How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

https://manas.tech/blog/2023/10/25/approaching-unconventional-problems/

by mgarciaisaia • 3 years ago

475 335 3 years ago

gwill• 3 years ago

this is pretty smart, i didn't realize the hotspot tells you how many connections there are although i don't really use mine. my mind went straight to bluetooth pairing.

m463• 3 years ago

I thought "find my" on newer iphones could do local non-cellular location services, like airtags.

dan_linder• 3 years ago

They can, but the AirTag has to be "seen" by another connected device and that device must relay the GPS position it was "seen" at.

I don't know if Apple IOS is correct enough to log the time and position of AirTags when the device itself is disconnected from a network...

solardev5• 3 years ago

The newer devices can locate each other via ultrawideband triangulation too, completely detached from the cell network. They have special chips for this built-in: https://www.pocket-lint.com/phones/news/apple/149336-how-app...

Scoundreller2• 3 years ago

I wonder how well the relay phone does store and forward, I guess it does otherwise AirTags are useless outside of cellular footprint territory.

I guess sometimes a late ping is better than no ping.

sergers• 3 years ago

Samsung has their own "offline finding" as they call it, if enabled other Samsung devices/wearables can locate it somehow, brief on how that's done on their site

acdha• 3 years ago

It’ll show up in Find My even if it can’t connect to the internet. BLE and UWB both work offline.

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

There were only one or two iPhones among the 12+ people party we were - and this specific phone was an Android one.

marcod• 3 years ago

So, there is no security feature that prevents a phone from connecting to a cloned wifi network??

dhosek• 3 years ago

How can you tell a wifi network is cloned if the SSID/password match? After all, it might legitimately be a new legitimate access point in the network.

redox99• 3 years ago

Obivously using certificates and TOFU. APs would share the certificate.

(That's how it should work, not how it does in practice)

lxgr19• 3 years ago

Exactly, if the SSID and password match, it is the same network by definition.

rkachowski• 3 years ago

The BSSID won't match

nineteen999• 3 years ago

If the SSID and password are the same, how would the phone tell the difference? I don't know.

My Fitbit has a "find my phone" feature that uses Bluetooth to tell the Fitbit app on the phone to make a loud whistle. It's kind of handy and ive made use of it several times around my house, but obviously isn't useful outside Bluetooth range.

flashback21992• 3 years ago

If the SSID and password are the same, how would the phone tell the difference

MAC address, but devices don't care, by design they will connect if the SSID and encryption type are the same, actually, you can create a mesh wifi network at your house with regular routers or access points by doing so, connecting them with wired ethernet.

ruined• 3 years ago

802.1x eap

solardev5• 3 years ago

Yeah, back in the day before HTTPS was common, this used to be a viable attack where people would set up rogue hotspots at cafes and whatnot and intercept all your traffic.

lxgr19• 3 years ago

That's only possible for unencrypted networks/SSIDs, though.

LordShredda• 3 years ago

Assuming you kept the password a secret, how would you create an identical wifi clone?

addandsubtract• 3 years ago

LAX_FREE_AIRPORT_WIFI

brink• 3 years ago

99.9% of people don't consider this an issue, I'd rather there not be one in the spec. It's just unnecessary complication. If you're the genuinely paranoid 0.1%, write a script.

darkarmani• 3 years ago

802.1x. At least that was what could be used 12 years ago. I don't know about state of the art now.

lxgr19• 3 years ago

There's not really such thing as a cloned wifi network conceptually: If you set up a new access point using the same SSID and encryption settings, you didn't clone a network – you just extended it by one more access point/location where it's available!

A Wi-Fi network is the abstract concept of "all access points using the same name and passphrase", not an individual instance of an access point.

If you connect the two access points (e.g. using wired Ethernet), clients can actually roam between the two fairly seamlessly without any other setup required, and this even works across brands!

progman322• 3 years ago

One thing to keep in mind re: roaming - devices tend to "stick" with their current AP even though there's a perfectly good same-SSID AP with much better strength available. There are protocols that can orchestrate between APs to "kick" stubborn devices to better APs: 802.11r, 802.11k, and 802.11v.

JCharante2• 3 years ago

Enterprise networking hardware has protections against this by attacking other access points. Example from cisco: https://community.cisco.com/t5/wireless/wlc-quot-rogue-conta...

jeroenhd• 3 years ago

Either "enterprise" WiFi or, if your device supports it, locking down the MAC address. That'll give you range issues if you use mesh wifi, range extenders, or additional access points, though.

I don't know why more devices don't support WPA Enterprise, it's not _that_ complicated a protocol. I can imagine a "secure router" product with a normal WPA3 network for management and an "enterprise" network with a simple username/password list selling quite well in some niche circles.

You can build such a network yourself, though, with almost any OpenWRT device, though it's clearly not something most end users can manage themselves: https://github.com/ouaibe/howto/blob/master/OpenWRT/802.1xOn...

monsterofcookie• 3 years ago

Wait until dark, shine a flashlight around and look for reflection off the glass. Or use a metal detector...

Scoundreller2• 3 years ago

Note to self: put a piece of retroreflective tape on my phone.

(I already have a roll of DOT stuff for bicycles, required on the front and rear forks if riding at night)

kgabis• 3 years ago

I did that with my dji drone, figured that when I eventually crash it and it ends up in some dense foliage, I could just go back at night and look for it with my torch looking for shiny 3M reflective tape.

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

It was dark already. We did a lot of grass-searching with flashlights - but the phone was on top of the ATV, in a tough-to-spot location (by the handlebar or something, between some cables).

smortaz• 3 years ago

not directly relevant, but was riding my motorcycle in the boonies, and lost the phone which was on the handlebar (bumpy rocky path).

Looked for it several times on the path with no luck. Then I remembered my old iPhone was in the backpack. Did a Find my phone on the backup phone and it showed exactly where it had lost touch with the primary phone. This is all without cell or Wi-Fi service. Saved me a $1000.

lxgr19• 3 years ago

Oh, wow, I didn't realize "Find my" worked even when both devices are offline! But it makes sense – all that's really needed is GPS and Bluetooth.

Were you able to access it right there without signal, or did you need to move to an area with coverage for it to sync?

oldbbsnickname5• 3 years ago

Not really. The phone only appears "off" but is in-fact in a low power mode providing beacons. It won't work if the battery were removed.

Also, modern iPhones use tower-assisted GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, BeiDou, and NavIC) so the satellite isn't necessarily Navistar. With fewer or no towers, and positioned in an odd orientation on the ground, a good fix becomes much less likely, and the range can increase from <1m to 10's-100's of m.

JCharante2• 3 years ago

You might not want to mount your phone on the handlebar. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37230198

Jeremy1026• 3 years ago

It might also fall off while riding on a bumpy trail and be lost forever unless you have a backup phone in your backpack.

jojobas2• 3 years ago

Having anything to distract you on a motorcycle is a bad idea.

Best to put your phone in DND, if you need directions have them in voice only.

megablast2• 3 years ago

You had an old iphone you rarely used that still had a working sim in it? So you were paying for two phones every month?

IggleSniggle• 3 years ago

Internet access is not necessary for Find My to work. Your devices all broadcast their public key over Bluetooth and NFC, and your devices all also have your own private key, and so are identifiable / visible in Find My.

Even if they hadn't had the local map, they can still get some useful signals from Find My (and they can still push Ring requests). However, in their case, their old phone still had the log of the last seen location. Again, no Internet required.

withinboredom• 3 years ago

He said no service at all. When traveling, and you have an old phone with eSIM support, carrying it with you in a backpack (with eSIM information ready to go) is a good idea. Especially when traveling alone, you never know what will happen. Your primary phone can be stolen, you drop it, or it simply dies and you need rescue.

alexwasserman2• 3 years ago

I assumed it would be Bluetooth. Walking/driving around with headphones powered on waiting to pair.

WiFi network mirroring is smart.

grepfru_it• 3 years ago

wifi network mirroring is smart

Yep, so smart that I used to name my WiFi “McDonald’s Free WiFi” when I lived half a block from McDonald’s. Everyone’s phones would connect but to my goatse’d image network.

I thought devices would start remembering the base station MAC addresses to avoid hijacking but I guess not.. maybe I should start doing this again at my local Home Depot

Edit: just remembered I used to do this on planes too. I would MiTM the AP and people would connect to my WiFi device. Then I would serve an obvious incorrect Bank of America page. No one logged in to it though :(

userbinator2• 3 years ago

I thought devices would start remembering the base station MAC addresses to avoid hijacking

The use of multiple APs with the same SSID is a feature, not a bug. It enables roaming between them.

alexwasserman2• 3 years ago

I really meant the choice to use it here, not the implementation of how it works.

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

WiFi network mirroring is smart

Thanks!

I don't usually use bluetooth _that much_ so I didn't think about it. My cousin's truck was around, which was indeed paired with the phone - but it would have been a bit more cumbersome to use in the search anyways.

eternityforest5• 3 years ago

I wonder how cheap and low power we could make tracking beacons if we didn't actually have to send any data and could accept some privacy risk.

Imagine like, an airtag, but the ID only needs to be 1 byte long, or even just a simple presence signal.

You'd put it on everything you own that's portable and easy to lose. When you want to find it you just search for signals. Maybe it could have an NFC silencing feature. Perhaps it could only activate after 10 minutes of not detecting movement, while also not being near a base station (The base stations would mark a location as the "safe place you won't forget").

So you won't get any interference from anything people are carrying. You won't pick up anything safely stashed where it actually belongs.

But you can quickly sweep an area for any lost property (Which could be good or bad, depending on if it's a helpful security guard or someone who believes in finders keepers looking...).

You wouldn't ever have to receive any data, except to detect base stations, which would only need maybe a 2ft range.

But it wouldn't solve the big issue with losing stuff, detecting when you leave a location without a thing.

lxgr19• 3 years ago

Imagine like, an airtag, but the ID only needs to be 1 byte long,

Well, then you could only ever track 255 different tags :)

AirTags are already pretty minimal. Their battery lasts about a year, and I imagine an open source equivalent should be possible to build for under $5.

This is purely guesstimated based on the fact that I have a couple of Bluetooth LE thermometer/hygrometers that cost me about $3 a piece that last about a year on the same battery (CR2032) – and these run custom firmware and need to run a display and data logger (to on-chip flash) as well!

juanuicich• 3 years ago

Apparently there are Find My compatible generic tags coming out of China already, and they cost less than $5, shipping included. I say apparently because I’m still waiting for one to arrive and test.

eternityforest5• 3 years ago

You'd just have to have IDs repeat, and software that could tell the difference based on signal strength. If you have two on the same ID that have different RSSI, show them as two tags.

You'd have to do some guesswork though to figure out what's going on but it would be better than nothing, and you might be able to get the size down below what CR2032 allows.

imp0cat• 3 years ago

A year is a long time, but you can also get a CR2032 to USB converter and use that as a constant power source.

Why? If you're using your smart tag to track your car, you can hide it somewhere deep inside and connect it to the vehicle's battery so it always has power. Then you never have to worry about changing batteries.

dzhiurgis• 3 years ago

Walk around shouting Hey Siri

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

WOW. I love this approach. Didn't think of it since I don't usually use Siri (nor Google Assistant, since I'm on Android - as my cousin).

SO steampunk to see a group of adults shouting around "HEY GOOGLE" in the woods to find a lost phone.

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

(I've just asked my cousin, and he says Google Assistant is not enabled)

xen2xen1• 3 years ago

Done this in my car to find my phone when it slipped under a seat.

askvictor2• 3 years ago

What's the difference in signal strength between bluetooth and wifi? I had assumed since they use the same frequency, and usually the same chip and antenna, they would be much the same (perhaps there are regulatory differences between them?) If anything, I'd guess that BLE would be more useful in this case as there is less handshaking, which means on a very poor connection you've got more of a chance of getting some data through.

willcipriano• 3 years ago

What's the difference in signal strength between bluetooth and wifi?

Big in my experience. 15 - 20 feet vs 100+ feet for wifi out in the open like that.

lxgr19• 3 years ago

Depends on the Bluetooth device class.

Most devices are Class 2, with a maximum transmit power of only 2.5 mW; that's not a lot compared to Wi-Fi's ~20-30 mW.

AirPods are notably Class 1, which goes up to almost 20 mW! They accordingly have much better range as a result.

Bluetooth LE in newer version has new low-bitrate coding methods to allow for even greater ranges (called "Coded PHY"). Assuming Bluetooth LE classes are the same as for EDR (I don't know if they are!), this source [1] claims a 4 times greater range using coded PHY, which would be in the range of several hundred meters.

[1] https://www.bluetooth.com/blog/exploring-bluetooth-5-going-t...

sllabres• 3 years ago

I've been using three AirTags and two of the cheaper clones mentioned above. I can activate both about 100m away in the forest, if there is a line of sight.

On the other hand, i can walk an entire day through the forest (with some other people around every now and then) without a single position update from the tag.

Someone• 3 years ago

I had assumed since they use the same frequency, and usually the same chip and antenna

Yes and no. Bluetooth is 2.4GHz, WiFi has many bands, including one around 2.4GHz. Those can share an antenna, but I think that means only one can be sending at a time (they could mix the signals, but I guess that would mean connection would fail for the less powerful Bluetooth signal)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth:

“It employs UHF radio waves in the ISM bands, from 2.402 GHz to 2.48 GHz”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels:

“The 802.11 standard provides several distinct radio frequency bands for use in Wi-Fi communications: 860/900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, 3.6 GHz, 4.9 GHz, 5 GHz, 5.9 GHz, 6 GHz, 45 GHz and 60 GHz. Each range is divided into a multitude of channels. In the standards, channels are numbered at 5 MHz spacing within a band (except in the 45/60 GHz band, where they are 0.54/1.08/2.16 GHz apart), and the number linearly relates to the centre frequency of the channel. Although channels are numbered at 5 MHz spacing, transmitters generally occupy at least 20 MHz, and standards allow for channels to be bonded together to form wider channels for faster throughput.

Countries apply their own regulations to allowable channels, allowed users and maximum power levels within these frequency ranges. The ISM band ranges are also often used.”

askvictor2• 3 years ago

FWIW I was referring to 2.4GHz Wifi, which shares is basically exactly the same frequency range as bluetooth (14 Channels in 2412-2484MHz vs 80 channels in 2400-2483.5MHz). The devices I've been working with share a chip and antenna, though they can't typically do both at the same time without multiplexing.

I'm interested in, for this particular problem (finding a device using just wifi or bluetooth), which one would have the greater effective range.

jukea2• 3 years ago

I once found my phone buried in the sand on a beach with no coverage. I had a year worth of pictures on it, so I stewed in anguish for almost a day until we thought about installing a Bluetooth signal monitor on a friend’s phone . Given the sluggish update frequency, we resorted to triangulating the phone’s position. As we were pulling it from its sandy grave, I swear it felt like we were cheating fate itself.

lxgr19• 3 years ago

I recovered a lost device (satellite messenger in my case) via Bluetooth as well! It had just fallen into some ferns a meter or so off the trail, but without Bluetooth I'm sure I'd have never found it again.

WanderPanda2• 3 years ago

Not to nitpick but I think you mean trilaterate ;)

lxgr19• 3 years ago

If we're being nitpicky it was probably neither – multilateration requires taking multiple measurements, drawing circles/lines of equal signal strength (or timing advance) and then intersecting these.

If you just want to home in on a transmitter, there's a much simpler algorithm: Try walking into various directions and keep heading into the one that makes the signal strength nunber go up :) Not sure if there's a name for that.

jukea2• 3 years ago

Nice one, Yep this is it. We drew 3 rough circles and found the intersection

tkk13909• 3 years ago

And this, kids, is why we back up everything

janus• 3 years ago

Ha, last winter I lost my phone while snowboarding in the last 300-500m before mountain base. I noticed because I was listening to music with my airpods when I got to the bottom the music had gone silent. Thankfully I had my Apple watch with me, so I immediately got off the board and start running uphill while incessantly spamming the "ping my phone" button. At some point I saw in the watch screen it briefly connected and then immediately disconnected again. I realized somebody had probably grabbed it and skied by me. I went back running to the chairlift while still spamming the button and finally found the person who had grabbed it, a few seconds before he got into the chairlift. I felt that day that the watch investment had been worth it hah.

lxgr19• 3 years ago

My friend was able to retrieve his phone that had just been pickpocketed out of his backpack that way!

"Hey, did you just grab my phone" can take some courage to say to a stranger; "Hey, I can hear my phone ringing in your bag when I press this button!" was much more convincing.

pestatije• 3 years ago

can you not power-off an iphone without unlocking?

InSteady• 3 years ago

This reads like an ad.

olyjohn2• 3 years ago

Lost my FRS radio up on the mountain once. I started calling it from my friends radio... "Hello, I'm a lost radio, please find me" and someone called me back and met up with me to return the radio.

amatecha• 3 years ago

hahaha, that's great! I can imagine hiking along and hearing this scratchy voice emanating from "nowhere", tracking it down and finding this lonely radio on the ground, pleading for help to be brought back to its owner! :)

subarctic• 3 years ago

Was he stealing it? I found a phone on the slopes last year, but I gave it to the liftee - figured I'd let them figure out how to get it back to the owner.

andromaton• 3 years ago

If all else fails, build your own Stingray.

https://www.hackers-arise.com/post/software-defined-radio-pa...

gauravphoenix2• 3 years ago

This reminds me of the kind of hack I came up with, almost 20 years back. I used to work in Bangalore, and now and then, we would have a power outage in the evening that lasts for a few hours. I was single and used to live alone. I did not want to go home from the office and find myself without power. So how do I find out there is power at home? During those days, there were no IOT devices so checking them is that's out of the question. But I did have a landline phone that was powered by electricity and had a replaceable battery as a backup. I used the phone only to connect to the internet. So I just removed the batteries and when the power goes out, my phone wouldn't 't work. So before leaving work, all I had to do was call my landline. If it rings, it means there is power.

codetiger• 3 years ago

Good one, Living in a place like that, I can understand how important it is. :)

darkwater• 3 years ago

How long was the commute from office to home? Depending on this you still had risks of phone working while at the office, power out when back home, no?

gauravphoenix2• 3 years ago

10-15 mins walk. ~5 mins by motorbike

bonton89• 3 years ago

I used the same trick recently where a long power outage had me staying at my relatives until power was restored. My answering machine doesn't work without power but the phone does so if it doesn't pick up I know the power is out.

Since the central office switch is usually powered by generators I was used to the phone always working even during outages. But I found that the landline phone only stays functional for only a day now. I believe the deployment of fiber to the node means there are battery backups at the nodes that only last that long.

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

Here in Argentina people sometimes leave inside the freezer an ice cube with a coin on top of it, so they can check if the power went off for a long while - because the coin would be lower in the cube even if it froze back.

theendisney23• 3 years ago

In my job I regularly wonder how to get a found phone laptop or notebook back to their owner. The notebook is the easiest. The apple laptop the most stupid. I have the locked laptop i have my iphone you would think, with the closed eco-system, there to be some magic ritual i can perform for the laptop to register on the owners "find my device"???? Or at least let me type a number for them to call?

Sometimes, (if i charge the phone) eventually contacts real names appear on the home screen. This seems just the information one shouldn't be sharing?

It is really odd how garbage the tech is here.

dicknuckle• 3 years ago

On my Android phone, the homescreen can have a short message, I changed it to "If found, call {wife's phone number}"

theendisney23• 3 years ago

I know, great in theory but i havent seen one where it was configured. You can also configure a phone number to call. No one apparently does that.

The solution needs to not require any configuration.

You can call your own phone of course but then i have to keep it charged. If it dies the sim locks.

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

Whenever I go to big concerts or gatherings, I set my lock screen to a screenshot of a WhatsApp story (that I never publish) saying something like that.

manwe150• 3 years ago

Do they usually have guest account access disabled, and would that help if enabled? I once saw a theory that guest account access can help because it grants the third party the ability to connect it to any WiFi network, allowing it to “phone home”

On iPhones, there is the ability to get the medical id (their name and emergency contact) from the Lock Screen too, if people set that up. I set my notifications privacy setting to show preview only when unlocked, so that it won’t show names of my contacts or one-time PIN codes texted to me

theendisney23• 3 years ago

People Who forget their phone are perhaps more likely to not configure anything.

I can think of a number of ways to improve the finders experience. Give the provider something to configure. Say a dedicated helpdesk number where I report finding your phone and you can report losing it. Perhaps with a pin matched to the phone.

Say the finder manages to unlock it (0000) they can create a facinating phone bill. If reported as lost the provider can at least cap the bill at something more usual until your id is fully validated.

Could create an app for registered lost and found spots. Then can do all kinds of magic.

Having 1000$ bricks sitting on shelves looks kinda..dumb?

userbinator2• 3 years ago

Before reading, I thought it would be about a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_junction_detector ; but then again, that can find not just lost phones but other electronics too.

aaron695• 3 years ago

I’ve learnt to save battery by switching my phone’s wifi off whenever I go into the woods or mountain

I feel like this is not true.

Walking in a city it'd be even worse since there would be 100's networks to check to see if it can connect too. Which I don't think matters much.

Bad cellular reception which you'll hit if you are coming and going out of coverage would matter.

Similarly a wifi you can connect to will drain the battery with background apps and if reception sucks also bad.

But zero wifi you can connect to, I can't see mattering.

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

Rationale is "I will be offline, so don't even try to connect". When I'm hikking in the mountains, maybe spending a couple of days up there, I only use my phone for GPS and/or photos - so everything else goes off.

bayesianbot• 3 years ago

I use this sometimes when I can't find my daughter in a large shop - just turn on my wifi tethering and when I have a device connected, I know she's nearby.

Agent766• 3 years ago

Here's a fun question, after the device connected to the wifi hotspot, would the "find my" feature work?

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

The hotspot didn't provide real Internet connectivity, since there was no service - only the places' WiFi, but out of reach, and the phone can't connect to the WiFi and provide the hotspot at the same time.

So probably not. But if the lost phone was an iPhone, walking around with another iPhone would have reported it (once the walking one was connected to the WiFi back again).

wslh• 3 years ago

A few years ago I also found my mobile phone in Mar del Plata, Argentina, after a young horse passed over my daughter... it was using the find me option in a Fitbit watch linked to a Samsung mobile phone.

My daughter was perfectly fine, but that is another story: fingers crossed, she has some special powers.

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

Te abrazo, hermano

secsubsc• 3 years ago

I did something very similar to connect my Amazon Fire-stick with my new TV at a different place when I had lost the remote (of Fire-stick). The TV remote was helpful, but only after I could connect the Fire-stick with a working Internet connection.

I remembered my old home's wifi SSID and password, so created a hotspot on my phone with the same SSID and password, and the Fire-stick got connected. All went good after that.

ridgeguy• 3 years ago

Find My came to the rescue when my wife unknowingly dropped her phone during a pullover to take some pix. The turnout was on New Priest Grade, the best way to Yosemite from our home.

Next morning, after the frenzied "Where's my phone" search petered out, we remembered Find My. No way, I thought. Rural road, many miles away, etc. Which new phone would you like, Dear?

Find My immediately found it 43 miles away. My wife looked at Google Earth, identified the likely turnout and high-tailed it. She found it about five minutes after stopping at that turnout.

There were enough passers-by with iOS devices that Find My worked as hoped. It amazed me that we got a little piece of our property back through operation of planetary-scale infrastructure.

Maxion• 3 years ago

Even with all the hate Apple gets in the tech sphere, they do have a lot of very handy features in their products.

simondotau2• 3 years ago

IMHO the volume of hate isn't so much once you calibrate for Apple setting high expectations for its products, and Apple selling these products by the metric crap-ton.

_v7gu2• 3 years ago

They have leveraged their userbase into an (admittedly very useful) spy network

hunter2_2• 3 years ago

infrastructure

Imagine if anyone, not just Apple, could build on that, creating an automatic sneakernet. Populous areas without cell towers would come online, with ultra high latency. Throughput would also need to be throttled by the owner of each device to accommodate battery consumption preferences.

audunw• 3 years ago

We’re not that far off from the planet being covered with low bandwidth internet anyway.

NB-IOT and LTE-M, along with the possibility that SpaceX can use Starlink satellites to provide low bandwidth LTE coverage, seems to give a viable path for global coverage soon

Only problem is that in the short term NB-IoT/LTE-M devices are rather expensive, both upfront and monthly costs. Guess that will come down over time though

AceJohnny2• 3 years ago

Throughput would also need to be throttled by the owner of each device to accommodate battery consumption preferences.

Ay, there's the rub!

tinus_hn• 3 years ago

Tile did exactly that. Except of course according to the privacy policy they track where everything and everyone is.

fastball• 3 years ago

Apple let's you build products for the Find My network.

LeoPanthera• 3 years ago

Third parties are allowed to use the Find My network. I have a Find My "credit card" in my wallet made by Chipolo.

spuz2• 3 years ago

There were enough passers-by with iOS devices that Find My worked as hoped

I'm not sure I understand why you would need nearby devices to locate your phone. The phone itself already had GPS and a network connection, right?

katbyte• 3 years ago

Find my works without a network connection. So if the phone is lost without signal and another iOS device comes in range it will remember seeing it, and then upload the location to apple for the devices owner to see when it has internet again.

wodenokoto2• 3 years ago

There were enough passers-by with iOS devices that Find My worked as hoped.

Wouldn't the phone tell Apple servers where it was? No need for passer-bys.

brookst2• 3 years ago

Without cell coverage?

joshvm• 3 years ago

I have a couple of Tile fobs from before Apple moved into the space. They're still good enough for checked bag tracking while flying (at least to confirm the bag has made it to the terminal). Tracking is pretty limited without the subscription, but enough to sanity check. It would also work as a "last seen" location, which might be enough for your example (you don't need the network unless your device moves).

Find My should also give you a push notification if you leave a device somewhere? But you'll get false positives if you turn off Bluetooth.

klinquist3• 3 years ago

Find My should also give you a push notification if you leave a device somewhere?

It does.

eternauta3k• 3 years ago

I thought he was going to find it by its local oscillator emissions like the TV detector vans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van

semireg4• 3 years ago

I had AirPods Max stolen from our car a few months ago. A week later they popped up on Find My a block away. I hopped on my bike and tracked to a small apartment building. Using Find My will show you a “warmer … warmer … colder” kind of UI and whenever I lifted my phone to a particular window (shades drawn) Find My would say “Nearby.” I called the police and they were genuinely excited to knock on the door. A guy answered and denied having headphones that fit the description. Another police officer brought me around to the window and had me “play sound to locate” and sure enough you could hear the beep-boops through the window. The officer went back and said “listen, we know they are in your apartment, we can hear them, either go get them or we are getting a search warrant.” The guy said “ohhhh well I did have a party last week and there’s this backpack…”

Uh huh. Headphones returned.

Another officer returned to this scene and asked if we got the headphones back. I held them up and he says: “OH $&@# YEAH!”

ahepp• 3 years ago

What city do you live in?

layer83• 3 years ago

From his company, probably Winona, Minnesota.

chrischen2• 3 years ago

Wasn’t expecting that. Was expecting an “even if you located them the cops won’t bother to help you recover just $XX dollars worth of stolen goods.

eru• 3 years ago

I think that attitude really depends on where you are, and how overworked your local police is.

eiiot• 3 years ago

San Francisco

gosub100• 3 years ago

You're surprised real-world accounts dont match common internet stereotypes?

bryanrasmussen2• 3 years ago

I had AirPods Max stolen from our car a few months ago. A week later they popped up on Find My a block away.
The officer went back and said “listen, we know they are in your apartment, we can hear them, either go get them or we are getting a search warrant.” The guy said “ohhhh well I did have a party last week and there’s this backpack…”
Uh huh. Headphones returned.

I mean from your description sounds like the guy was telling the truth, or is your theory that he stole your airpods, went on vacation and came back home after several weeks - which of course is also a possibility, but I think backpack left over from party sounds also reasonable.

on edit: hmm, early in the morning, so now I understand it was a week after being stolen they showed up on Find My..guess need more coffee.

ant6n• 3 years ago

Or perhaps resist the „well actually“-urge ;-)

semireg4• 3 years ago

I didn’t want to muddy the original story, but I had nest cam footage of the actual theft but too blurry to make a positive ID. I saved the footage. The guy was very tall and built like a football player. With sandals.

When I met the guy that night a week later he opened the door and it was pretty obvious he was the guy. Same sandals.

Beyond a reasonable doubt? Eh, probably not.

baz007• 3 years ago

Lucky there. UK here. A couple of years back I had a macbook pro delivered to me. It was delivered to the correct number on a different road. The POD had a photo of the front door and the person. I recognised the front door as it was on a local estate. Phoned delivery company up (DPD) and they said that they delivered it to the correct location and wouldn't do anything about it. Went round there and the guy said "um, it's mine now. Finders keepers. What are you going to do about it?".

So I phoned the police. They never turned up.

I opened up a credit card chargeback. But I was complaining about this to someone in the school playground and someone else overheard it. Turns out she was his next door neighbour. Said "I'll get it back for you". Sure enough that afternoon she turned up with it! Turns out the guy was a convicted paedophile and she knew that and said if he didn't give it back she'd tell everyone on the estate.

You need leverage or a good police force against criminals. The latter is rare so I suspect that taking matters in to your own hands is sometimes required.

hinkley• 3 years ago

You did a cryptographically secure deletion of that hard drive, right? Even odds there were bad things in that drive.

gadders• 3 years ago

This is like an episode of Shameless. Sounds a lot like when I grew up. Except we didn't have macbooks or online shopping.

squokko• 3 years ago

I hope she still told everyone on the estate...

INTPenis2• 3 years ago

a good police force

What do you expect the police to do in this situation? They can't just walk into people's homes over your word. OP at least had a noise which in the states I assume is probable cause or something. And even then they'd have to come back with a warrant but got the headphones because the suspect felt defeated.

Your situation is bizarre, the helpless feeling of knowing where your stolen item is and not be able to do anything about it. But it's not solvable by the police unless you have more evidence. For example you could have recorded your neighbor saying those things to you.

Here in Sweden petty theft is 99% an insurance issue. I even heard one case where their boat was stolen with an airtag on it and it was traced to a particular driveway.

The police here won't even pick up the case, it goes into a pile of other theft cases and the owner can use the ID to file an insurance claim.

It's very sad on the surface. But maybe they have their reasons.

Angostura2• 3 years ago

Just a small note, but your contract is with the retailer - if it's not delivered, tell Apple or whoever. It is up to them to get the goods to you.

Zenst• 3 years ago

That's shocking and also lucky. Had that neighbour not overheard or intervened, you would have had a known paedophile using a computer that could be tracked to you via sales used for a crime that the police would have acted upon and caused you more pain and suffering.

I've also learned the hard way, there again I have had police make so many mistakes for crimes in the past and ignore hard evidence that I lost faith in them years ago sadly. But this is the UK.

Though in your case, at stage it was at, once you had asked the recipient for it back and they said no, the police should have intervened due to the law of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding and acted.

Equally, the onus to prove delivery is upon the courier and again, you had a case there with them, so shouldn't of had to go thru that.

I agree, taking the law into your own hands alas seems to be the best solution in so many matters in the UK from my experience, sad and wrong but heck, we all want a simple life.

Also note from experience, the police (from a UK perspective) are not as aware of the laws as you would expect and had them tell me a matter was a civil matter and not criminal and raised complaint and had that upheld (lots of those) as they were wrong and the common laypersons expectations of the police is far short from reality, so always stand your ground and don't let anything slide as I used to do as it only erodes you away and enables incompetence to prevail.

That all said there are some good police (those that care and do their job properly) but sadly not as common as one would expect.

Trencin• 3 years ago

I wonder whether you are a screenplay writer rather than an Engineer.

timwis• 3 years ago

Hey just so you’re aware for the future, it’s the seller’s responsibility to get your item delivered to you, so if you hadn’t recovered it, it would be on Apple to resolve it. They would then take it up with the shipping company.

More detail: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-w...

p00dles• 3 years ago

I had a similar situation in Paris with an iPhone. The Police were so helpful, knew exactly what to do, and were also very excited, but ultimately the Find My location wasn’t granular enough to find the phone. In an urban environment like Paris with big apartment buildings directly adjacent to each other, I think Find My is difficult. I’d have to be lucky and catch the phone during transit from one place to another, I think.

Edit: being able to use my iPad with Find My was an amazing experience, it’s almost worth having one just for that situation, where I didn’t have to bumble around with 2FA and logging in from my laptop, which isn’t Apple. I could also erase my stolen phone remotely, which gave me so much peace of mind.

weinzierl• 3 years ago

"but ultimately the Find My location wasn’t granular enough to find the phone"

Depends on the generation, the new ones with ultra wideband (UWB) are really awesome, you can locate the item to tens of centimeters. I think you already have to be in a certain range for UWB to kick in. So might not really help if you could not identify the apartment otherwise.

dghughes• 3 years ago

There should be an app people can download and you share the location data of your lost device. Multiple devices can all home in on it increasing resolution of the location via triangulation.

radres• 3 years ago

Really would like to know which city this is. As others commented many of the police force would've responded "tough luck"

semireg4• 3 years ago

Small town Minnesota, USA

api• 3 years ago

Lots of high theft products should come with a stink bomb mode that sprays some disgusting sulfur based compound.

enb• 3 years ago

How close did you have to be to the window for it to say “nearby”? With my airtags you have to be within several metres.

semireg4• 3 years ago

I was standing in the grass of apartment complex. Find My app says “distant” and I move phone over window “nearby” … back and forth it would toggle between distant and nearby.

Open and shut case, Watson.

joshstrange• 3 years ago

Did you go buy a bunch of lottery tickets afterwards? Cops doing their job when you give them the entire breadcrumb trail is incredibly rare. I have many stories from friends and that I’ve seen online of the cops refusing to do anything even when you can guide them directly to the location of your stolen property.

I’ve personally experienced their lack of competency when they refused to follow up on stalking/harassment of a friend. They said there was nothing they could do even after I’d tracked down what free texting service was being used and gave them the abuse email address for law enforcement to use. They just straight up refused to do anything. Finally I was able to get my friend’s number blacklisted from the free text message service’s side to stop the abuse (the scumbag would change phone numbers every time he was blocked so we couldn’t just block the number). We even knew who was behind it and they wouldn’t do anything. And before you think this was mild he was sending 100’s of texts a day and calling multiple times. He also keyed the victim’s car but again, cops wouldn’t do anything about it.

eloisant• 3 years ago

TBH having a few police officers drive to the place then spend that time probably costs more than the price of the device.

koheripbal• 3 years ago

Stolen property with an address and evidence will always get actioned. It's easy and rewarding for them.

Online or telephone stuff won't. It is much more complex and requires system knowledge.

It's that simple.

piperswe• 3 years ago

It depends on where you are. I had a stolen backpack recovered when I was travelling in Zurich. I stopped by the train station police, showed them the AirTag tracking, and they sped down the freeway (lights & sirens!) to catch up to the perpetrators' train and arrest them. I went to the Landesmuseum, and by the time I was done my backpack (and most of its contents) were ready for me at the police station.

Compared to SFPD, who took about 8 hours to even show up to my burgled apartment so I could file an insurance report, it was a breath of fresh air.

meetingthrower• 3 years ago

Ok we have opposite situation than stolen headphones. We found some on a trail in the woods. They are "Alan's Airpods". We connected to them from our nearby house, hoping he would come by using Find My.

There is no other way to contact them that I can see?

aembleton• 3 years ago

You could take them to a police station and hand them in.

xkekjrktllss• 3 years ago

Where are you located? Here in a busy midwest city, the police are too short staffed to even respond to a 3 car pile up in the middle of a busy intersection sooner than 2 hours after the fact.

scarface_74• 3 years ago

Opposite anecdote. I had my phone stolen from the gym. I showed up with the police and the guy denied having it - ended up he was telling the truth.

Then I saw the phone was at someone else’s house right by the one I showed up to the following evening. I used public records to track down the owner and he said it was a rental. He called his tenants and they said they didn’t have it. They were also telling the truth. Once I told them where it was stolen they said that another neighbor actually worked at the gym.

He did have my iPhone and returned it once his manager told him to. I worked at the gym part time as a fitness instructor.

This was back in the iPhone 4 days admittedly when Find My relied on GPS.

fennecfoxy3• 3 years ago

Quite a few years ago (and fortunately the only time I've been burgled), I had a guy hop in through my bathroom window of the house, because our rubbish bins were outside the window/we left the window open for the cats to jump in & out of.

My flatmates and I were all sound asleep in our rooms. I remember half-waking a few times and seeing a shadowy figure in my room, but being half-asleep remember thinking "ah just my flatmate probably doing something" and went back to sleep.

Awoke a short time later and realised what had happened with the charging cables for my laptop/phone pulled towards the doorway and a few things strewn here and there. Got up and went to the hallway and found the rest of the house in disarray and banged on my flatmates doors to panic/get them to call the police. This was at about 4am.

They hadn't hit up my flatmates rooms, only mine (closest to the front door/road) and the main areas of the house. While the police were on their way, I realised my desktop was still there (it was a full-tower) and turned it on to see if I could locate the phone: success! It showed my phone as being in a carpark near a Macca's a few areas over.

My flatmate was still on the phone to the police so we relayed that and they said they'd take a look, but a separate team was coming to see if we were okay. That second team arrived and we made 'em some tea and all sat around being reassured by 'em until the first team had reported in; they got the stuff back! (Well, most of it).

Turns out the guy had: stolen a car, burgled about a half dozen places before ours, then burgled our place and driven to get get Macca's to celebrate. Apparently he was the only car in the carpark and the police walked up seeing that the car was chock full of people's stuff.

My stuff was returned and so was the car and the police were apparently trying to get the other stuff back to their owners, too. I got a follow up call a couple months later "we can't tell you who he is, but for your information he'd already been pulled up on this before and this time he's going to prison". There's nothing quite like the feeling of justice, like "yeah FUCK you for entering my house and taking my stuff".

The scariest thing of the entire scenario was me realising that my phone/laptop were charging on my bed, next to me. Which meant he'd leant over me while I slept to take my stuff.

After moving to the UK, unfortunately after a few years with getting away with walking around London at night, I got mugged. These guys clearly did this stuff all the time because my phone had clearly been turned off, so was not able to be located.

But it really shows the importance of technology helping mitigate/prevent these sorts of things; we should really be holding companies to higher standards and have universal ways to make theft of anything like phones/laptops essentially impossible.

Another thing was the reaction of NZ police; fast, efficient, caring and really eager to just help out someone who had been wronged. Whereas the response I got in London/Met police was basically "ya we can't do anything and there's no CCTV of it" (the most surveilled city in all of Europe, apparently.

squarefoot• 3 years ago

Embedding a LoRa module in the phone could come handy in similar situations; it could trigger a timed transmission of the latest known position before a given event, say a big bump followed by no movement or usage for X time, too long exposition to temperature and humidity incompatible with a house, etc. LoRa allows transmission at impressive distances using very low power compared to WiFi and other systems; a phone configured to turn itself off and use just the LoRa module to repeat a very short <phone code>+<position> say every 10 minutes wouldn't tax the spectrum too much (RF in that context is a very scarce resource) and its battery would likely last weeks.

stevage• 3 years ago

Wow, that's pretty creative.

jen729w2• 3 years ago

Back in the mid-90s my dad lost his car keys. Turns out they were in his dressing gown (we’re British) pocket, in the wardrobe.

So he bought one of those keyrings where you whistle and it beeps. This was a Saturday and we were visiting my grandparents, his parents. He told his dad, by now with a mild case of the Alzheimers, that he’d got this thing and that “you beep and it tells you where your keys are”.

Well my grandad, who never drove a car let alone used a computer, his mind was blown. He just had no idea how this thing could do that.

This went on for a few minutes.

Dad, increasingly frustrated: “you just beep and it tells you where your keys are!”

Grandad, increasingly confused: “... but ... how?!”

It turns out that my grandad was imagining that you whistled and that this little device shouted out, “they’re in your dressing-gown pocket!”

stavros2• 3 years ago

To be fair, if someone said to me "you just beep", I'd also be confused as to how exactly I can beep.

psd14• 3 years ago

printf(0x07) or similar

Blahah• 3 years ago

No wonder he was confused - how does a person beep? Surely you whistle and it beeps?

jen729w2• 3 years ago

Haha sorry typo. Indeed, one whistles and the other beeps.

Reubachi• 3 years ago

Am I crazy? are beep/whistle interchangable?

atoav• 3 years ago

My brother dropped his iPhone during a powder snow traversal down the back of the mountain to a hut.

We found it accidentally during a hike in the summer, when the snow was gone.

Always be prepared to lose everything.

psd14• 3 years ago

I'm so paranoid about dropping my shit from a ski lift that I've taken to a chestpack, lanyards and karabiners. It makes me feel better.

Floegipoky• 3 years ago

Watch out for any of those dangly bits getting caught on the lift, I almost got dragged by my backpack strap a few years ago. IMO better to lose the gear.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 3 years ago

If you ever connected to a network with a hidden SSID (or one where the phone thought the SSID was hidden for some reason), the phone will actively beacon for that WiFi, including the "hidden" SSID.

This is obviously harder to use for searching for the phone than the method they used, but it's a privacy nightmare you should be aware of. Hiding SSIDs is almost always a really bad idea for this reason.

speedgoose2• 3 years ago

That’s an interesting design flaw. You connect to a hidden wifi network once and then your device will emit the ssid when you are not connected to a wifi network, or all the time?

Ayesh• 3 years ago

Basically, yes. There was a really nice article here in HN about it, I couldn't find it but hopefully someone will point at it.

derelicta• 3 years ago

This is surprisingly smart

nehal3m4• 3 years ago

Largely beautiful as this country is, as you get into more rural areas, there's a high chance you won't have cell phone coverage there - I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to choose if that's a feature or a bug.
We'd already called and sent some WhatsApp messages, so we knew the phone wasn't reachable.

How did they do that without coverage?

speedgoose2• 3 years ago

You call from an area with coverage. Sometimes it’s enough to walk a little bit to be on the other side of a hill for example.

nehal3m4• 3 years ago

But if that's the case then the test is invalid: The point is to determine whether the lost phone is in coverage range. If you can get in range by moving around a bit then the lost phone might also be in such a place.

itpcc• 3 years ago

Maybe with their place's Wi-Fi?

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

The place had Wi-Fi, but the phone was just enough apart from the router to not reach it. The calls were WhatsApp Calls because we knew there was no cell service to make a standard call (don't know if the phone has VoLTE).

nehal3m4• 3 years ago

So awesome that the authors of linked articles hang out here. Thanks for clearing it up!

yanovskishai• 3 years ago

On a somewhat related note, due to the ongoing war in Israel, GPS is being heavily jammed to deter terrorist drone attacks. An intriguing side effect of this is that services like "Find My Phone" and AirTag are experiencing disruptions. This interference sometimes results in devices appearing to be located in neighboring countries, hundreds of miles away from their actual location. Here's an article detailing the jamming situation: https://www.gpsworld.com/gps-jamming-in-israel/.

unsupp0rted• 3 years ago

In Korea too “Find My” is disabled.

As soon as I landed my family member couldn’t see the AirTag I carry anymore, nor my phone.

pnw• 3 years ago

That’s allegedly due to a Korean law which requires 6 month retention of location information, which Apple thankfully is not OK with.

93po3• 3 years ago

There's ongoing military conflicts happening inside Israel?

williamdclt2• 3 years ago

Find My is great. I hid an AirTag in my bike, which got promptly stolen (as bikes tend to be in London): I had near-zero hope but police _actually_ was keen to retrieve it, it evolved into a multi-week adventure where they tried to retrieve it several times but the thief just rode away. Ended up finding it in a shady bike shop, with a fresh new coat of bright silver paint.

I was skeptical when I bought the airtag, I thought I'd just lose a bike _and_ an airtag, but now I can't recommend it enough!

klinquist3• 3 years ago

I recommend removing the speaker from the airtag for this use case. Plenty of youtube videos showing you how.

williamdclt2• 3 years ago

I do too. I'm not sure how the thief hasn't heard it over several weeks... it was very well hidden and the sound was pretty muffled, but still

kebsup• 3 years ago

There are apps that show Bluetooth signal strength of all nearby devices. I've used that to find phones a few times.

_giorgio_• 3 years ago

??Phones *identify the wifi by name* only, and try to use the same password??

oynqr3• 3 years ago

Both sides have to prove they have the PSK/password before the connection is established. This is of course done without sending the password in plain text.

grav• 3 years ago

TL;DR: created a wifi-network on another phone with same SSID and password as the one that the lost phone usually connects to, walked around waiting for the phone to connect, receive the "Find my phone" notification and send out a sound.

Cool :)

mgarciaisaia13• 3 years ago

This, but without the "Find my". Not sure if my cousin would have been able to log into his account from another phone (maybe MFA would be a blocker if he tried), and my hotspot didn't actually provide Internet anyways.

I thought about "relaying" the place's Wi-Fi connection through a chain of phones sharing via bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but luckily we could find the phone without having to try that. The setup would have been something like:

Router <-Wifi-> Phone <-Blutooth-> Phone <-WiFi-> Phone <-....

sschueller• 3 years ago

If I had 2 wifi access points a meter apart would that me enough to be able to locate the device either behind or in front of the two antennas?

I assume I would need two wifi USB dongles for my PC and some sort of way to determine the time a beacon packet arrived but I don't know if the time difference is granular enough to be able to tell a difference in time between the two.

Has anyone tried something like this with wifi?

neves2• 3 years ago

I've had this exact same problem last week while going to Mount Roraima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Roraima

If I had just read this message before. This is an ingenious solution. He created a thetering wifi network with the same name and password of a network the phone would recognize. When there's a connection, it means the phone is near:

"I’ve used my own phone’s tethering feature to create a wifi network with the same name & password as my cousin’s home network - and we started walking around the place. We made sure the other guy helping us with the search had his own wifi off, to avoid false positives, and waited to find a new connection to the hotspot. And it worked! The connection was made when walking nearby the parked truck, but it turns out that the phone wasn’t in the truck - it was lying on one of the ATVs that was parked by its side."

SandroG• 3 years ago

If you have an Apple Watch, there is a nifty trick of pressing and holding the "Locate Phone" button in the Control Center. Doing so also engages the phone's flashlight so you can find it at night.

bahro• 3 years ago

The butterfly you've seen is a Diaethria species, also known as the "eighty-eights" for obvious reasons.

mcv• 3 years ago

Nice! Now does anyone know a way to find my wireless earphones? Presumably in their charging box.

I expect not, because they don't have bluetooth on in their charger, and I don't think the charger itself has bluetooth. But just in case someone knows a miracle for me: Sony WF-1000XM4.

How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

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