Apple thinks this house is the Bermuda Triangle of lost iPhones

By

Dozens of people have been told their lost iPhones are this house. But they're not.
Dozens of people have been told their lost iPhones are this house. But they're not.
Photo: Fusion

Find my iPhone is a fantastic way to recover your iPhone when it is lost or stolen. Most of the time. If you’re Christina Lee and Michael Saba, though, you hate Find my iPhone, because it has ruined your life.

For some reason, Apple constantly reports stolen or lost iPhones as coming from Saba and Lee’s small suburban Atlanta house… even though they are nowhere near by.

Fusion has the story, which is just too bizarre. Here’s a snippet:

It started the first month that Christina Lee and Michael Saba started living together. An angry family came knocking at their door demanding the return of a stolen phone. Two months later, a group of friends came with the same request. One month, it happened four times. The visitors, who show up in the morning, afternoon, and in the middle of the night, sometimes accompanied by police officers, always say the same thing: their phone-tracking apps are telling them that their smartphones are in this house in a suburb of Atlanta.

But the phones aren’t there, Lee and Saba always protest, mystified at being fingered by these apps more than a dozen times since February 2015. “I’m sorry you came all this way. This happens a lot,” they’d explain. Most of the people believe them, but about a quarter of them remain suspicious, convinced that the technology is reliable and that Lee and Saba are lying.

Saba and Lee say they are terrified that altercations with people who believe the have their iPhones will get violent, or that police will kick down their front door some day… something that has, indeed, actually happened before due to faulty Find My iPhone tracking.

No one knows what’s going on. All the stolen phones are from different carriers, so that isn’t it: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Boost Mobile. Apple claims the issue has nothing to do with them. As near as anyone can figure, the problem may have to do with a strange triangulation issue between three cell towers around Saba and Lee’s home, but even then, it’s hard to understand why Find my iPhone keeps directing people to the wrong house.

Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate solution in sight for Saba and Lee. If they want Find My iPhone to stop telling people to come to their house, they may very well just have to move.

Source: Fusion.net

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.