How I Found The Owner Of A Lost iPhone In Less Than A Minute
And so can you, without any hacks…
Karma. It’s a thing. Or at least I think that whatever goes around, comes around. I might sound naive, but I truly believe that the more good people do, the more it gets amplified to exponential levels. And who doesn’t want to live in a world where good always wins? Having been recently in a conversation with someone who lost their phone a while back, I realised I had a very short — yet powerful — story of my own about a similar event.
If it were just a story where I return someone’s phone, I wouldn’t share it. While some might find it inspiring or encouraging to do the same, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable just bragging about giving back someone what was rightfully theirs. This story, however, goes a little further, and comes with a trick up its sleeve that I do feel it’s worth sharing.
A couple of years ago, as I was walking home from work, I saw on the edge of the footpath what seemed like a black phone case. Picking it up, I realised it was more than just a case — it held a phone too. From what I could quickly tell looking at it out of its case, it was an iPhone 6S. Looking around, I saw no-one looking for anything lost, so I decided to take the phone home, thinking what my best options are in terms of finding its owner. While it wasn’t the latest model of iPhone at the time, I knew it still had good value, and beyond that what I suspected, someone else’s personal information, contacts, digital wallet, potentially their whole life in the form of photographs and who knows what else. The 6S was a very capable iPhone, I had one myself. Even four years later, I managed to sell it in a shop that later resells them, for 280 euros. I knew that not returning it would be the worst thing I could do as a human to a fellow human.
My first instinct was to try to get in touch with the carrier based on their SIM card, but that felt like a long-shot and I had no confidence the phone would actually get back to its owner. Then I realised that most people tend to have Siri set up on their iPhones, so chances are I could rely on Siri to find me its owner. Obviously, the phone was passcode protected, but even if it weren’t, I wouldn’t have felt too comfortable going into their personal data, just to track them down, no matter how good my intentions were. So, Siri it was.
If you think about it, the “magic” trick that allowed me to track the owner down in less than a minute, is actually quite simple and obvious. What most people will have on their phone is either a home number, a parent’s number, or a relative’s number. My gut feeling was that the order of probability that they have any of these would be:
- Home
- Mum
- Dad
Hey, Siri. Call home. — that’s all it took…
The phone rang, the owner answered. What was funny, is that they didn’t even have time to realise their phone was missing, as it was less than half an hour since they lost it. Apparently, this was their business phone and “Home” was set as their personal mobile. You can imagine her surprised tone when she answered to her own, other phone calling her. Upon confirming that it was indeed her phone, we realised it must have fallen out of her bag as she got into her car. Thank God, she didn’t run over it, and no other car did either.
Short story even shorter, within half an hour I met her and handed her phone back, and she was lovely enough to thank me with a box of chocolates which I then shared with my colleagues at work the next day.
I know we often make fun of voice assistants, and granted, Siri isn’t the most intelligent of them all. No matter how much of an Apple fan I am, she does piss me off regularly, but in this case, it was the perfect solution to track down a lost device’s owner. The next time you find an iPhone, remember this. Don’t overthink it, don’t go all Columbo on it, just try Siri paired with a bit of common sense!
This phone’s owner couldn’t believe how I managed to track her down. She thought it was an ingenious trick. I made sure to explain to her how I did it, so she wouldn’t worry about her phone being hacked while in my custody, or me getting access to any of her information. Frankly, to this day, I don’t even know her name. Using Siri in this way was the most secure and private solution to finding her. I certainly hope that if she found someone else’s iPhone, she’d use the same trick I did, and now I most certainly hope so will you. As I told her…
If I ever lost my iPhone, I’d hope that someone would track me down, too. It’s the right thing to do.
Those annoying voice assistants are good for something after all… 😉
Did you ever find someone’s lost phone or wallet? How did you track them down? 💬
Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, Lego fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer!