Finding the owner of a lost iPhone can be quite easy — if the person has set up an ICE (in case of emergency) contact, or if the phone has data connectivity with Find My iPhone set up, or if the owner calls their own number.
The iPhone 6 I found had none of this going on, and to make matters worse the phone was in Japanese language. This was the first thing I noticed when I picked up the brown case out of the armrest in the backseat of a Bangkok taxi.
The phone was locked, in flight mode and in a nice case with a transit card for what I suspect to be Japanese mass transit. Wikipedia confirmed I was right.
Realizing the owner was a Japanese person on vacation in Thailand, I wondered if they would bother calling their phone. I swiped down for notifications and could see they used Gmail, Swarm and played a couple of games. But as all was in Japanese, it was not of much use.
I pondered how I might go about keeping this new iPhone, but I know Apple has gone a long ways toward making it hard to use a lost or stolen iPhone, so I knew it would not be easy to repurpose it as my own. Additionally, on two separate occasions, I had lost my prized WAP enabled Nokia 7110 in Bangkok taxis and both times the phone had been returned. This had suck with me and I felt obliged to pay it forward as I thought of how painful losing my own phone would be.
When I got home the next day, there was still no call from the mystery owner, and I begin to feel a challenge being put to me. Weren’t we in a world where everyone is connected? If so, how is it possible that I could not hunt down the owner of this connected device.
My first proactive move was to remove the Nano SIM from the iPhone, noting it was a Softbank SIM. I put the Nano Sim in to the casing of a standard sized SIM and placed it in another Nokia phone. Then, I called myself from the Japanese number. Amazingly roaming was on and the phone number was still active so it worked. I had my first big break in the case — the owners phone number.
My next thought was to contact Softbank and let them know I had the phone of one of their subscribers. The English speaking customer service lady was helpful enough, but said clearly there was nothing she could do for privacy reasons. Even leaving a note on their CRM was a no no. Her best suggestion was to give it to the police, but for some reason I found that suggestion tantamount to a dead end. Surely I, a tech professional, could do better than that.
I remembered that as the user was Japanese, it was nearly mandatory that all Japanese citizens use Line Messenger. With the users working Japanese phone number, I could register a Line account. Luckily I had my old iPhone on hand that was recently cleaned, so I could install the Line app and receive the verification SMS.
In creating the new account, Line will delete access to all the user’s old messages and accounts. I figured a small price for the user to pay.
After creating the Line account and verifying it via SMS, I was able to change the users photo to a screen shot showing an email of mine which his friends could contact me on — and sure enough, by the end of the day one had contacted me and the communication began.
The person I was in contact with was a friend living in the same building of the phone’s owner. The owner was at work and would be back later in the day. When the owner finally got back, I got the necessary address and the phone was sent out, the next day via DHL, and they even covered the DHL shipping charges once the phone was received.
I asked him why he did not try an call his own number, but seems he had thought because he had left it in flight mode, it would be useless to try.
So here is the take away if you ever lose your phone:
- Someone might be trying to get the phone back to you. Help them out by sending your phone an SMS with a contact email or phone #.
- Call your lost phone.
- Put some contact info on your lock screen graphic, so there is no need to unlock your phone to find out who it goes to.
- Don’t cancel or suspend your number right away — monitor activity from your phone company to detect usage.
Conclusion: If you lose your phone, don’t count out the fact that someone may be trying to return it to you, and you’ve made their job hard. Take a minute to think about how you might track down your phone if lost.
