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Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

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Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#21

Post by mikeash »

seiji wrote: post #17
JonnieCache wrote: post #2

Now this is interesting. Presumably the coordinates of their house are significant in some way. The result of some kind of truncation perhaps? I can't see how a floating-point error could converge on a specific value like this, but I'm no expert in such things. If they could only post their address the answer would surely be found very quickly, but that would defeat the object somewhat. I suppose it's fortuitous that…

Sorry, but it's actually really simple. It's the same reason why on a Jet Blue flight, my phone shows me geolocated to Long Beach, CA for the entire flight (if I don't hold the phone up to the windows). Phones prefer wifi positioning, and that's based on the base station mac addresses. If you are in a highly wifi dense area, moving one AP can auto-propogate its new location by phones reporting in bulk groups of mac a…

GPS is definitely more power hungry and easily blocked, but when you get a solid signal it's far more accurate than WiFi positioning. GPS will pretty reliably nail down your location to within 2m or so, while WiFi positioning is probably an order of magnitude worse. The main use for WiFi positioning (besides devices that simply don't have GPS capability at all) is for indoor location, because GPS signals tend to penetrate buildings poorly.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#22

Post by drzaiusapelord »

mapgrep wrote: post #9

My money is on a wifi SSID that matches the one used by thieves or a heavily-trafficked location the victims all pass through. My company moved ~5 blocks and it really screwed up the map on my phone (which I use to get around the city) for several months. My company had left the network SSID the same in the old location, so that no one had to re-configure their wifi. Even with GPS on, my phone was always convinced it…

This seems like a stretch. SSIDs aren't whats stored here, its the mac address of the access point that's stored. There are millions of SSID called "Netgear" for example. You can't use the name as a unique value, so mac addresses it is.

Regardless, phones are smart enough to understand that GPS is authoratitive, AGPS second, and wifi/IP address as last. If GPS/AGPS says Chicago, but the wifi says Atlanta, the phone should consider Chicago authoritative. I also believe its not the access point youre near, but a relationship of access points nearby that gives you a location. So if you see three mac addresses, all three are looked up to do a lookup and act as a sanity check against people recently moving and taking their wifi router with them.

I imagine the real reason will be something more prosaic than some GPS shattering bug. Neighbors running a criminal ring perhaps, duplicate mac address, random idiots messing with these poor people, some bug in a popular 'find my phone' app, a geoIP bug, a local craigslist scammer using their address for whatever reason, etc.

Sadly, the article doesn't specify what service is being used to track the phones or really any technical details, so its difficult to really say whats going on here. They really should just buy a new access point to be safe (might help). Eventually you'll get a hothead that won't buy this story and that might turn out badly for them.

Can't wait for this mystery to be solved. Hopefully, someone from Google or Apple will reach out and investigate this from their end.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#23

Post by xsmasher »

mapgrep wrote: post #9

My money is on a wifi SSID that matches the one used by thieves or a heavily-trafficked location the victims all pass through. My company moved ~5 blocks and it really screwed up the map on my phone (which I use to get around the city) for several months. My company had left the network SSID the same in the old location, so that no one had to re-configure their wifi. Even with GPS on, my phone was always convinced it…

Curious if your phone was Android or iOS?

I know that iOS dropped skyhook in 2010, and always assumed that their new database would self-correct faster due to feedback from phones that had GPS + wifi turned on.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#24

Post by craigmccaskill »

patrickmay wrote: post #20

I found this particularly disturbing: > In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. When Saba asked if he could go back inside to use the bathroom, the police wouldn’t let him. > > “Your…

Would not the location tracking telling them the girls phone was inside the house be probable cause? Seems more reliable than a dog alerting on a car.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#25

Post by duaneb »

patrickmay wrote: post #20

I found this particularly disturbing: > In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. When Saba asked if he could go back inside to use the bathroom, the police wouldn’t let him. > > “Your…

> The police shouldn't be able to detain someone for over an hour without probably cause and without arresting them.

They can't. The police officer in question was wrong and they did not exercise their rights.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#26

Post by cmiles74 »

craigmccaskill wrote: post #24
patrickmay wrote: post #20

I found this particularly disturbing: > In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. When Saba asked if he could go back inside to use the bathroom, the police wouldn’t let him. > > “Your…

Would not the location tracking telling them the girls phone was inside the house be probable cause? Seems more reliable than a dog alerting on a car.

Whoever said that the phone location tracking was anywhere near this level of reliable? IMHO, it's really only good as a sort of hint on where your phone _might_ be.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#27

Post by anikamariam »

cmiles74 wrote: post #26
craigmccaskill wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would not the location tracking telling them the girls phone was inside the house be probable cause? Seems more reliable than a dog alerting on a car.

Whoever said that the phone location tracking was anywhere near this level of reliable? IMHO, it's really only good as a sort of hint on where your phone _might_ be.

do you think the police care?

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#28

Post by anikamariam »

duaneb wrote: post #25
patrickmay wrote: post #20

I found this particularly disturbing: > In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. When Saba asked if he could go back inside to use the bathroom, the police wouldn’t let him. > > “Your…

> The police shouldn't be able to detain someone for over an hour without probably cause and without arresting them. They can't. The police officer in question was wrong and they did not exercise their rights.

they have the right to detain those people on reasonable suspicion.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#30

Post by pjc50 »

patrickmay wrote: post #20

I found this particularly disturbing: > In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. When Saba asked if he could go back inside to use the bathroom, the police wouldn’t let him. > > “Your…

They had probable cause: the last reported location of a missing teenage girl was their house.
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