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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?

#211

Post by [deleted] »

mindslight wrote: post #187
mikeash wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison between willingly assigned and transmitted MAC addresses and death camp tattoos is utterly absurd, both because it unnecessarily pulls Nazis into the conversation, and because they have no useful parallels purely from a technical point of view.

Calling them "willingly" transmitted is a bit of a stretch, given that people don't have much choice to turn just them off and defaults are a powerful thing. The useful parallel is the general inventorying and tracking of people. Luckily we don't have the rest of totalitarianism (yet), but this cornerstone is well laid due to naive designers. BTW you were the one who brought up the subject of Nazis.

[deleted]

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

#212

Post by abhorrence »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #139
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. Once I got stopped and they decided they were going to get a drug dog, and then a warrant, for my car. "Am I being detained?", I asked. "No, you're free to go." "Wait, I can just get in my car and drive away?" "Oh no, we're holding your car as evidence." I was in the middle of nowhere. I don't know und…

IANAL, but my understanding is that you can't be detained (or rather a traffic stop cannot be extend) to wait for a drug dog [0]. Already you should have been able to leave.

Additionally, the "no, you're free to go" bit sounds like an officer trying to find a loophole, since the standard for whether or not you're being detained is if a reasonable person would assume they were free to go. Despite the officer telling you that you were free to go, I suspect most people in the middle of no where without a car would not assume they truly were.

Plus, calling your car "evidence" at that point is a bit... weird.

[0] http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-9972_p8k0.pdf

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

#213

Post by cwilkes »

sideproject wrote: post #102

I had a similar experience about a month ago, when I thought I lost my iPhone 5s. Logged onto "Find my iPhone" app and it told me it was about 1km away from my house. I thought I must've dropped it somewhere nearby. So I got the address from Apple Map, drove there and knocked on the door to greet a rather defensive (obviously) lady who, of course, denied ever picking up an iphone that day. I snooped around to see if…

When you went back home did you check and see if she was following you? Maybe she snuck in and replaced your phone.

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

#214

Post by cwilkes »

lenomad wrote: post #178
incompatible wrote: post #149

"Avast’s software kept tracking the phones after the other programs were cleared with a factory reset" Does anyone know how that works?

It should work only for those phones which came with Avast factory installed. After you do a factory reset and turn on phone, they send an SMS to contact their server. This gives them the phone number which can then be used by the server to send remote commands to the phone. One of my phones had McAfee pre-installed with a similar setup. If you do a factory reset and they find that it is a different phone number now,…

A phone had McAfee on it? I can't imagine how slow and painful it was to use that.

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

#215

Post by nitrogen »

mikeash wrote: post #191
mindslight wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling them "willingly" transmitted is a bit of a stretch, given that people don't have much choice to turn just them off and defaults are a powerful thing. The useful parallel is the general inventorying and tracking of people. Luckily we don't have the rest of totalitarianism (yet), but this cornerstone is well laid due to naive designers. BTW you were the one who brought up the subject of Nazis.

Right, when you said "People with an identifier number tattooed on their arm" you weren't even thinking of Nazi concentration camp victims. Sure. Pull the other one. Every router I've ever seen has a pretty clear setup option for creating a hidden network. I agree that defaults are powerful, but they don't make it any less "willing," they merely expose people's indifference.

Every router I've ever seen has a pretty clear setup option for creating a hidden network.

Hidden networks are even less private, because then every client device has to probe repeatedly to see if the network is there.

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

#216

Post by ytpete »

asciimo wrote: post #154
ghshephard wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rights are you referring to? The police seem to have done everything correctly. These were individuals who were being detained pursuant to an investigation of an ongoing crime. The police did not search the inside of the house without a warrant - though, it's unclear why not - if they had strong belief that there was a crime in progress, they had every legal right to do so. I guess the only thing in question is…

Software that puts a blinking dot on a map should not be considered probable cause.

"Probable cause" isn't even enough - all that does is let police go get a warrant.

To enter a house without needing a warrant (without the resident's permission), the situation needs to be much more compelling than just probable cause. For example, if police are in the middle of pursuing someone and they see that person flee into a house, then they can enter it immediately. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance

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

#217

Post by veb »

IvyMike wrote: post #200

It would be fascinating for someone to log into their Google Location History and see where the phone was right before it was at this house. It might provide a clue. https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0

Thanks for sharing this link, I had no idea Google had your location history so nicely accessible like this. I knew they kept track, but never once did it occur to me that I could see it.

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

#218

Post by ubernostrum »

dntrkv wrote: post #105
Bjartr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what are the other options Go to a judge, communicate the situation, and maybe get a warrant if the judge deems it appropriate. That's how the system is designed to work. >The chance of checking and making sure while in the process inconveniencing someone far outweighs the chance of not checking. >If you are the parent of this missing kid and the police tell you your child might be there but they can't look into it,…

>There are good reasons we don't let emotional parents head the investigations of their missing children. And where did I suggest that? There is a huge difference between having a parent head an investigation and asking a police officer to check out a potential house where someone's kid may be held. And the couple was well within their right to not open the door to the police. I'm not suggesting the police should hav…

The issue is that you're using a gigantically emotionally loaded situation as a basis for designing a legal system.

That often ends very, very badly.

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

#219

Post by mootothemax »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #210
PhantomGremlin wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The findmyfriends feature on my iPhone has been 100% accurate in identifying where my friends are My wife and I use Find My Friends quite often to keep track of our children. I've used it for years, so I'm quite familiar with it. Our experience is quite the opposite of "100% accurate". I provided more detail in this other post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10950107 Edit: just looked up the USA version of "pro…

Why do parents track their children? Kids are tougher than parents credit them for. It's unfortunate that new technology will let parents hover forever. Luckily, they're resourceful. I wonder if it's possible to hack the app to send false location data? There are ways to jailbreak a phone that make it appear unjailbroken (e.g. to put a keylogger on it). Maybe this technique could be used to acquire freedom, by MITMin…

>Why do parents track their children?

Two reasons come to mind:

- parents spend a ridiculous amount of time worrying over ever-yet-more unlikely ways that their children will be maimed or murdered that very day

- it's not unknown for kids to have relatively poor reasoning and decision-making skills

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

#220

Post by briandear »

sp00ls wrote: post #184
harryh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"might be" absolutely constitutes probable cause.

I don't know. Out of curiosity I just tried Find my iPhone on my own device which has been sitting in the same location in my house for about an hour completely untouched. Apple's interface shows my iPhone about a half mile away in a house I've never visited or been in before. There is a big circle around my device (which doesn't even include the actual location) but the actual dot is somewhere I've never been before…

Was the phone within the tinted radius? The dot doesn't represent your location; it represents the center of a circle containing your phone.
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