A man who had his iPhone stolen has been able to recover it thanks to Apple’s MobileMe service and some simple detective work. Rather like last week’s tale of the student who tracked down a stolen Xbox 360 using a wireless controller, ‘Rob’ was able to turn the stolen technology against the thief.
Soon after the iPhone was stolen, Rob got hold of a replacement and set about re-synching his contacts and emails using MobileMe – Apple’s push email and contact synching service that stores your data in the ‘cloud’ (a fancy way of saying ‘on a server on the Internet’).
It wasn’t long before Rob began to spot unfamiliar names popping up in his Contacts. The thief was entering his friend’s details into the stolen phone, and MobileMe was quietly saving them into the cloud – and Rob’s new phone was happily grabbing them.
Armed with what soon became a comprehensive list of the theif’s friends and family, Rob was able to call up a few people on the list and social engineer a name and number from them. He took this to the police and they were able to track down the culprit and see him banged to rights.
Rob is now selling the returned phone on eBay (well, he did have to shell out for a replacement) so get bidding if you want a small piece of Internet Crime history (or just a cheap new phone).
via TUAW
