Stolen Cell Phone Shares Thieves' Photos?

eastbayted writes "A man from Berkeley, Calif. had his cell phone swiped. Soon after, the ShoZu starting uploading pictures to his Flickr account taken by the thieves — for the world to see. There's one of an unidentified woman eating something chocolatey, and a couple of either a chihuahua or a large rat. Seems this guy had installed some software on his phone to automatically perform those photo uploads, and whoever took his phone didn't realize it That's his story, anyway ... some people doubt it. He's a Yahoo employee. Yahoo owns Flickr. This is all pretty good PR for the photo site, no? He claims: 'People assume I'm doing it for self-promotion, marketing, a hoax or something like that. I'm talking to you because I want it to be known that it's not a hoax. I'm just too ordinary. I'm just too unclever for that.'" Update: 09/02 05:48 GMT by Z : Made the quote more obvious.

Comments

did anyone else read the summary amd think...

[dknj]

what the fuck?

Re:did anyone else read the summary amd think...

[kantier]

what the fuck?

I'd say "what the flickr?"

(couldn't resist posting it...)

Too bad flikr is down...

[ErnstKompressor]

Too bad flikr is down... ...scheduled maintenance my arse -- they were /.-ed...

Re:Massage?

[xs650]

Full service?

Re:Massage?

[mfh]

"Flickr is having a massage." The hell?

I hope they post pics! Especially if it's one of those really FUN massages!!

Not Slashdotted

[Kadin2048]

No I think Flickr does its regular maintainance very late on weekend nights (EST). I've run into this before and it's a bit frustrating.

Just some rather bad timing in posting the story here, I guess.

Re:Massage?

[GenP]

I hope they're using the Linux massage API and not trying to tickle the ioctls themselves...

It's in the article

[Kadin2048]

Summary admittedly doesn't make a lot of sense, and the Flickr page is down, but the InfoWorld article isn't too bad.

Apparently the guy (allegly -- assuming you don't believe it's all some sort of elaborate PR hoax) had some software on his phone that caused photos taken to be automatically posted to his Flickr account. This is pretty reasonable, actually: Flickr lets you post photos via email, so it would just involve programming the phone to automatically send photos to an the address for this. His phone was stolen, and a while later, photos of random people started showing up on his Flickr page, taken by the thief, we assume.

The real interesting part of the story is not all this, though, it's how it turned into an Internet phenomenon and in particular how a lot of people really tore into him for being a PR flack. Personally I think that the story is probably legit, particularly in hindsight, but a lot of people didn't.

Apparently after he took so much crap about it being a stunt, he disabled the software and has written off the phone.

A crappy ending to what could have been a pretty neat story, if you ask me.

Re:It's in the article

[sharpestmarble]

>... A crappy ending to what could have been a pretty neat story, if you ask me. -- If only we could make stupidity more painful... "I knew there was a reason to leave .sigs on. Is it me or is this .sig funny in this context?" OK, maybe not funny, but interesting nonetheless...

Re:It's in the article

[stunt_penguin]

Ok I clicked on the dropdown to mod you troll, but decided that an eduction would be more useful to you than a loss of karma.

First, a quick definition, taken from dictionary.cambridge.org:

theft : (the act of) dishonestly taking something which belongs to someone else and keeping it:

Taking that phone was theft, pure and simple. Anyone who picks up a phone from a public space and fails to hand it to the nearest resonably responsible person is committing an act of theft. They are stealing the phone as surely as if they'd snatched it from the person's hand or broken into their home.

Re:It's in the article

[CCFreak2K]

A crappy ending to what could have been a pretty neat story, if you ask me.

The problem is, the story essentially already happened. Sure it's kinda neat in that justice sort of way, but it's not that original anymore, and most of the reason people bag on him for PR stunt is because of the connections they make between his place of employment and his photo service of choice.

who cares?

[macadamia_harold]

A man from Berkeley, Calif. had his cell phone swiped. Soon after, the ShoZu starting uploading pictures to his Flickr account taken by the thieves

Well, for $5 a month, Sprint offers a full replacement plan. If someone steals your phone, they void the ESN of the stolen receiver, and they send you a new one. problem solved.

Re:who cares?

[novastar123]

true not everyone looses or has their phone stolen, I did, a rather nice phone too, filed a police report, the officer that did the report told me not to hold my breath, they get 50-100 reported stolen phones a week, and thats just the ones that get reported. In 1 town.

Re:who cares?

[Tim Browse]

Probably what, 1 in 100,000 people lose their phone or have it stolen?

Er, well, if that were true, then this means that there are at least 6.2 billion phones in use in London, UK. If you assume most people keep their phone for, say, 18 months, that actually works out at 18.6 billion phones. And that's just phones that are lost, not even stolen. And only the ones lost in black cabs.

FYI, there are approximately 10 million people in London. I think your estimate may be off.

Sounds like the T-Mobile/Sidekick scenario

[WidescreenFreak]

http://www.evanwashere.com/StolenSidekick/

A similar thing happened a few months ago when a T-Mobile Sidekick was stolen. Apparently, T-Mobile stores a copy of all of your data and photos on their servers so that if you switch phones you have access to all of your data and photos. The "thief" apparently wasn't aware of this and was soon identified because of the photos that she took of herself and her neighborhood. It's a long story, but an interesting read.

for certain phones, it's worth it.

[macadamia_harold]

That is $60/year. SO if you expect to have a phone stolen once every 3 years, it is equivalent to $180/per phone stolen.

Spending $60 on a "no questions asked" replacement policy for a $600 phone is kind of a no brainer. And I do mean "no questions asked". Theft, destruction, malfunction, airline shenanigans with your luggage, basically *whatever*. Believe me, it's worth it.

Re:Possible?

[dangitman]

I guess I'm just out of the whole cell phone thing so I have to ask... is it even possible to install software on a cell phone that will automatically take pictures and upload to Flick

I'm not sure why you ask about automatically taking pictures with a "cron" function - because that is not part of the story. Apparently the photos were manually snapped by the alleged thief, or someone in possession of the phone. The phone just automatically uploads new images taken by the user. As for the automatic photographing - why not? You can get software to do just about anything with your phone - time-based things like alarms are available. So I don't see why you couldn't do the autmatic picture-taking.

I Can a user upload an arbitrary program to their phone and have it run? I thought your provider pretty much controlled what your phone can do and what programs are on it.

Depends on what phone you have, and who your provider is. My Nokia runs the Symbian OS, and I can write software, or buy/download thousands of different applications for it. Not sure why this seems so far-fetched to you.

not just lying but overlydramatic too?

[Desolator144]

"...he is not seeking justice, revenge, or even his mobile phone. He would quite like his life back" Oh yes, a stolen phone ruined his whole life. Now he has to go live in a box in an alley wishing he could have his life back. Is it just me or does everyone think it's odd that he should have logically not told anyone about what was going on until the thief took a picture that would give enough evidence to get himself captured? If my phone got stolen (well okay, I don't own one and never have) I'd be kinda pissed and want revenge, especially if it was likely it would be handed to me as easily as having the offender take a picture of his car or house or something.

Re:Possible?

[in2mind]

Yes it is.

Instructions for posting to Flickr from Cameraphone: http://www.flickr.com/get_the_most.gne#cameraphone

From Nokia to Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/nokia/upload/n93/

Choose "Options" -> "Upload"

From that page,it seems users have to manually upload the pictures to Flickr.I dont find a option to AUTOMATICALLY post every new picture.

O RLY?

[Tarmas]

People assume I'm doing it for self-promotion, marketing, a hoax or something like that. I'm talking to you because I want it to be known that it's not a hoax. I'm just too ordinary. I'm just too unclever for that.

O RLY? Take a look at this pic, supposedly taken with the stolen camera phone, then at this one, the first result for "Chavelle" on Google Images. Looks familiar? And I'm not taking his lame excuses.

Re:O RLY?

[in2mind]

Thats interesting.

Probably thats why he put this disclamier on Flickr for the car pic:

- Taken at 12:24 AM on August 17, 2006; cameraphone upload by ShoZu this is apparently a picture from another web site, streetfire. I didn't upload it to my photostream, I am not sure how it got here.

Re:Possible?

[Ewan]

There's a piece of software called shozu which does the automatic uploading. it runs on your phone as a j2me application in the background and everytime you take a photo, it resizes it to your specifications and uploads it to your flickr account.

Ewan

The Rise of the Conspiratorial Class

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

The real interesting part of the story is not all this, though, it's how it turned into an Internet phenomenon and in particular how a lot of people really tore into him for being a PR flack.

Yeah, I don't know if anyone else has noticed but there seems to be a rise in the general "OMG it's a conspiracy" reaction for every news worthy event these days. I find it bothersome that if a real world anomaly pops up the automatic reaction is for it to be either a government or business conspiracy. What happened to enjoying stories like this one for what they are worth? It's a pretty cool story IMO. Those vanguard conspiracy types are the first to admit to being "critical thinkers" and "heroes of truth" yet they are the first to destroy a critical element of humanity - the story.

Re:Possible?

[snillfisk]

It's just not possible, it also opens up quite a few new possibilities. As part of my master thesis we fitted a mobile phone with a camera in the front of a car, linked the phone to a bluetooth gps and recorded both the view and the path of the road in the landscape. It also uploaded the images and position directly to a web site, so viewers could track both the vehicle and the view online.

The norwegian road authorities apparently does something similiar when doing road maintenance, and have stored 18m+ pictures of the road network in Norway from the view of the driver. They do probably use a bit more hi-resolution images than a camera phone, but the concept is the same.

Idiot Tax

[Frankie70]

Well, for $5 a month, Sprint offers a full replacement plan.


That's the idiot tax.

In a 10 years period, you would have paid 600$. You
would have to lose phones pretty frequently to break
even.

Re:Idiot Tax

[Frankie70]

Lemme guess, you think home, medical, and auto insurance fall into the same category?


Insurance is basically a scam - it's meant to benefit the insurance company &
not the insured.

You should insure only when the loss will be unaffordable.
Home, Medical & auto insurance fall into this category.
(Auto because of lawsuits).

Even out that there, you should be choosing your deductibles
smartly to reduce your premium.

For an auto insurance, keep your deductibles as the maximum
you can afford to pay without becoming broke. Yes, you will
be hit a by a big deductible if you do have an accident.
However, over a long period, the reduction in premium would
automatically more than break even unless you are having
accidents very frequently. If you are having accidents
frequently, you probably shouldn't be driving.

Re:Idiot Tax

[An Onerous Coward]

Home insurance is basically unavoidable so long as you still have a mortgage. The bank wants its collateral protected. It's illegal in most states to drive without auto insurance (of course, you can get away with liability-only). Medical insurance is certainly a necessity, but nearly 40 million Americans are doing without.

So, yes, they're necessities. But you should practice self-insurance against non-catastrophic losses. Extended warranties and product replacement plans are usually bad deals. If you lose a $600 phone, do you really need to replace it with another $600 phone? Or can you get by with a $50 model? Or will a $300 model from another company provide what you need? Self-insurance lets you choose how you want to fix what's broken, avoids the hassle of dealing with the company, and avoids what often amounts to a 'stupid/scared user tax.'

If there is a risk out there that could collapse your finances like a house of cards, whether it be a medical illness, a fire, or a car accident, then you certainly should insure against it. If the loss of a $600 phone is such a risk for you, then yes you should insure against it, but the better solution is to not have such precarious finances in the first place.

Update !

[french_user]

The picture of the husband has just arrived : http://pix.nofrag.com/28/4b/68359f899f1cd65ff0f073 fc993f.html

Re:ShoZu?

[Coopa]

Shozu is a 3rd party java application that uploads photos from your mobile phone to your flickr account. I started using it last week and it's pretty handy really. They do have a website http://www.shozu.com/.

Re:...which leads me to believe this is a hoax.

[empaler]

GSM phones are identified by their IMEI number to the provider. The providers usually have a black list of stolen phone IMEIs. Of course, not all providers block a zeroed IMEI (000000000000000), which is stupid because once you have equipment to change the cell phone, you can change the IMEI. (Then again, you could just change it to another random IMEI number)

Re:GSM phones also have an ESN.

[kybred]

But the ESN is embedded in the SIM card, not in the phone itself. That's why GSM phones can be carried across to different carriers.

No, the IMEI (E for equipment) is in the phone, the IMSI (S for Subscriber) is in the SIM.

Doesn't Make Sence

[matth]

If his cell bill and service were canceled (i.e. he notified the carrier about the stolen phone) then how did it send the pictures.. eh eh?