The idiots used the device to post a video to their own Facebook page:
Posted on 01/18/2015 10:43:52 AM PST by smokingfrog
HOUSTON -
A River Oaks man says mysterious photos have begun appearing on his iCloud account, a week after his iPad and other items went missing from his truck.
Randy Schaefer said he awoke Jan. 8 to find his iPad, laptop, checkbooks and cash gone.
He immediately filed a police report but had little else to go on. Then, Jan. 16, while looking at old photos on his phone with his girlfriend, Randy said about a dozen pictures of two men he'd never seen before appeared in his iCloud folder.
he pictures were of two men holding large amounts of cash. Although police have yet to identify anyone as suspects in Schaefer's case, that hasn't stopped him from trying to figure out the identity of the men. He posted the pictures on social media Friday.
"At that point, somebody suggested I post it on Facebook and that led to Reddit," Schaefer said.
He says clues in the photos led him to believe the selfies were taken at a Burger King on Montrose and Westheimer. Schaefer also said one of his missing checkbooks had been found in an alley behind a nearby Starbucks where he had, in the past, connected his iPad to the store's Wi-Fi connection.
(Excerpt) Read more at click2houston.com ...
spewed on monitor, choked on drink!
When my iPad got stolen, I had it security protected. (See my reply#23.) With a longer than the default 4-character password (people should use more than 4 characters). I ended up remotely wiping it, and figured it was gone.
My question is, is there a separate command to enter while in your possession to brick it, or does wiping the data do that? Yeah, I should know but don't. I see Internet sales of "bricked" machines for cheap because the "owner forgot" the password. Is it really bricked short of swapping out components?
:)
Y'see.
Interesting, thanks!
Not if you have a relatively recent version of iOS. I think it was introduced in iOS 7, but I'm not sure.
Even if you haven't set a device passcode, you can't turn off "Find My iPad/iPhone" without entering the password for your Apple ID.
A plausible explanation.
There is a command to erase the device, but it requires that you know the password for the associated Apple ID. It's Settings->General->Reset->Erase All Content and Settings.
The reason you see the cheap "bricked" machines is because they have been lost/stolen, and perhaps remotely erased. But, the device identifier is still associated with the original Apple ID, and can't be reactivated unless you know the password for the ID.
Apple added this functionality to reduce the value of a stolen device. Since it can't be reactivated, the value is reduced to "parts". However, it's still a significant sum after you part out the pieces that are likely to break.
According to the article:
"I do have a Track my iPad (app)," Schaefer said. "But by the time I tried to use that, it showed it was offline. It didn't even show that it was at the Starbucks or the Burger King."
I'll guess that the thieves showed it to one of their buddies and someone pointed out that it could be tracked.
Or, it simply hasn't connected to a WiFi access point since then. From the article:
"I think maybe (the iPad) had gotten onto [Starbuck's] network," Schaefer said. "That's when it backed up the pictures they had taken from Burger King on the iCloud."
If it's a WiFi-only iPad, it can only report position when it is connected to a WiFi access point. Unless you have it configured to automatically connect to a "public" WiFi network, it may not do so -- unless the thief connects to one themselves. After 24 hours, the last known position is no longer available.
And even then, it only knows the location of a WiFi access point if Apple has the device ID (of the access point) in their database. Someone else's Apple device with GPS would have had to "hear" the access point and report their location at some point in the past. But, the location isn't as accurate as GPS.
On the iCloud web portal, you can request an email if the device comes online. But, I don't know if that requires the latest version of iOS.
I posted this in another reply, but I think it's worth repeating:
Even if you haven't set a device passcode, you can't turn off "Find My iPad/iPhone" without entering the password for your Apple ID. This functionality was added in iOS 7:
Similar story from UK.
BBC News - iPad thief John Jeffries caught with Cloud photo
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-25653313
Selfie on stolen iPad helps Houston man ID suspects
Clarification: the headline implies they caught these guys. But, it just adds some additional information, like where the money came from.
I heard on the radio this morning that someone who went to school with one of the perps ID’d him from the BK video, but haven’t heard of any arrests yet.
The idiots used the device to post a video to their own Facebook page:
Yes, it's on the Reddit thread:
And, here's the outcome:
http://abc13.com/news/stolen-ipad-helps-lead-police-to-theft-suspect/476329/
He immediately filed a police report but had little else to go on.
Cops will take action if:
1. The victim is a cop or family member.
2. There is a chance of a hefty fine or seizure.
3. There is an opportunity to kick some ass.
4. There is some publicity to be had.
With this story, number 4 has been achieved. The cops will now catch the "youths".
I just looked at the dateline on the article: it's 2015-01-15.
It's quite a coincidence, and there are a lot of common factors. But, unless the dateline is wrong, this is probably not the same theft.
I think it’s a different crime. The iPad theft was in the River Oaks area, which is just west of downtown.
Thanks for all the responses to my questions. I was lucky to get my iPad back, and figure the thief was most likely a tourist (tracking showed it settled down at a downtown hotel, and it was returned to the BART lost & found within two weeks because I had remotely wiped it). In the meantime, I bought a replacement iPad also with 3G. Once returned, the original iPad went to my wife after iTunes restored all my data. Having wi-fi only would suck because of the difficulty finding free wi-fi; having 3G works everywhere especially in a moving vehicle and has saved me while using gps map services when driving in strange cities I visit.
Turning off "Find my iPad/iPhone" is a pain now, because of the forced entry of a password and receiving an email alert. There are times when one does not want to be tracked. But it's a good thing to have to deter thieves.
I use the Personal Hotspot in my iPhone for my iPad when traveling.
It's not perfect, as once the iPad drops the connection, the iPhone won't let it reconnect without disabling the personal hotspot and reenabling it to make the iPhone "discoverable" again.
And, you don't get the GPS accuracy, either. I've suggested to Apple that they allow the GPS API on the iPhone to be accessible from a connected iPad. But, they haven't even replied to my suggestion.
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