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Bug Sends Lost-Phone Seekers To Same Wrong Address
netbuzz writes "A mysterious GPS-tracking glitch has brought a parade of lost-phone seekers — and police officers — to the front door of a single beleaguered homeowner in Las Vegas. Each of the unexpected visitors – Sprint customers all — has arrived absolutely convinced that the man has their phone. Not so, police confirm. The same thing happened in New Orleans in 2011 and Sprint got sued. Says the Las Vegas man: 'It's very difficult to say, 'I don't have your phone,' in any other way other than, 'I don't have your phone.''"
Something along the lines of "Yes, the tracker says your Phone is here. No, it is not. Please call SPRINT at 1-800-xxx-xxxx" Lo-tech, but effective.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
it has been over a year and sprint can't fix the problem
a nice letter to their legal department may move things along
While frustrating for him, from the outside looking in, it's kinda funny. No matter what he does to assert his innocence, it will appear as lies to the owner of the missing phone...
Ken
Open an Apple store there. Sell iPhones. The people showing up are inevitably short a phone.
I'm surprised Apple hasn't patented this yet.
Have gnu, will travel.
you think the police care?
Is it vigilantism for me to knock on your door and peacefully ask if you have seen my phone?
To me it seems no different than when religious folks or girl scouts knock on my door. Well other than I don't have your phone, am not interested in your myths, and would like one box of thin mints and one box of samosas.
If everyone had a gnu, this would not be a problem.
--frank[at]unternet.org
"These aren't the GPS coordinates you are looking for."
(Well, that's better than, say "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of people looking for lost phones")
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I skimmed the submission, it rang a bell, I searched it, submission on front page, I pasted and Wham! Instant tit head!
Thems the breaks
Watch those corners
you would have to read it. I guess your idea sucks because he has put up a sign already and you didn't read enough to know it. Bright, you are not.
Sent from my ENIAC
I'd start stealing phones. How would Sprint know the difference?
That is all.
Yes, and the angry people are going to say thank you and walk away. Completely believing your story. These people are not like your average girl scout. They are mad, and they want their damn phone back. They will not be walking away when you give them your polite response. You thinking so, means you haven't thought this through.
I would be ill advised for anyone tracking a phone to go to the address and accuse the occupants of having it.
There are many possible outcomes, most are less than optimal.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
really? ignoring the sign he posted, then knocking on someone door at 3AM becasue your crappy software popped up his address is being a man?
And what other answer do you think you will get besides 'No, I don't have you phone' Do you think the thief will just hand it over?
What if a woman wants to do it, does that count as being a man?
How about: 'A civilized person goes to the house, and notes the sign then leaves?'
vigilantism is an individual or group who undertakes law enforcement without legal authority. So yes, it is vigilantism.
IN a civilized society, you accuse someone of a crime, and they defend there innocence. This man was constantly approached and forced to PROVE his innocence by vigilante
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is it vigilantism for me to knock on your door and peacefully ask if you have seen my phone?
Read the original article.
This is clearly not what is happening.
And even if you should ask politely and during polite hours, unlike the people this man has encountered, you would be taking the law into your own hands and accusing him of lying if you rang his doorbell over this despite the clear note he has put up outside his home.
Part of the problem is that people use technology they don't understand. Sprint isn't pointing out his home as the address where the phone is. It's a triangulation starting point, with an error margin of several hundred feet in all directions.
tl;dr: The real victim isn't the yobo who lost his phone.
Like this?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
And this is what happens when you don't know how to design a working GPS
I don't think it's a problem with GPS itself, I think the problem is that the stolen phones are not able to use GPS - like a phone is stolen and whoever took it is keeping it in his kitchen cabinet. The phone can't see any GPS satellites so it relies on a cell tower fix. If it can only see one tower (and maybe this guy has the nearest address to the tower), the phone is claiming that it's at this guy's house.
I suspect that whoever is harassing the guy is ignoring the large circle in his positioning app that shows the range of the positioning fix (or the "Find my phone" app itself is not revealing that it only located the phone to within a 1000 ft radius).
'It's very difficult to say, 'I don't have your phone,' in any other way other than, 'I don't have your phone.''"
I suppose keeping some copies of this news article by the door and handing them out might help a bit.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The linked to article sucks. Here is a better one with much more detail.
http://llodo.com/lost-phone-dont-blame-wayne-dobson.html
And it works both ways, too.
For the person going to the house: You don't know if this "phone thief" (whether or not they actually have your phone) is an elderly lady who wouldn't hurt a fly, or an escaped felon who enjoys torturing people who show up at his door before killing them.
For the person at the house: You don't know if this "my phone was stolen" person is going to politely ask, believe you, and then leave or get belligerent and whip out a gun demanding to know where his *@%!# phone is.
Besides, are these people really expecting the "phone thief" to answer the door and say "Oh, yeah. I stole your phone. Here it is back again. Sorry about that."? Whether the person answering is a phone thief or not, he's going to deny it until the person leaves. It's not like the person at the door has the right to search the alleged phone thief's house looking for their phone.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Had the same kind of thing happen with a laptop at work. It got stolen from the guy's car. It had Computrace on it so we called them up and had it fired up. After a fair bit of time the police were ready and used the info to go and arrest the people (who of course had a bunch of stolen goods). They then had to hang on to the laptop for like 9 months as evidence even though it was a pretty clear and quick, by court standards, case.
Thing is not only does it take some time for the prosecution to get everything ready (make sure they aren't missing anything and so on) but defense attorneys quite often wish to delay things to distance their client from the event, and to have time to try and negotiate a better plea. As such it can take a lot of time, even when things are straight forward.
I suggest changing it to 1600 Pennsylvania St., Washington, DC. This will solve the problem in that (a) the people living there have very good protection, and don't have to worry about a random nut who won't believe they don't have his/her phone, (b) it will become national news, so everyone even vaguely informed will soon know that if your phone locator shows it's there, don't believe it, and (c) it should provide for a new, entertaining conspiracy theory for nutters to go on about, all on how Obama is stealing phones and using his power as President to cover it up.
Yep, but if they continue to call knowing that the debtor isn't there, they're in violation of various sections of the FDCPA. It's not usually hard to track the phone number back to a collections agency, they're not real good at hiding themselves. And once I know that, I respond to their question with "Is this $NAMEOFCOLLECTIONAGENCY?". That puts them in a bind and how they answer doesn't change the substance of my next statement, only it's phrasing: "The person XXXXX you are trying to contact does not live here and can't be contacted through this number. If you continue to call this number I will consider it harassment and a violation of the FDCPA.". Then I hang up. If I'm really annoyed and anticipating actually doing anything to them, I'd print out a quick little letter and spend a few bucks on registered mail, return receipt requested to their office. But if they really aren't calling for me or anyone here, usually just being firm gets them to stop, because they don't want the hassle and expense of sending someone to small-claims court and they really don't want the hassle of dealing with a default judgement if they don't. Judges may be unsympathetic to people trying to get free money via FDCPA/TCPA complaints, but it's easy to frame the complaint instead as an aggrieved uninvolved party who just wants the phone calls to stop who's faced with a company that just won't accept the truth.
If you're female, filing the harassing-calls paperwork might produce interesting results. Female getting calls at all hours, faked caller ID information, dead air (robodialer trying to find an agent to hand the call to) or a male who won't identify themselves (agent instructed not to give out information), you're getting creeped out by it (you probably are), that should get the incident routed over to Vice as a potential stalker.
I skimmed the submission, it rang a bell, I searched it, submission on front page, I pasted and Wham! Instant tit head!
Thems the breaks
That's terrible, reading anything in the submission should be a crime. We managed to ban articles back in 2005, but skimming submissions is far to close to "informed"