If you own an Apple device, you can create an iCloud account and be able to track your device if ever it gets lost or stolen
Delta Milayo Ndou : #DigitalDialogue
A recent incident involving the theft and eventual recovery of a colleague’s iPad has inspired this week’s instalment and in particular — the initial uncooperativeness of the police whom she approached for help in her endeavour to track down the thief. This colleague, a recipient and custodian of a company owned iPad, was attending classes in Gweru when her gadget was stolen on a Friday and owing to the frantic ‘crash course’ pace of her block release programme she only discovered the theft in the evening.Having no idea when or how the gadget had been pilfered from her, she immediately alerted the Senior Network Technician, one Simbarashe Kaseke (who deserves special mention in this tale), to notify him that the company gadget had fallen into thieving hands. As it turns out, Kaseke had connected the gadget on his iCloud account and immediately activated tracking by putting the device on ‘lost mode’.
As soon as the device was switched on its location pinged on Kaseke’s phone and images of the Google map location where the device was were emailed to him. He alerted the victim who tried to find the place where the device was pinging from and it was a cluster of houses and there was no way of approaching people in their homes to enquire after stolen property.
The device was switched off for two days and when it was switched on again, the location settings were set on ‘satellite view’ as opposed to the Google maps view to make it easier to pinpoint the exact location of the device.
Having filed a police report on the day of the theft, this time the victim took the satellite images to the Gweru police to inform them that she now had a satellite image of the location of where her stolen device was pinging. According to my colleague, the police officers at the station laughed at her and expressed scepticism over her claim of knowing the exact location of her device — even though she had satellite images showing the location. “Where did you get the picture from, how do you know that picture is correct?” they quizzed before reaching a consensus on the fact that her request was really too absurd to grant. They dismissed her outright.
Now my colleague is a very strong willed person, not easily dismissed and so she asked to see the officer in charge. “For what?” the rather unhelpful and cynical officers asked, “What do you need to see him for?”
How a guy in Harare tracked a thief in Gweru — via satellite images
As stated, my colleague is a particularly strong-willed individual and so she insisted on seeing the officer in charge and it helped that she happened to know his name (as he had interacted frequently with the media in his previous portfolio) so she requested to see him by name.
Eventually, those officers relented and she was granted an audience with the officer in charge, who upon hearing her tale and her explanation of how Kaseke was tracking the device from Harare and had managed to identify its precise location in Gweru gave her the benefit of the doubt.
“He called two officers and then told them to accompany me because from the satellite images we could see that the device was at a shopping centre that had four buildings clustered together and we could see it was in the second building and appeared to be in a backroom judging from the position of the ping in relation to the street”, explained my colleague. With the official crime-fighters (i.e the police) in tow, my colleague embarked on a second attempt to retrieve the stolen company property that she had been entrusted with.
I have no doubt other people (including myself) would have given up and settled for filing a police report and letting the organisation absorb the loss as ‘one of those things’ that just happen.
But this thief had the wrong victim, like I have already stated — my colleague is pretty strong willed and is rarely deterred from pursuing a course of action once she sets her mind to it. So she was going to find the thief and recover that device come hell or high water — and thanks to Kaseke who kept tracking the device from Harare — she did just that. According to Kaseke, “I wrote a message that would pop up on the screen of the iPad as soon as someone switched it on. The message simply read “this device has been stolen, please call the owner on this number ____”.
He said he figured the thief would want to take it to someone who could unlock it or attempt to crack it so his message was directed at whomever the thief would surrender the device to — if they were honest enough to do the right thing. As it turns out, they weren’t.
Using technology to fight crime
My colleague and the two officers follow the pinging device to a shopping centre and locate second building where they learn that there is a backroom where some guys specialise in unlocking phones.
They make their way to the said backroom and indeed happen upon this thriving phone unlocking enterprise and the officers confidently state “We are here for the iPad you received recently, it could be today or some time yesterday — that device is stolen property” (okay. I am imagining this is what they said — allow me some creative licence since I am narrating this tale).
They probably said something to that effect, but not using those exact words. And please don’t start asking deep questions such as, ‘did they have a search warrant or not’ lets just follow the tale for now. Anyway, the guys at the unlocking business were not interested in going down for a thieving client so they immediately cooperated with the police and produced the iPad.
Now of course, my colleague — being the strong willed person she is — was not going to simply walk off into the sunset with her recovered gadget and let the issue go unresolved.
The police asked the phone-unlocking entrepreneurs to call their thieving client and inform him that they had successfully ‘cracked’ or unlocked the device so he could come and pick it up. Of course the unsuspecting pilferer rushed to triumphantly claim his prize and bask in the glory of ill-gotten gain (okay, I don’t really know if that’s how he was feeling, but I imagine he wasn’t sulking about it). Anyway, the thief walks right into a trap and confesses to ‘finding it tossed somewhere’ before calling his pastor to vouch for his good character and speak of how he would not do such a thing. I will end the tale here.
I shared this because it illustrates how our police officers are sometimes ill equipped or ignorant about how they can use technology to fight crime — even petty theft crimes. The satellite images that my colleague provided were initially scoffed at because the officers she was engaging were unfamiliar with that tracking technology and had little confidence in its accuracy or veracity.
Moreso, people often don’t have evidence of where exactly their stolen property is so having someone approach the police and saying “I know where my stolen item is, please help me recover it” is easy to dismiss especially if the claim is based on unfamiliar technology.
Anyway, if you are the owner of an Apple product, know that you can create an iCloud account and be able to track your device if ever it gets lost or stolen (as long as the device is on and has an Internet connection via data or Wi-Fi). The ‘lost mode’ function also comes with a ‘siren’ function which means if you swiftly notice that your device has been stolen, you can activate that sound and your device will emit a sharp ‘siren-like’ sound to help you locate the thief (much like a car alarm sounds off when your vehicle is being tampered with or otherwise triggered). Also handy, is the ‘erase device’ feature which allows you to remotely erase everything on your device once you realise it is stolen and fear that your information will fall in the wrong hands (that’s especially if you don’t have a password or security features activated). To learn how to secure your gadget, simply go to YouTube and type in ‘how to find my stolen iPad/phone’, etc.
If you own an Android smartphone and you lose it, you can choose to block it with the help of an IMEI number (IMEI stands for International Mobile Station Equipment Identity) and protect your privacy.
You can check for the IMEI number of your mobile from the box of your mobile phone, or from the purchase bill, or under your mobile phone’s battery and on the device itself by typing in *#06# and it will reflect your IMEI.
Sometimes fighting crime or preventing it or protecting your information is a Google or YouTube search away — so let’s ‘school’ ourselves. No doubt a tech-savvy ZRP could would give criminals a run for their money and the long arm of the law could become the ‘typing finger of the law’ tracking criminals remotely.
Delta is Head of Digital at Zimpapers. Follow her on Twitter: @deltandou