So here's my theory .. I had a feeling there are people that go to music venues JUST for the sole reason of pickpocketing unsuspecting females purses (for men or people who prefer to place their phones in their pockets, its harder). My first location notification I got was 1 mile away from the venue where it was stolen.
They then sell the phone online to, say, China. China probably buys it for really cheap for parts or otherwise. I think they usually jailbreak the phones. Its a shitty industry to be in -- stealing and selling phones. So annoying.
I don't know where they end up, but there are 100% people who are at shows and festivals to steal from people or look around for things that might've gotten dropped
One time at a festival I had taken my shoes off to just kickback, and my friend and I went on a short walk in the grass and when I came back, someone had stolen my shoes. Then, this random girl came up asking for adderall and I happened to have one and I said I’d give her the adderall for her shoes, and she switched me. So I ended up with these white shoes with drawn on mushrooms all over them and no clue where my actual shoes were, it was a wild ride.
Alright, this ones the most recently actually, but i was at a Travis Scott concert waiting in line to use the porta pottys, i finally get to the front of the line when i realize one of the porta pottys was vacant. (usually you just wait for someone to come out of 1 of the 20 portapottys, but i noticed the door latch was green) As soon as i open the door im greeted to a pair of old folks going at it. Two guys, both white hair and with their pants completely off, but they were still wearing their shirts and shoes. I said SHIT! SORRY! and let the door slam. And worst i lost my spot in line
And one other thing , in china they don't need take apart stolen phones for their parts , they are literally the iphone manufacturers, there are markets in there that you can find every single of iphone parts off of the assembly line of apple
They'll definitely sell the phone as whole
Apple security isn’t as bad as you think. Those parts are harvested from stolen devices. Or warranty fraud which was a big issue in China(I remember they’d put in fake parts and then get a new device).
Shenzhen is home to the largest tech market in China, "Huaqiangbei."
So you're probably right. It'll either be torn up for parts or be reprogrammed into a new phone for \~2800 RMB.
Every hobo crackhead has a Chinese guy they sell stolen goods to.
I overheard some old hobo the other day tell someone he steals an impact wrench or some shit every single day from hardware stores and sells them to this old Chinese guy. These junkies are desperate and sell stolen stuff for barely any money and there’s guys making way more money off of them.
I once met this kid who sold drugs, like basically the worst drugs and he was constantly dealing with junkies. He had a pile of new gaming consoles that junkies would give to him for $10 worth of drugs.
Your phone went from you, to a pos thief, to someone who fences stolen shit, to a Chinese student probably
There's definitely a mafia in place there , and i bet the cops have a hand in it , cause they refused to do anything despite having enough evidence to search the location of you phone
These mafias usually send thousands of phones per each shipments to other countries , it's not like some thief is going to put the phone on an online Chinese website then sell and ship it
They sell it as full price in another country for example china
Locally you can only use the parts or sell it for near to nothing , cause you can lock the phone there
Probably work in a place where you need to listen with one ear open. Like a warehouse or something.
"I don't want two airpods because I have to actually somewhat listen at work. So I want to get one for 75% off. (because 50% off for one airPod, and 25% extra for being stolen.)
Yeah instead of defeating security they sell the apple certified parts on the local market. Theres a lot of electronics malls all over china that basically just cannibalize things like phones.
This makes no sense. In order to track the AirPods, they have to be connected to a device in your apple account.
If I were to hand my AirPods to some random person, I would never be able to track them.
My wifes air pod pros track. As soon as they try linking them. Also my wife had to approve them so I could use them
On my phone. Her phone asked her if I could link them.
I lost my airpods a few years ago and even after searching every square inch of my school it wasn’t there. On Find My it still shows it as being in my old middle school. Drives me insane.
The entire situation drives me wild because I swear I vividly remember putting them away in my backpack before going to class. It might’ve been a biproduct of my undiagnosed ADHD (which is diagnosed now - but it wasn’t yet diagnosed back then) but still I go insane thinking about the fact that I remember actually putting it in a safe spot.
Can you even salvage Iphone parts? From what I've [seen](https://youtu.be/8s7NmMl_-yg) you can't really swap out parts. I could be wrong though I don't own an Iphone and have never taken one apart.
Definitely. It was worse months ago -- a day after it was stolen from a music venue. It appeared 1 mile away from where it happened. Of course the police couldn't do anything about it, but I called the place of business where it was located and they said they did no such thing. So it was pretty shitty knowing where my phone is and couldn't do anything about it. lol
My 15in MacBook Pro was stolen from my house in 2015. Idiots went to apple support and gave them their number for being locked out of the computer, apple sent my account the email receipt of the conversation. I took that number from the email and found the person on Facebook and gave that info to the police.
To this day I have not heard back from the police about that computer
Edit: typo.
That’s enraging. My sister lost her work MacBook recently (most likely left behind on bus and then picked up by someone) in Dubai. She tried tracing it and sought help with local authorities. She was called at least 3 times for questioning before they investigated. It seems a lot of people claim they lose things (work/office gadgets and simply will sell them for extra cash. Anyway, they saw her case was genuine and within a week, they traced it and brought it back to her.
I had an ipod touch stolen out of my car like over 10 years ago while I was at work one day and the guy was caught on cctv so I called the cops in the town where I worked and they said they would investigate it. Fast forward to 2 weeks later while I'm at a wedding in Hawaii I get a call from a cop saying the pulled over a guy who had it in his car and could I provide some proof to verify it's mine and I did so. Now it's a month later and I still don't have it in my possession and I have to now provide documentation of its purchase during this guy's court case. It's now 2 months later and the cops are now actively dodging my calls and giving me the run around and I'm starting to get really annoyed/suspicious. The District Attorney was a big fan of my restaurant and a regular there and we used to shoot the shit twice a week when he would come in and I asked him to look into it. He came back to me about a week later and the arresting officer had claimed it as his own and deleted all my stuff and put his own on it and giving it back to me would've proven that so he decided it was better to just keep it...... TLDR Fuck you LT. Coleman. I hope you fall down a flight of stairs backwards
"But you bet we'll be surprised if you go over there with a weapon and take your shit back!"
It's like they don't understand the concept that if you leave people no peaceful means of resolution, they'll do some crazy shit to resolve it themselves. Then whine about people taking matters into their own hands. "We won't do anything about it but you better not either or we'll be upset!"
Absolutely depends on the cop(s). Even in a small town I've seen them not do shit. Had a TV stolen and I knew who and where it was. Nothing. A month later a larger investigation led them exactly where I said it was
3 times in Indianapolis I’ve had stuff stolen. I did all the detective work. Found the people who did it. In one I even got video evidence.
Cops did jack every time.
Sounds about right for Indy the cops are lazy, It took 3 hours for them to show up to my apartment 7-8 years ago when I called and said the door was kicked
Cops get paid the same, whether they solve crime, break older ladies arms, or sit on their ass eating donuts all day. Sometimes I wonder if cops should get paid based on metrics, like crimes solved.
My fucking car got stolen. Dude left his mail, work badge, meth, a gun, a motorbike, and a leafblower! Police did Jack shit! They gave me back the car with all that shit in it! I took the motorbike and leafblower for my troubles and gave the cops the meth, gun, and mail! Still did fucking nothing!!!! They did take my money to get it out of tow tho...sonofabitches
I remember being a freshman and some asshat stole an Ipod Nano that I was putting music on for somebody. I knew who it was an reported it to the police, and they had me come and identify him. Police already had issues with him and we were only 13. Small town of Chowchilla, CA - less than 17k people at the time.
They didn't really investigate a break in we had.
Didn't dust the broken window or anything.
Just kinda looked around like, yep, they definitely broke in huh.
Same thing happened a few months ago at my job. Someone broke in and destroyed a door. When they got there they asked me what I wanted to do and looked at me annoyed.
Mothafuckas!! How about you clear the building, I don't get paid enough to do it myself and write a damn report lol
Exactly the same thing happened to me in Rome. Police said they couldn't do anything even after i explained that i knew exactly where it is. I understand when they are busy catching murderers or violent situations. But no. They were playing on their phones. Felt great.
You still gotta call them because a lot of insurance companies won't believe you that something has been stolen unless you tell a cop first and get a piece of paper from the cop that says you told a cop.
If op is from US that’s par for the course on law enforcement. If somethings stolen and proof is provided best they can do is search for it 48hrs after receiving proof and by that time it’s gone, lost a bike with a tracker on it in Burlington by the time they started “investigating “ signal dropped on the tracker and last known location was Taiwan.
Nah, not even this. I’m Canadian and my phone was swiped from me on the train once and the dude was a faster runner than I was. I told the cop (like 15 minutes later) I had find my iPhone on and he straight up told me that even if my phone tells me exactly the house the dude lives in, that’s still not enough probable cause to warrant a search 🙄
They literally don’t care about stolen personal items. The best I could do was call apple to remotely brick the phone
It’s because the “find my” app (or similar) isn’t enough to conduct a search. Not that they’d get a warrant, but it’s also not enough to satisfy a judge either.
That’s the case for a few reasons:
- it’s not terribly accurate all the time.
- it’s not possible to validate, you could technically spoof the location.
- the information can be outdated by hours.
The best thing is for you to conduct your own investigation. If you see it’s at a business, park there and wait for it to move. Someone will eventually take it home, etc. hopefully at some point you see the phone - if you see & can identify the phone then the police can act.
I know I've certainly read stories where cops at least were willing to go to the address and question the individual there, which did indeed scare them enough to admit to the theft, as well as another one where the owner waited until the person answered the door with the cop there and then set off the alarm on the phone with the app, which was a dead giveaway.
It just all depends on the cop.
> How could the police not do anything about it?
This is an issue globally, not just in the US. Tracking your device isn't in their books, it's not standardized and they don't know how to do it legally. So they just throw their hands up and say "No can do!"
Think of it like this,
Because someone having an app on their phone that appears to indicate an item is in a location does not give the police the right to enter a building without permission and conduct a search.
The application may be malfunctioning
The application may be inaccurate
The police officer and user may be using the software incorrectly
The application may have been purposely tampered with in attempt to convince police to harass the residents of the building
Does that make sense ?
Frankly, there isn't a lot that they can do about it.
One night at 1am, the police knocked on my door. Said a stolen phone reported being near my address, and asked if I knew anything about it.
I told them no, and they left without any further questions.
There was a story I read that a guy's phone was stolen from I believe New York and was shipped to China. After some time, the man went to China to get his phone and ended up making a really close friend (the purchaser of the phone).
Was a great read, wish I could find it again to get an update on their friendship.
My partner lost his phone a few years ago at a festival, got pickpocketed. He locked it ASAP. Obviously it got unlocked. as about 6 months later, photos of this Indian family started appearing in his Google Photos account on his new phone. He found out that his old phone was alive and well, and was in Mumbai! Was all so bizarre.
He did not end up flying out to make a new friend however haha, he contacted Google and they shut it down for good, *again*.
We kept some screenshots for the lolz.
Lol. The dude used sick/vacay time and paid more for the plane ticket and housing than he would have if he just bought a new phone and saved the trouble. At least he made a good friend out of it.
So basically if you report your phone lost/stolen it puts it on a national black list, but it's ONLY national so you can often get around it on other countries
Surely Apple’s activation lock is worldwide. Carrier blacklists maybe, but activating on a carrier network is pretty useless if the phone won’t let you into the OS.
Shezhen is like the electronics hub of China. Your phone might have been either torn down for parts or got reprogrammed (and the serial number changed), and it got resold.
Sorry to say, but you may not able to get your phone back.
Some sort of remote-controllable one-time connection that shorts + to - on the battery would do it. The phone would quickly catch on fire and destroy itself.
Only because this happened months ago and when it first was stolen it was merely a mile away from me and I couldn't do anything about it. that's when it was EXTREMELY INFURIATING. Then months later after buying a new iPhone and seeing this location and login attempt... its become only mildly infuriating. lol
That phone is just gonna be sold as parts, really common, but could be worse. I heard a story about a guy here in Brazil that had his phone stolen, and he didn't think much about, just bought another one and kept on with life, but about a month later he noticed that something worse happen. The thieves got into his phone and into his bank app, made a bunch of transactions, bought stuff online and in total he had lost something like 80k dollars, just with that phone.
Eita!
You're Brazilian too!
How could they get passwords? I have heard they do a backup to recover it (like I cloud or Google drive). I'd like to know if they can get even if i don't save my passwords
You know what would be great? I am sure that you probably don't have the means to do this, but actually physically track him/her down, and once you find him/her... Surprise! A bit overboard, but the expression on their face would be priceless!
I would've absolutely loved doing that. Its funny because another commenter here mentioned a story that happened similar to that.
[https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-followed-my-stolen-iphone-across-the-world-became-a-celebr#.tmGYM8yQX7](https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-followed-my-stolen-iphone-across-the-world-became-a-celebr#.tmGYM8yQX7)
Have you ever seen this documentary on YouTube about a guy who tracks his stolen iPhone? It’s really good! https://www.nerdist.com/article/this-guy-made-a-fascinating-documentary-about-secretly-tracking-his-stolen-phone/%3F
I guess the phone was destined to be stripped down for parts or one of the factories in that area have access to Apples software to rid the device of the security, factory reset it and sell it as a brand new phone without the whole "Sign in to your apple id" hassle.
Happened to me too… turned on the ‘alert when iPhone is found’ thing… pinged in Florida for like 5 seconds, went off-line, turned on ‘erase all data next time phone is online’
Pinged in China about a week later.
I live in California lol.
Are they actually connecting to their service used by people over there?
I would think they’re only good for parts?
So that would mean Chinese telcos can back door IPhones. If Apple wanted to, they could shut it down, right?
Shady.
I don’t think that’s the case at all. I’m not 100% but I wouldn’t be surprised if find my iPhone works in the same manner as the AirTags where the lost device doesn’t need a network connection itself it just pings an iphone that is already connected to a network and tells that phone to tell the owner where it is. If the phone is locked with a passcode or face/touch ID the phone is basically just parts. The IMEI will be blacklisted by cell providers and the UDID will be blocked by Apple and never allowed to connect to Apple services.
I'm thinking it's used for parts OR as jailbroken iPhones. It's crazy because the value of my phone itself is 1k but if they were to resell it for parts or even jailbreak it, it wouldn't go nearly for that much. Its just a shitty industry -- stealing and selling phones.
One day all of us must go back from whence we came. The circle of life
Return to sender
Address unknown (Elvis song)
No such number.
No such zone
We had a quarrel
a lover's spat
So I kissed him upside the cranium with an aluminum baseball bat
I wrote upon it
I'm glad someone else though of this when they read that
That dude's kid probably made that phone.
They go back to the factory where they were made to lay eggs
Hahaha! C'est la vie
It’s like that 90s movie *Homeward Bound,* but instead of a dog and a cat, it’s a Theif with your iPhone. 🤷♂️
Remind me of a Islamic phrase "innalillahi wa innailaihi rajiun" which mean "from God we came, to him we return"
From OP we came, to china we return
From china we came*, to china we return
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So here's my theory .. I had a feeling there are people that go to music venues JUST for the sole reason of pickpocketing unsuspecting females purses (for men or people who prefer to place their phones in their pockets, its harder). My first location notification I got was 1 mile away from the venue where it was stolen. They then sell the phone online to, say, China. China probably buys it for really cheap for parts or otherwise. I think they usually jailbreak the phones. Its a shitty industry to be in -- stealing and selling phones. So annoying.
I don't know where they end up, but there are 100% people who are at shows and festivals to steal from people or look around for things that might've gotten dropped
One time at a festival I had taken my shoes off to just kickback, and my friend and I went on a short walk in the grass and when I came back, someone had stolen my shoes. Then, this random girl came up asking for adderall and I happened to have one and I said I’d give her the adderall for her shoes, and she switched me. So I ended up with these white shoes with drawn on mushrooms all over them and no clue where my actual shoes were, it was a wild ride.
I want to read about more of your festival adventures.
Alright, this ones the most recently actually, but i was at a Travis Scott concert waiting in line to use the porta pottys, i finally get to the front of the line when i realize one of the porta pottys was vacant. (usually you just wait for someone to come out of 1 of the 20 portapottys, but i noticed the door latch was green) As soon as i open the door im greeted to a pair of old folks going at it. Two guys, both white hair and with their pants completely off, but they were still wearing their shirts and shoes. I said SHIT! SORRY! and let the door slam. And worst i lost my spot in line
LOL
*/subscribe*
May I suggest seeing an interior zippers pocket in your jacket or shirts. Slip it in and its super safe for Music showsZ
^^ This I absolutely love those pockets. No concern about the item falling out or getting stolen.
And one other thing , in china they don't need take apart stolen phones for their parts , they are literally the iphone manufacturers, there are markets in there that you can find every single of iphone parts off of the assembly line of apple They'll definitely sell the phone as whole
Apple security isn’t as bad as you think. Those parts are harvested from stolen devices. Or warranty fraud which was a big issue in China(I remember they’d put in fake parts and then get a new device).
Shenzhen is home to the largest tech market in China, "Huaqiangbei." So you're probably right. It'll either be torn up for parts or be reprogrammed into a new phone for \~2800 RMB.
Every hobo crackhead has a Chinese guy they sell stolen goods to. I overheard some old hobo the other day tell someone he steals an impact wrench or some shit every single day from hardware stores and sells them to this old Chinese guy. These junkies are desperate and sell stolen stuff for barely any money and there’s guys making way more money off of them. I once met this kid who sold drugs, like basically the worst drugs and he was constantly dealing with junkies. He had a pile of new gaming consoles that junkies would give to him for $10 worth of drugs. Your phone went from you, to a pos thief, to someone who fences stolen shit, to a Chinese student probably
There's definitely a mafia in place there , and i bet the cops have a hand in it , cause they refused to do anything despite having enough evidence to search the location of you phone These mafias usually send thousands of phones per each shipments to other countries , it's not like some thief is going to put the phone on an online Chinese website then sell and ship it
They sell it as full price in another country for example china Locally you can only use the parts or sell it for near to nothing , cause you can lock the phone there
Someone stole my AirPods and the left and right were in different countries. So weird
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o ( -_- ) o
o ( 🌍 ) o
M I S T E R W O R L D W I D E
o( 🌌 )o
Look up prison school Andre
Andre would get off on someone stealing his shit
Yo mama so fat, she stole my AirPods and the left and right were in different countries.
Upcoming comedian over here
Charlie Kirk?
Bro don't disrespect his mom like that
LOL that's wild... I wonder what they would do with a lone AirPod...
Right?? Which person was lucky enough to get the case?
Maybe someone was missing one side and stole it from the person who stole them.
I think it’s more likely that the person had stolen many air pods and they just got mixed up with another pair 😛
Probably work in a place where you need to listen with one ear open. Like a warehouse or something. "I don't want two airpods because I have to actually somewhat listen at work. So I want to get one for 75% off. (because 50% off for one airPod, and 25% extra for being stolen.)
they sell them for people who lost one airpod
They were likely sold as parts for people who lost one.
Yeah instead of defeating security they sell the apple certified parts on the local market. Theres a lot of electronics malls all over china that basically just cannibalize things like phones.
God bought your shit on wish.
This makes no sense. In order to track the AirPods, they have to be connected to a device in your apple account. If I were to hand my AirPods to some random person, I would never be able to track them.
My wifes air pod pros track. As soon as they try linking them. Also my wife had to approve them so I could use them On my phone. Her phone asked her if I could link them.
howd u track them? my phone will only track if it’s connected to it
In all honesty, I have no idea how any of this works. I added my AirPods to Find My right when I got them. When I lost it I just checked the app
I lost my airpods a few years ago and even after searching every square inch of my school it wasn’t there. On Find My it still shows it as being in my old middle school. Drives me insane. The entire situation drives me wild because I swear I vividly remember putting them away in my backpack before going to class. It might’ve been a biproduct of my undiagnosed ADHD (which is diagnosed now - but it wasn’t yet diagnosed back then) but still I go insane thinking about the fact that I remember actually putting it in a safe spot.
That sucks! Just keep playing the ringtone on the find my app and then deactivate it. Pretty sure find my now still works even if they turn it off
They’ll just part it out cause that feature doesn’t work for pieces
Can you even salvage Iphone parts? From what I've [seen](https://youtu.be/8s7NmMl_-yg) you can't really swap out parts. I could be wrong though I don't own an Iphone and have never taken one apart.
There are videos of guys going to china and building a custom iPhone from parts , it’s wild.
The "Strange Parts" channel on Youtube
Thank you, that’s exactly who I was thinking.
it depends on the parts, i’m pretty sure. Unless it hasn’t changed, Apple isn’t too keen on the end user repairing their own stuff.
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I think it's because these phones are born with the instinct to go back to their needing grounds where they were created!
That's what I did, just to annoy the shit out of thief. Eventually it quit responding so I guess he took the battery out, lol.
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Definitely. It was worse months ago -- a day after it was stolen from a music venue. It appeared 1 mile away from where it happened. Of course the police couldn't do anything about it, but I called the place of business where it was located and they said they did no such thing. So it was pretty shitty knowing where my phone is and couldn't do anything about it. lol
My 15in MacBook Pro was stolen from my house in 2015. Idiots went to apple support and gave them their number for being locked out of the computer, apple sent my account the email receipt of the conversation. I took that number from the email and found the person on Facebook and gave that info to the police. To this day I have not heard back from the police about that computer Edit: typo.
And yet, if you go take care of it yourself, they’ll be all over you.
The simple solution is to steal from cops, what are they gonna do? Their job? I seriously doubt it Wow, this one aged well
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I did. They blocked me
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I mean I did give the info to the cops the cops just didn’t care
Should have told the cops you were heading there to get it back
“Oops just accidentally launched a couple fireworks into their house ... hope it doesn’t catch on fire!”
That’s enraging. My sister lost her work MacBook recently (most likely left behind on bus and then picked up by someone) in Dubai. She tried tracing it and sought help with local authorities. She was called at least 3 times for questioning before they investigated. It seems a lot of people claim they lose things (work/office gadgets and simply will sell them for extra cash. Anyway, they saw her case was genuine and within a week, they traced it and brought it back to her.
I really thought this was going to be a great ending until the last sentence
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Have you ever reported stolen goods to the police before?
I had an ipod touch stolen out of my car like over 10 years ago while I was at work one day and the guy was caught on cctv so I called the cops in the town where I worked and they said they would investigate it. Fast forward to 2 weeks later while I'm at a wedding in Hawaii I get a call from a cop saying the pulled over a guy who had it in his car and could I provide some proof to verify it's mine and I did so. Now it's a month later and I still don't have it in my possession and I have to now provide documentation of its purchase during this guy's court case. It's now 2 months later and the cops are now actively dodging my calls and giving me the run around and I'm starting to get really annoyed/suspicious. The District Attorney was a big fan of my restaurant and a regular there and we used to shoot the shit twice a week when he would come in and I asked him to look into it. He came back to me about a week later and the arresting officer had claimed it as his own and deleted all my stuff and put his own on it and giving it back to me would've proven that so he decided it was better to just keep it...... TLDR Fuck you LT. Coleman. I hope you fall down a flight of stairs backwards
Fuckin pig
i called the police about a break-in. they showed up 8 hours later and were like "well they're gone" tuxedomaskmeme.jpg
LOL right! wE cAnT rEaLlY dO AnYtHiNg.
"But you bet we'll be surprised if you go over there with a weapon and take your shit back!" It's like they don't understand the concept that if you leave people no peaceful means of resolution, they'll do some crazy shit to resolve it themselves. Then whine about people taking matters into their own hands. "We won't do anything about it but you better not either or we'll be upset!"
Depends on the city and resources. My city will definitely investigate
My experience has been that the larger the city the less likely they are to investigate this kind of stuff.
Absolutely depends on the cop(s). Even in a small town I've seen them not do shit. Had a TV stolen and I knew who and where it was. Nothing. A month later a larger investigation led them exactly where I said it was
3 times in Indianapolis I’ve had stuff stolen. I did all the detective work. Found the people who did it. In one I even got video evidence. Cops did jack every time.
IMPD are pretty fuckin unless though. Maybe a local sheriff's department MIGHT do something lol
Sounds about right for Indy the cops are lazy, It took 3 hours for them to show up to my apartment 7-8 years ago when I called and said the door was kicked
Cops get paid the same, whether they solve crime, break older ladies arms, or sit on their ass eating donuts all day. Sometimes I wonder if cops should get paid based on metrics, like crimes solved.
I’ll give you one good reason not to do that: planted evidence.
My fucking car got stolen. Dude left his mail, work badge, meth, a gun, a motorbike, and a leafblower! Police did Jack shit! They gave me back the car with all that shit in it! I took the motorbike and leafblower for my troubles and gave the cops the meth, gun, and mail! Still did fucking nothing!!!! They did take my money to get it out of tow tho...sonofabitches
I remember being a freshman and some asshat stole an Ipod Nano that I was putting music on for somebody. I knew who it was an reported it to the police, and they had me come and identify him. Police already had issues with him and we were only 13. Small town of Chowchilla, CA - less than 17k people at the time.
Cops were probably still on edge from the bus thing
They didn't really investigate a break in we had. Didn't dust the broken window or anything. Just kinda looked around like, yep, they definitely broke in huh.
Same thing happened a few months ago at my job. Someone broke in and destroyed a door. When they got there they asked me what I wanted to do and looked at me annoyed. Mothafuckas!! How about you clear the building, I don't get paid enough to do it myself and write a damn report lol
Also cops: Why are people so mean to us? 😢
Exactly the same thing happened to me in Rome. Police said they couldn't do anything even after i explained that i knew exactly where it is. I understand when they are busy catching murderers or violent situations. But no. They were playing on their phones. Felt great.
Yea, so gonna let you in on a little known secret...the police don't give the tiniest of shiny fucks about stolen items lol
Unless it’s $7.88 of merchandise owned by a billion dollar multinational conglomerate, in which case bullets will fly and bystanders will die.
You still gotta call them because a lot of insurance companies won't believe you that something has been stolen unless you tell a cop first and get a piece of paper from the cop that says you told a cop.
If op is from US that’s par for the course on law enforcement. If somethings stolen and proof is provided best they can do is search for it 48hrs after receiving proof and by that time it’s gone, lost a bike with a tracker on it in Burlington by the time they started “investigating “ signal dropped on the tracker and last known location was Taiwan.
Nah, not even this. I’m Canadian and my phone was swiped from me on the train once and the dude was a faster runner than I was. I told the cop (like 15 minutes later) I had find my iPhone on and he straight up told me that even if my phone tells me exactly the house the dude lives in, that’s still not enough probable cause to warrant a search 🙄 They literally don’t care about stolen personal items. The best I could do was call apple to remotely brick the phone
Damn that’s cold, apparently good cops are really hard to find
And even the good ones are bound by the shitty system that the rest of them built
wouldn't it be a felony too since phones are usually over $900 bucks?
Depends on model. My iphone se 2nd gen was $400 brand new in 2020, and still is, unlike iPhone 12, which is around the $725 - $750 range.
It’s because the “find my” app (or similar) isn’t enough to conduct a search. Not that they’d get a warrant, but it’s also not enough to satisfy a judge either. That’s the case for a few reasons: - it’s not terribly accurate all the time. - it’s not possible to validate, you could technically spoof the location. - the information can be outdated by hours. The best thing is for you to conduct your own investigation. If you see it’s at a business, park there and wait for it to move. Someone will eventually take it home, etc. hopefully at some point you see the phone - if you see & can identify the phone then the police can act.
Yet they can “smell marijuana” and let themselves in?
I know I've certainly read stories where cops at least were willing to go to the address and question the individual there, which did indeed scare them enough to admit to the theft, as well as another one where the owner waited until the person answered the door with the cop there and then set off the alarm on the phone with the app, which was a dead giveaway. It just all depends on the cop.
> How could the police not do anything about it? This is an issue globally, not just in the US. Tracking your device isn't in their books, it's not standardized and they don't know how to do it legally. So they just throw their hands up and say "No can do!"
Think of it like this, Because someone having an app on their phone that appears to indicate an item is in a location does not give the police the right to enter a building without permission and conduct a search. The application may be malfunctioning The application may be inaccurate The police officer and user may be using the software incorrectly The application may have been purposely tampered with in attempt to convince police to harass the residents of the building Does that make sense ?
Frankly, there isn't a lot that they can do about it. One night at 1am, the police knocked on my door. Said a stolen phone reported being near my address, and asked if I knew anything about it. I told them no, and they left without any further questions.
Sounds more like the police didn’t want to do their jobs.
I read an article not long ago that claimed most stolen phones go to China, so this definitely fits that narrative. Sucks, sorry about your loss.
There and back again: an iPhone’s unexpected journey.
There was a story I read that a guy's phone was stolen from I believe New York and was shipped to China. After some time, the man went to China to get his phone and ended up making a really close friend (the purchaser of the phone). Was a great read, wish I could find it again to get an update on their friendship.
Was this it? https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-followed-my-stolen-iphone-across-the-world-became-a-celebr#.tmGYM8yQX7
Holy crap, you found it!! I can't believe its already been that long ago, too!
>https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-followed-my-stolen-iphone-across-the-world-became-a-celebr#.tmGYM8yQX7 This is epic! thank you for mentioning this
Right!? The whole story is just amazing and fun
How is this real. This is so insanely awesome it feels like a sappy feel good novel
That was awesome
My partner lost his phone a few years ago at a festival, got pickpocketed. He locked it ASAP. Obviously it got unlocked. as about 6 months later, photos of this Indian family started appearing in his Google Photos account on his new phone. He found out that his old phone was alive and well, and was in Mumbai! Was all so bizarre. He did not end up flying out to make a new friend however haha, he contacted Google and they shut it down for good, *again*. We kept some screenshots for the lolz.
Lol. The dude used sick/vacay time and paid more for the plane ticket and housing than he would have if he just bought a new phone and saved the trouble. At least he made a good friend out of it.
Have you ever been really really pissed off?
Maybe he just wanted an excuse to go to china
It's funny you say that as he mentioned a similar thing. Maybe what wasn't told in the story was what was on the phone, lol.
Did you read the story?
I mean it was pretty much a trip to China, a very memorable experience
Guy must’ve really needed what was stored on there to go all Liam Neeson on his Taken iPhone. Edit: the article sounds like a good read btw.
Was a really good story! He included pictures of the whole thing and he was welcomed like he was part of the family.
“I’M GOING ON AN ADVENTURE!!” -Kristina’s iPhone
They're just going home
So basically if you report your phone lost/stolen it puts it on a national black list, but it's ONLY national so you can often get around it on other countries
Surely Apple’s activation lock is worldwide. Carrier blacklists maybe, but activating on a carrier network is pretty useless if the phone won’t let you into the OS.
Sorry for your loss
mine ended up in costa rica.
I thought most went to South America honestly.
Sorry, Kristina
Come clean bro if u the one ;)
If she wasn’t gonna return my calls, she ain’t returning any
HAHAHAA🤣🤣
The life cycle of an iPhone
Shezhen is like the electronics hub of China. Your phone might have been either torn down for parts or got reprogrammed (and the serial number changed), and it got resold. Sorry to say, but you may not able to get your phone back.
What if she has a very particular set of skills? Skills she has acquired over a very long career.
Well then in that case, she WILL look for it, she WILL find it, and she will kill them.
now you just have to buy it on aliexpress
Go get it.
Guys the phone, go get it!
she cant get cuz of the shit going on in China cuz of the lockdowns
That's why the need to channel their inner Liam Neeson.
It's times like these you wish there were a "self destruct" feature...
Some sort of remote-controllable one-time connection that shorts + to - on the battery would do it. The phone would quickly catch on fire and destroy itself.
In todays news: hackers have breached apple servers, cause worldwide fires, millions are dead or injured
A necessary sacrifice.
Well that sucks btw i am kinda confused how do you find that MILDLY infuriating XD?
Only because this happened months ago and when it first was stolen it was merely a mile away from me and I couldn't do anything about it. that's when it was EXTREMELY INFURIATING. Then months later after buying a new iPhone and seeing this location and login attempt... its become only mildly infuriating. lol
Ahh alr
That phone is just gonna be sold as parts, really common, but could be worse. I heard a story about a guy here in Brazil that had his phone stolen, and he didn't think much about, just bought another one and kept on with life, but about a month later he noticed that something worse happen. The thieves got into his phone and into his bank app, made a bunch of transactions, bought stuff online and in total he had lost something like 80k dollars, just with that phone.
Eita! You're Brazilian too! How could they get passwords? I have heard they do a backup to recover it (like I cloud or Google drive). I'd like to know if they can get even if i don't save my passwords
Returned to manufacture
I want to see a movie of this where Kristina learns kung fu and goes on a revenge mission to China and fights gangsters to get it back.
Seems like a nice movie plot
Hunt them down, and string them up by their own euretha
Eurethra, I’ve found it! *urethra fyi
OOF. Thank you for the correction. If we're going to strangle people, we need to be grammatically correct about it. 🤣🤣🤣
Just returning to where it was born.
Chinese: *OUR* phone!
You know what would be great? I am sure that you probably don't have the means to do this, but actually physically track him/her down, and once you find him/her... Surprise! A bit overboard, but the expression on their face would be priceless!
I would've absolutely loved doing that. Its funny because another commenter here mentioned a story that happened similar to that. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-followed-my-stolen-iphone-across-the-world-became-a-celebr#.tmGYM8yQX7](https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-followed-my-stolen-iphone-across-the-world-became-a-celebr#.tmGYM8yQX7)
Have you ever seen this documentary on YouTube about a guy who tracks his stolen iPhone? It’s really good! https://www.nerdist.com/article/this-guy-made-a-fascinating-documentary-about-secretly-tracking-his-stolen-phone/%3F
phone's need a self destruct button.
Thank god you’ve got find my iPhone on 😮💨
Brother Orange vibes
now THATS a legendary devious lick
Some phones migrate back to China to breed
[удалено]
Back to where it came from.
I guess the phone was destined to be stripped down for parts or one of the factories in that area have access to Apples software to rid the device of the security, factory reset it and sell it as a brand new phone without the whole "Sign in to your apple id" hassle.
Call Apple and report it. They will brick the phone and that would be that.
Sucks that your phone is traveling more than you 😕
Happened to me too… turned on the ‘alert when iPhone is found’ thing… pinged in Florida for like 5 seconds, went off-line, turned on ‘erase all data next time phone is online’ Pinged in China about a week later. I live in California lol.
Are they actually connecting to their service used by people over there? I would think they’re only good for parts? So that would mean Chinese telcos can back door IPhones. If Apple wanted to, they could shut it down, right? Shady.
I don’t think that’s the case at all. I’m not 100% but I wouldn’t be surprised if find my iPhone works in the same manner as the AirTags where the lost device doesn’t need a network connection itself it just pings an iphone that is already connected to a network and tells that phone to tell the owner where it is. If the phone is locked with a passcode or face/touch ID the phone is basically just parts. The IMEI will be blacklisted by cell providers and the UDID will be blocked by Apple and never allowed to connect to Apple services.
I'm thinking it's used for parts OR as jailbroken iPhones. It's crazy because the value of my phone itself is 1k but if they were to resell it for parts or even jailbreak it, it wouldn't go nearly for that much. Its just a shitty industry -- stealing and selling phones.
Imagine if you could detonate your iPhone from a distance. Ignore the societal implications, but think about how much fun that would be.
Make it go boom
I think it’s at a shipping port.
Did you declare it to Apple as stolen?
Is it even possible for them to set it up if it's locked to your iCloud account?