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Sent to you by Bill Boulware via Google Reader: Unlucky Thief Caught 10
Minutes After Stealing iPhone via Wired: Gadget Lab by Dylan F. Tweney
on 7/26/10

You'd think people would learn.

Last week, a man grabbed an iPhone out of the hands of a woman standing
on a San Francisco city street, then sped off on his bicycle.

Ten minutes later, he was in custody of the police. It was his bad luck
that the victim had been in the middle of testing a GPS-tracking app,
and the app was running on the phone at that very moment.

She returned to the office, called the police, and was able to give
them the exact location of the iPhone because the app was still running.

"This reminds me of the bank robber who arrives during the security
test," said the phone's owner, David Kahn, in the newspaper report.
Kahn is the CEO of Covia Labs, and had given the phone to another
person in order to demonstrate his company's GPS-tracking capabilities.

The would-be thief isn't the first phone grabber to be nabbed thanks to
GPS. In 2007, the town of Babylon on New York's Long Island was able to
retrieve 14 stolen city phones, thanks to GPS tracking. A company
called GadgetTrak has a whole page of devices retrieved using GPS and
the company's software. Apple offers a "find my iPhone" feature with
its optional, $100/year MobileMe service, and similar services are
available for other GPS-enabled phones.

And don't forget that Brian Hogan was tracked down by the authorities
after allegedly taking home a prototype iPhone he found in a bar, thus
kicking off one of the biggest gadget stories of the year.

For now, the odds are probably still in phone-snatchers' favor: You
have to have a GPS-capable phone, and you need to have some kind of
tracking app or service turned on before you lose the phone. But over
time, an increasing number of phones are going to be trackable, whether
they are stolen or simply lost in the trash.

Thieves should probably start to think twice before snatching a phone
out of someone's hand.

Unluckiest thief nabs iPhone with GPS tracker (San Francisco Chronicle)

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/iphone-its-the-antenna-stupid/#ixzz0uozabg7M






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