Slashdot Mirror


Tracking a Move Via "Find My iPhone"

dmolnar writes "I recently helped my girlfriend move her stuff from Chicago, IL to Oakland, CA. The movers were scheduled to arrive at 8AM on the 5th of July, and we were stressing the day before about all the things that could go wrong with a move. We realized that if we knew where her stuff was, it'd make us feel better. This is a story about using the $99 iPhone to track the move ... and about a somewhat surprising potential use of Find My iPhone to track your friends' iPhones without them noticing."

2 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Much cheaper... by speedtux · · Score: 5, Informative

    Isn't the whole point of the article about current users utilising existing features in new and innovative ways. i.e. with a marginal cost of zero.

    That would be using one of the many location tracking features that have been out for years for other smartphones. The total cost isn't $99+2 year contract, but simply $200 for the phone and no contract.

    These days, the simplest of the bunch is probably Google Latitude.

    No expensive iPhone needed.

  2. Re:Much cheaper... by digitalchinky · · Score: 5, Informative

    So all your belongings are in boxes, including this GPS with SMS bridge business you speak of, all of which is buried under clothes or whatever, sitting deep inside a moving truck which just happens to be built out of sheet metal, strengthened by a steel or alloy frame of sorts (Last time I checked, all of them were built this way) A nice little Faraday cage yes?

    Your solution would not work, this guy lucked out in that the system was using cell towers to triangulate the phones location, if it was true GPS it would not have worked.