4 ms·

Yeah I'm baffled by all of the comments saying that this is great as an anti-theft feature. I don't know where people live that that's the case, but I sure as h

by rurp 5y ago

Yeah I'm baffled by all of the comments saying that this is great as an anti-theft feature. I don't know where people live that that's the case, but I sure as heck have never known police in the US to give a damn about $1000 property crimes. They don't care about $20000 home robberies and car thefts, even with strong video or other evidence. I can't imagine they're going to start chasing down criminals to get a used phone back unless it's for the mayor's kid or something.

krrrh 5y ago
That aside, there was a massive decrease in iPhone thefts when activation locking was introduced with the original “find my”. Something like this could further deter the portion of thefts that end up funnelling through shady resellers.
sparker72678 5y ago
It serves as anti-theft insofar as it makes it more of a pain generally to be in possession of a stolen phone. But yeah the police are not going to go get your iPhone back for you.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Lets not generalize, shall we? Police here in The Netherlands take care of stolen bikes. Its just a low success rate which skews our perception.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    And here in America, I got literally laughed at by my small-town police force as a teenager when I went to them with the exact house my stolen bike was sitting outside of.
    - Fnoord 5y ago
      The Dutch police want to avoid that civilians 'play their own judge'. If the perpetrator and/or stolen object can be positively ID'ed this is a big plus for the public prosecutor to give a go ahead. What can happen then, is that the police try to buy the stolen good, catching the perpetrator red handed. This is the most effective path of getting a case succesfully put to trial. However, it is going to differ per local jurisdiction. Some Dutch police do have man power issues as well, just like some of USA has. On a side note: I don't like the attitude of laughing at civilians/victims who the police officer is supposed to serve. Its a kind of negative attitude which devalues the victims interest (I don't like the word toxic but others would apply it here), eventually harming trust in police in the process which (long term) benefits criminals. And what I also don't like is when such is generalized on all police, all around the world. The way you were treated flat out sucks.
kace91 5y ago
In my country, I've seen a person enter a police station asking for his phone, which he knew to be there because of a finder feature (not sure if it was Find my Phone in an iPhone specifically). The police must had taken the phone from someone who was caught stealing in a different incident or something.
david_allison 5y ago
In my country, the police came to my house when I dropped my wallet. I strongly believe "Find My iPhone" has made iPhones significantly less valuable on the resale market and will have reduced thefts
- kube-system 5y ago
  More specifically: Activation Lock. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201365 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201365
- Yaggo 5y ago
  > In my country I often see people here referring to their country without mentioning the actual country, i.e. they hide the interesting detail, which I find weird. Why not to write "in Iceland..." instead? Or is it a privacy thing or just some kind of modesty?
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    Because very often, any time anybody mentions their country it is quickly dismissed as "not applicable, because nobody but OP lives there".
kelnos 5y ago
I was visiting a friend in Switzerland a few years ago, and her bag got stolen right off the back of her chair while we were in a restaurant. (The guy was quick and sneaky; by the time I ran out to the street, he was gone.) The restaurant manager called the police, and over the next 15 minutes we learned that the thief went on to try to rob the wrong person at another restaurant a couple blocks away. The intended victim held the guy down until the police arrived. The restaurant manager led us over to the other restaurant. The police managed to recover nearly everything that was stolen, by going through the guy's pockets, and also doing a search in a nearby alleyway, where he had dumped my friend's bag and some of the less-concealable items he'd stolen from people. One thing (can't remember what) was still missing from my friend's bag, and the police took down information about it and told her who to contact to follow up in case it was found. It was easily the best experience I've ever had with police anywhere (I live in the US but travel fairly frequently). I wish all police could be like that. (Granted, this was just a single experience with two specific officers; who knows if the rest in their precinct or even country are on average that good. But it was definitely encouraging.) I recount this to suggest that in places with police that don't suck, maybe this sort of thing could actually be a decent anti-theft feature. But agreed that police in the US don't care. I was once mugged and had $3000 worth of stuff stolen from me (laptop and two phones), and the police clearly filed my report to /dev/null. Another friend of mine had her iPad stolen once, and she ended up tracking it down on her own (not the safest thing she's done) because the police told here there was "nothing they could do" even though she showed them the tracking information.
- rurp 5y ago
  This actually reminded me of a couple positive experiences I had with police in Mexico. They weren't sitatuations where I'd been robbed so not totally analagous, but twice I dealt with officers that were very thoughtful and helpful. Living in the US has probably skewed my impressions of police generally.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  In the US, their actual job is filing the report. Anything that goes beyond that is PR.
matt-attack 5y ago
I've had an iPhone stolen twice (both times it was my wife's actually). And both times I've recovered it using Find My. Honestly, it didn't even occur to me to involve the police. I just fired up the Find My app as soon as she told me the phone was missing, and I hunted it down. Confrontations ensued on both occasions, but nothing too serious.

by rurp 5y ago

krrrh 5y ago

That aside, there was a massive decrease in iPhone thefts when activation locking was introduced with the original “find my”. Something like this could further deter the portion of thefts that end up funnelling through shady resellers.

sparker72678 5y ago

It serves as anti-theft insofar as it makes it more of a pain generally to be in possession of a stolen phone. But yeah the police are not going to go get your iPhone back for you.

Fnoord 5y ago
Lets not generalize, shall we? Police here in The Netherlands take care of stolen bikes. Its just a low success rate which skews our perception.
- Talanes 5y ago
  And here in America, I got literally laughed at by my small-town police force as a teenager when I went to them with the exact house my stolen bike was sitting outside of.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    The Dutch police want to avoid that civilians 'play their own judge'. If the perpetrator and/or stolen object can be positively ID'ed this is a big plus for the public prosecutor to give a go ahead. What can happen then, is that the police try to buy the stolen good, catching the perpetrator red handed. This is the most effective path of getting a case succesfully put to trial. However, it is going to differ per local jurisdiction. Some Dutch police do have man power issues as well, just like some of USA has. On a side note: I don't like the attitude of laughing at civilians/victims who the police officer is supposed to serve. Its a kind of negative attitude which devalues the victims interest (I don't like the word toxic but others would apply it here), eventually harming trust in police in the process which (long term) benefits criminals. And what I also don't like is when such is generalized on all police, all around the world. The way you were treated flat out sucks.

kace91 5y ago

In my country, I've seen a person enter a police station asking for his phone, which he knew to be there because of a finder feature (not sure if it was Find my Phone in an iPhone specifically). The police must had taken the phone from someone who was caught stealing in a different incident or something.

david_allison 5y ago

In my country, the police came to my house when I dropped my wallet. I strongly believe "Find My iPhone" has made iPhones significantly less valuable on the resale market and will have reduced thefts

kube-system 5y ago
More specifically: Activation Lock. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201365 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201365
Yaggo 5y ago
> In my country I often see people here referring to their country without mentioning the actual country, i.e. they hide the interesting detail, which I find weird. Why not to write "in Iceland..." instead? Or is it a privacy thing or just some kind of modesty?
- dotancohen 5y ago
  Because very often, any time anybody mentions their country it is quickly dismissed as "not applicable, because nobody but OP lives there".

kelnos 5y ago

I was visiting a friend in Switzerland a few years ago, and her bag got stolen right off the back of her chair while we were in a restaurant. (The guy was quick and sneaky; by the time I ran out to the street, he was gone.) The restaurant manager called the police, and over the next 15 minutes we learned that the thief went on to try to rob the wrong person at another restaurant a couple blocks away. The intended victim held the guy down until the police arrived. The restaurant manager led us over to the other restaurant. The police managed to recover nearly everything that was stolen, by going through the guy's pockets, and also doing a search in a nearby alleyway, where he had dumped my friend's bag and some of the less-concealable items he'd stolen from people. One thing (can't remember what) was still missing from my friend's bag, and the police took down information about it and told her who to contact to follow up in case it was found. It was easily the best experience I've ever had with police anywhere (I live in the US but travel fairly frequently). I wish all police could be like that. (Granted, this was just a single experience with two specific officers; who knows if the rest in their precinct or even country are on average that good. But it was definitely encouraging.) I recount this to suggest that in places with police that don't suck, maybe this sort of thing could actually be a decent anti-theft feature. But agreed that police in the US don't care. I was once mugged and had $3000 worth of stuff stolen from me (laptop and two phones), and the police clearly filed my report to /dev/null. Another friend of mine had her iPad stolen once, and she ended up tracking it down on her own (not the safest thing she's done) because the police told here there was "nothing they could do" even though she showed them the tracking information.

rurp 5y ago
This actually reminded me of a couple positive experiences I had with police in Mexico. They weren't sitatuations where I'd been robbed so not totally analagous, but twice I dealt with officers that were very thoughtful and helpful. Living in the US has probably skewed my impressions of police generally.
ncmncm 5y ago
In the US, their actual job is filing the report. Anything that goes beyond that is PR.

matt-attack 5y ago

I've had an iPhone stolen twice (both times it was my wife's actually). And both times I've recovered it using Find My. Honestly, it didn't even occur to me to involve the police. I just fired up the Find My app as soon as she told me the phone was missing, and I hunted it down. Confrontations ensued on both occasions, but nothing too serious.