device has a specific unlock/recovery keypair in
its keychain out of the factory (or first activation). It could be requested
from the manufacturer from the service center. This would at least have
accountability ("AT&T Store #451, Employee #8 requested unlock key for Device
#123456").

The manufacturer's service could deny the request if the phone was reported
stolen, or contact the rightful owner via other channels before releasing it.
Or just revoke access to service centers with a history of abuse (e.g., the
thieves have an "guy" at a strip mall).

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topdownburglar
Interesting sentence. " The officer, who asked that his name not be used for
fear that civilians would follow his example,"

------
fromdoon
In India, when you loose a phone, you buy a new one ... often a less costly
one. No one ever even thinks of trying to find who stole the phone.

~~~
calbear81
It's not really about the value as much as it's about the principle of the
matter. Maybe it's an American thing but we have a sense of justice that makes
us do irrational things when rationally it shouldn't. For example, someone
broke into my car and ended up taking a tennis racket from my trunk. It wasn't
expensive to replace but I got in my car and drove around to see if I could
spot someone walking around with it. I would have confronted them and fought
them if they didn't hand it back. Even then, I would probably call the cops
and report the person.

~~~
ryandrake
I'm an American, and I think a more important principle is you don't risk an
encounter that may end in injury or death over mere "stuff". There's no
justice in getting shot trying to recover a phone you were too drunk to keep
in your possession. Replace your phone and be a little more careful next time
you go out.

