http://consumerist.com/5153293/updated-my-iphone-is-missing-and-some-guy-is-taking-pics-of-himself-with-it

Quote :

"Do you know this guy? [ed. photos removed] He seems to be in the possession of the iPhone that Dino's dad lost. Before losing the phone, his dad set up a rule where any email sent from the phone blind-cc'ed his personal email address, which we think is a pretty brilliant low-tech security solution for tracking down a lost/stolen phone or laptop. Was hoping you could give me some advice. My dad (64) lost his iphone today. He went to the At&T store and had the service stopped and got a SIM card to put into his old cell phone. Well he checked his aol account tonight and saw pictures of some guy holding an iphone up and taking pics in the mirror. My dad had it set up that he was BCC on emails sent out on the iphone. We emailed the the recipient of the emails to ask who was in these pictures and that we would like the phone back. He hasn't responded back yet. What should we do? I think in the morning my dad will file a report with the police. I tried googling the email address ([redacted]@hotmail.com) and no luck with that. Do you have any other advice we should do to get back the phone? I posted the pics on flickr. If this is seen widely on the Internet do you think it would shame the guy into give us back the phone? - Dino A. Paramus , NJ If he found the phone and didn't immediately bother looking through it for a way to contact the owner, we imagine he plans on keeping it. If it was stolen, we're pretty certain shame will not help. But who knows? One guy whose Sidekick got stolen was able to track down the culprits because they took pictures of themselves on it. He set up a site posting the pictures and an ad-hoc internet manhunt formed and eventually they caught the guy. On the off chance this was all a good-natured mixup (or he bought it used and didn't know it was stolen/lost), we'll post your story. You might want to email him again with a detailed description of what was on the phone, as well as any identifying marks and likely places where it was lost or stolen, so that he knows you're not a scammer yourself. Oh, and before anyone does or says anything too douche-y about the guy in the photos, remember that we really don't know how he came about it."

in 55 MINUTES, the commenters had tracked down the dude's facebook account, tracked down his Hi5 account, saw the pictures posted earlier, contacted him, had him contact the guy whose phone he stole, and asked that the pictures be removed. dude now has his phone back.

http://bit.ly/xonq6
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/s.php?init=q&q=jrsyctyemerson%40hotmail.com&ref=ts&sid=ff108547a0b8339bafc7f2cb57a4951e



i think that's an internet record.

2/16/2009 6:18:26 PM

can someone summarize it

2/16/2009 6:18:49 PM

pwnt

2/16/2009 6:24:43 PM

Guy's phone went missing. Some douche bag took pictures of himself with it and didn't know they were being emailed to the owner. Pics posted on the net, and in 55 minutes the guy was found and agreed to give the phone back.

Somebody make that shorter.

2/16/2009 6:25:34 PM

that's awesome

[Edited on February 16, 2009 at 6:27 PM. Reason : so who wants to sign his hotmail account up for a billion spams?]

2/16/2009 6:26:30 PM

I need to know the rest. The owner did do us a favor and shot the guy right?

2/16/2009 6:27:26 PM

[old]

but I wish they would explain how to bcc yourself on emails like that, it'd be very useful

2/16/2009 6:28:31 PM

i'd like an app that can track my iphone via satellite so if i lose it a signal can ping back and forth letting me know where it is

kind of like lo-bot from empire

2/16/2009 6:29:51 PM

you can set it up in mail settings

there's an entry that says "bcc as a rule" or something, i remember seeing it

my phone is off getting a skin put on it right now or else i'd find it for you, but it's there.

^the iphone 3g automatically geotags photos and sticks the location in the EXIF data... so if you can find a photo that someone took with your phone, you can generally tell about where they are

2/16/2009 6:30:18 PM

cloud city ftw

2/16/2009 6:30:35 PM

Quote :

"but I wish they would explain how to bcc yourself on emails like that, it'd be very useful"

yea you can set it to do it by default..but it blatantly says in the email BCC: LALALA

so he was an idiot for missing it as far as i can tell.

2/16/2009 6:49:08 PM