MobileMe’s “Find My iPhone” Serving Justice
A robbery victim has taken advantage of his MobileMe service and put it to good use. A Pittsburgh man, who’s name has been withheld, told police he was forced to turn over his wallet, his PIN number and his iPhone at gun point (Pellet Gun as it turns out) by 3 robbers early Sunday morning. Lacking any tech savvy skills or common sense for that matter, the robbers were clueless about one of MobileMe’s very helpful features, “Find My iPhone“.
After calling the police, the man used his computer and MobileMe to track down his iPhone along with the 3 not so smart criminals having a late night snack at a local restaurant.
Police said they will charge Bryant Rather, 22, of West Mifflin, Brent Ray Potter, 22, of Swissvale, and Myron Knox, Jr., 22, of Homewood, with two counts each of access device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime. Mr. Rather and Mr. Potter will also be charged with robbery.
Moral of the story: crime doesn’t pay.
[Via Post-Gazette]
August 31st, 2009 at 10:33 am
This story makes me smile.
August 31st, 2009 at 10:48 am
Woooooowww mobile me I’m going 2 get it
August 31st, 2009 at 10:50 am
That’s awesome.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:12 am
If only thine google sync had thus described powers. Curse ye Google Sync. I love thee Google Sync. It’s actually a nice alternative to MobileMe despite a few glitchs on calendar coloring that just takes a little tweaking with.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:12 am
He must’ve had to track on Mobileme right away, before the battery died…
__hater
August 31st, 2009 at 11:20 am
Now, if only these stories wouldn’t be published. The more thugs unaware of this, the better.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:27 am
@fastlane, I disagree. The more thugs that are aware of this, the more likely they are to leave us alone!
August 31st, 2009 at 11:29 am
Erm it would be better to not have your phone taken in the first place since the recovery rate isn’t 100% slowlane
August 31st, 2009 at 11:42 am
The moral of the story : Subcribe to MobileMe. Why? Money.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:49 am
I know thugs go 4 us ppl with iPhones…And where I live can’t even go to the starbucks with my MacBook pro.. I just use it when I’m at working at berverly hills..
August 31st, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Glad i bought MobileMe a month ago. good to know if a loose or my phone gets stolen I can track it. Plus not having to deal with microsoft office and physical syncing is nice.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Its great IF you have GPS and PUSH on, otherwise worthless. For me this would not work.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:45 pm
That’s awesome. Why would you not have GPS and push turned on?
August 31st, 2009 at 1:00 pm
@ Arslan… It does not work that way…. If all of them are aware of this they’ll just take the sim card out of the phone and voila !!!!! We are f..cked…..
August 31st, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Bah…. Just jailbreak and install Cyclay, it’s better than Mobile Me and works even the thief remove the sim.
Go jailbreak …. Go
August 31st, 2009 at 3:46 pm
@Arslan ibn Da’ud:
Nonsense. Good luck with that.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:33 pm
@ Luis Actually the simcard has nothing to do with the gps chip inside the phone. And since your iPhone would essentially be an iPod touch, your MobileMe account would still be set up. However the sim chip does assist the gps to better determine location and of course uses cell data or wifi. But again if they were smart they could turn on findmyphone on the iPhone and youre sol. Which gives you the incentive to always passcode lock your phone.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:35 pm
That’s turn off* findmyphone sorry.
August 31st, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Must be a slow news day, I just saw this on CNN as well.
August 31st, 2009 at 5:45 pm
If these guys were smart enough to figure out how to remove a SIM card they would probably be in a different line of work..
September 1st, 2009 at 5:51 am
This kind of thing is exactly why I got mobile me.
September 1st, 2009 at 9:11 pm
REVENGE IS A B***H
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Great story!
September 8th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
apple gives 60 days free trial now !. we should give it a try ! cheer ! great article .
September 10th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Here’s a coincidence. I’m traveling on business south of Pittsburg, and I left my iPhone in the Walmart bathroom where it was appropriated by someone whose mother didn’t teach them that honest finders aren’t keepers. Lucky me — A day before leaving to go out of town, I enabled “Find My Phone”. So I quickly picked up a go phone at the same Walmart and went back to my hotel and tracked down the losers to the vicinity of a single home. Via mobile me, I sent them messages stating that FBI-issued phones are fully trackable and that I would dispatch an officer to their home to their present location on such-n-such street if they did not pick up. Long story short… They did, and returned it lickety split to my hotel front desk as instructed. I sat in the lobby and refreshed the “Find My iPhone” screen on my laptop as picachoo-looking teenage punk drove up, walked in and dropped it off.
Needless to say — right now, I’m loving apple.
September 10th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
PS. I would never impersonate an officer. I just let them know that FBI-issue phones are trackable.
October 9th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Yes, sounds good, but it doesn’t do much good when the website is down for maintenance!!!