Can the Find My iPhone App End Casual Thievery?

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Police in Louisville, Kentucky used the “Find My iPhone” app to arrest an iPhone thief — well, more some guy who saw an unattended iPhone and took it.

It’s the latest happy ending story for the app, which debuted in June 2010, and first made the police blotter about a month later when cops recovered stolen iPads and iPhones belonging to an Apple employee.

Police say the iPhone perp is 19-year-old Kyle Just, who walked off with the phone he found on a table outside the Golden Nugget Bar. The owner says he put the phone down while having a cigarette, then turned around to find his iPhone missing.

In this case, the app led police to another bar just down the street. They took a look at the GPS coordinates and the map produced by the “Find my iPhone”app to find Just, who headed back to work with the iPhone at Z’s Oyster Bar. The pilfered iPhone was in his pocket, according to the arrest report.

Find My iPhone works by using the GPS capabilities of the iPhone and can be installed on the iPhone 4, iPad or 4th Gen iPod Touch.

The app, now offered gratis on iTunes, works like this: install the app on your “home base” (someone else’s iPhone, or an iPad, iPod Touch) and in the event that you lose your iPhone or it gets swiped, login to the app via your Apple ID. Once you’re logged in, you can see where your iPhone has strayed as well as lock it down or wipe the data from remote if it has fallen into enemy hands.

So is it just a matter of time before thieves get smarter (or the crimes of opportunity diminish?) or until cops get tired of being called to find phones?

Have you installed the Find My iPhone app? Got your iPhone back as a result of using it?

Source: Fox41

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