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?
#2Now 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 nobody lives at 0,0...
Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?
#3Other options:
-The name of the wireless in a database and picking up
the first one, could not be fixable changing the router
name or ip address as it is already recorded somewhere
-Same for other routers or ip address in the neighbor
-Maybe it's not their fault but someone else did it on
purpose, e.g. take the cell phone and manipulating it
inside a room with stolen/faked/forged data somewhere
else and wrapped in a metallic sphere to block signals
so only the forged router can be used?
-Even more crazier: put a router really close and put
there a vpn/proxy?Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?
#4Part of me feels if you can't keep track of your phone, you shouldn't have one.
I found this guy's iPhone. Called him up, and told him to meet me at high-tech burrito. He asked me if I would bring the phone to his home--at least 10 miles away.
I was close to tossing it out the my car's window, but I had him meet me at the burrito place.
If you only knew how special these drones I live among believe they are.
Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?
#5Now 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…
My guess is that there are probably tools used by criminals to trick anti-theft software into passing a false location. You can quite easily fake your geolocation.
Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?
#6Now 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…
0,0 is Null Island!
Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?
#7Now 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…
My guess is that there are probably tools used by criminals to trick anti-theft software into passing a false location. You can quite easily fake your geolocation.
Why would they all go to this one place though? Perhaps the sellers of the tool configured it with a default location. Now that would be cruel.
Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?
#8Other options: -The name of the wireless in a database and picking up the first one, could not be fixable changing the router name or ip address as it is already recorded somewhere -Same for other routers or ip address in the neighbor -Maybe it's not their fault but someone else did it on purpose, e.g. take the cell phone and manipulating it inside a room with stolen/faked/forged data somewhere else and wrapped in a…
Wouldn't hurt to change the MAC of the router (and the SSID while they're at it).
Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?
#9My 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 was in the old location up the block, and this would persist even when I was out on the street, until I walked around a bit.
There are companies (presumably Skyhook is one of them) who drive around mapping SSIDs to physical locations. The problem is that SSIDs can move or be duplicated elsewhere.
The article says of one of the couple "at one point he reset their router, and changed the frequency at which it broadcasts; it didn’t solve the problem." It does not say if he changed the SSID.
Theoretically, location is often determined using not just one but several nearby SSIDs, a sort of triangulation. Another possibility here is that there are multiple nearby SSIDs around this home that match the SSIDs surrounding some other area tied to the victims.
Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?
#10My 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…
I thought it was the MAC addresses of routers which were used for mapping, not SSIDs. Duplicate SSIDs are very common.