Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
#2This article is missing so many technical details. Would have been so interesting to dig into the "why" and "how".
Re: Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
#3I wonder if he shares a wifi SSID or MAC address on some wifi device in his home with a thief's
Re: Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
#4This article is missing so many technical details. Would have been so interesting to dig into the "why" and "how".
I've had something similar happen. For devices that don't have or can't access GPS, they look the MAC address of nearby wifi base stations and see if anything correlated that with a location earlier. This is what the iphone did at launch with the skyhook database.
However in some cases your wifi MAC isn't unique and it'll think you're elsewhere. In my specific case it kept resetting my time zone to somewhere in Russia (I'm in Massachusetts) because that's what the MAC said.
It seems to be worse if there are no other networks in range for it to do sanity checking against.
Re: Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
#5Apple may not be directly responsible or capable of rectifying this. It could be a third-party database. See also: geolocation database errors.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/09/maxmind-m...
Re: Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
#6This article is missing so many technical details. Would have been so interesting to dig into the "why" and "how".
Expecting this random guy to deeply understand the technicalities of why Apple is directing angry people to his house, in a state where it's legal to kill people for stealing your stuff, is not terribly reasonable. If techies are interested, they could help by figuring out the reason for this.
Re: Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
#7> "Scott Schuster told the local news station KTRK that he’s been visited by close to a dozen irate people over the past few years, telling him that their missing phone had last pinged at his address."
So like... a couple people a year? As far as annoyances go, not exactly a big one.
Still, I'm happy he has this article now. He can just show it to the couple new visitors who arrive each year. Heck, frame it and put it above the doorbell...
Of course, it's also the perfect cover if he ever wanted to turn into an iPhone and AirPods thief... :P
In all seriousness though, I would be concerned if somebody ever did become violent. I'd definitely want the local police to be aware of the situation in advance and be ready to call them.
But also, the solution is maybe as easy as replacing your Wi-Fi router?
Re: Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
#8> "Scott Schuster told the local news station KTRK that he’s been visited by close to a dozen irate people over the past few years, telling him that their missing phone had last pinged at his address." So like... a couple people a year? As far as annoyances go, not exactly a big one. Still, I'm happy he has this article now. He can just show it to the couple new visitors who arrive each year. Heck, frame it and put i…
> So like... a couple people a year? As far as annoyances go, not exactly a big one.
This is a safety issue more than it is an annoyance issue. Someone may get violent if they think they have evidence that you've stolen their phone and are denying it.
Re: Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
#9I recall a similar phenomenon some years before the pandemic, where Google Maps (?) continually led streams of angry humans to a particular person's residence. I've not succeeded in pulling up the reference, unfortunately.
I can only imagine how much it must suck to be at the blunt end of such MegaCorp oversights.
Re: Dad says glitch in ‘Find My iPhone’ app directs angry strangers to his home
#10This article is missing so many technical details. Would have been so interesting to dig into the "why" and "how".
Expecting this random guy to deeply understand the technicalities of why Apple is directing angry people to his house, in a state where it's legal to kill people for stealing your stuff, is not terribly reasonable. If techies are interested, they could help by figuring out the reason for this.
Expecting journalists to have an answer before writing a piece is very reasonable.