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How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

manas.tech

231–240 of 349 posts

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#231
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I had AirPods Max stolen from our car a few months ago. A week later they popped up on Find My a block away. >The officer went back and said “listen, we know they are in your apartment, we can hear them, either go get them or we are getting a search warrant.” The guy said “ohhhh well I did have a party last week and there’s this backpack…” >Uh huh. Headphones returned. I mean from your description sounds like the gu…

Or perhaps resist the „well actually“-urge ;-)

As you do?

I think my point still holds, guy lives in range of Find My, Find My notices it a week later - ah ha this guy definitely stole it? Seems a logical disconnect.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#232

If you ever connected to a network with a hidden SSID (or one where the phone thought the SSID was hidden for some reason), the phone will actively beacon for that WiFi, including the "hidden" SSID. This is obviously harder to use for searching for the phone than the method they used, but it's a privacy nightmare you should be aware of. Hiding SSIDs is almost always a really bad idea for this reason.

That’s an interesting design flaw. You connect to a hidden wifi network once and then your device will emit the ssid when you are not connected to a wifi network, or all the time?

Basically, yes. There was a really nice article here in HN about it, I couldn't find it but hopefully someone will point at it.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they are not. They are allowed to create devices that can be found , but I can't use my Android phone to find an AirTag.

Yes you can, there's an official Apple app to do it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.trac... And a 3rd party tool that does even more: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_t...

This does a different thing

What OP means is that I cannot purchase an Airtag/Chipolo, and then subsequently find that Airtag using the Find My Network with my Android device.

I can identify airtags around me with that App, but I cannot locate a missing Airtag.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#234
post #139

I had AirPods Max stolen from our car a few months ago. A week later they popped up on Find My a block away. I hopped on my bike and tracked to a small apartment building. Using Find My will show you a “warmer … warmer … colder” kind of UI and whenever I lifted my phone to a particular window (shades drawn) Find My would say “Nearby.” I called the police and they were genuinely excited to knock on the door. A guy ans…

Lucky there. UK here. A couple of years back I had a macbook pro delivered to me. It was delivered to the correct number on a different road. The POD had a photo of the front door and the person. I recognised the front door as it was on a local estate. Phoned delivery company up (DPD) and they said that they delivered it to the correct location and wouldn't do anything about it. Went round there and the guy said "um,…

That's shocking and also lucky. Had that neighbour not overheard or intervened, you would have had a known paedophile using a computer that could be tracked to you via sales used for a crime that the police would have acted upon and caused you more pain and suffering.

I've also learned the hard way, there again I have had police make so many mistakes for crimes in the past and ignore hard evidence that I lost faith in them years ago sadly. But this is the UK.

Though in your case, at stage it was at, once you had asked the recipient for it back and they said no, the police should have intervened due to the law of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding and acted.

Equally, the onus to prove delivery is upon the courier and again, you had a case there with them, so shouldn't of had to go thru that.

I agree, taking the law into your own hands alas seems to be the best solution in so many matters in the UK from my experience, sad and wrong but heck, we all want a simple life.

Also note from experience, the police (from a UK perspective) are not as aware of the laws as you would expect and had them tell me a matter was a civil matter and not criminal and raised complaint and had that upheld (lots of those) as they were wrong and the common laypersons expectations of the police is far short from reality, so always stand your ground and don't let anything slide as I used to do as it only erodes you away and enables incompetence to prevail.

That all said there are some good police (those that care and do their job properly) but sadly not as common as one would expect.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#235
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have no reasons other than budget induced apathy. The evidence of a crime is available and their lack of willingness to act is seriously telling

> They have no reasons other than budget induced apathy I'm not sure that's the case - the UK police are rigorously judged on the amount of cases they solve. If it was a slam dunk they would have done it.

Is that why they book butter knives as real weapons?

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#236
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try that with most retailers and the conversation ends at delivered. Your only option is to hit them with a summons and that's not a guarantee. So with due respect that reality doesn't exist. One reason I buy stuff from Amazon mostly is they are big enough to eat the issues and I put enough business through one service to be a customer worth keeping. Everyone else, not so much. I won't go into how shit Apple are on t…

Just do a chargeback then

That charge back might ask for tracking number, which will also says delivered. So they will ask you to call your insurance instead if your stuff got stolen on your porch.

It's a very tricky situation.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar situation in Paris with an iPhone. The Police were so helpful, knew exactly what to do, and were also very excited, but ultimately the Find My location wasn’t granular enough to find the phone. In an urban environment like Paris with big apartment buildings directly adjacent to each other, I think Find My is difficult. I’d have to be lucky and catch the phone during transit from one place to another,…

"but ultimately the Find My location wasn’t granular enough to find the phone" Depends on the generation, the new ones with ultra wideband (UWB) are really awesome, you can locate the item to tens of centimeters. I think you already have to be in a certain range for UWB to kick in. So might not really help if you could not identify the apartment otherwise.

The only real "problem" with UWB is the range. It might work better in North American homes (with hollow drywall walls), but in my Spanish home with brick interior walls, UWB doesn't even work one room over. It'll say "nearby", but completely lack any sort of direction information unless in the same room. I'd suspect in a situation like the OP was in in Paris, it would be very difficult to distinguish and exact location using UWB unless you got really lucky (like the phone was being stored directly next to an exterior door or something).

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#238
post #223
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with all the hate Apple gets in the tech sphere, they do have a lot of very handy features in their products.

They have leveraged their userbase into an (admittedly very useful) spy network

Have you read up on how Find My works? I don’t see how it’s a spy network when only the device owner can see where a device is.

Lots of people imagine that every Apple user, or at least Apple themselves, can track devices. But it doesn’t work that way.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#239

Find My came to the rescue when my wife unknowingly dropped her phone during a pullover to take some pix. The turnout was on New Priest Grade, the best way to Yosemite from our home. Next morning, after the frenzied "Where's my phone" search petered out, we remembered Find My. No way, I thought. Rural road, many miles away, etc. Which new phone would you like, Dear? Find My immediately found it 43 miles away. My wife…

> There were enough passers-by with iOS devices that Find My worked as hoped. Wouldn't the phone tell Apple servers where it was? No need for passer-bys.

Without cell coverage?

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The POD had a photo of the front door and the person. I recognised the front door as it was on a local estate. What more evidence do you need?

Ok I just read on a delivery company website that they have in fact started taking photos of the moment of delivery. Wow. That is incredible. Here I always opt for delivery at a pick up location and use my electronic ID to pick it up so I had never expected delivery drivers to take, and store, photos of people.

Had a delivery yesterday where the driver (Evri) had to wave his handheld around for a bit, as it wouldnt let him confim delivery as it thought he was 100m down the road!
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