Phone tracking

[Slaxl]

G'day all.

I recently had my brand new HTC Sensation swiped off my desk in my office and escaped with before I noticed. I went straight to the HTC Sense website to use the tracking feature to find it, but alas it didn't work (I had previously set it up and used it and it worked) so I went to another phone and used google latitude to find me and that also wasn't working.

The phone was still on and active when I tried locating it, I know this for sure because I called it to see if I could hear it ring, hoping I had merely misplaced it, and it rang, and later it called my brother, one ring then cancelled. I assumed this was because the idiot thieves were playing with it and accidentally called then cancelled. So it was clearly still operational.

What I want to know is have I been spoiled by 24 and James Bond films and led into thinking that phones, and in particular smartphones with GPS inbuilt, especially those set up to relay their location to others, and websites, should be easy to track? Am I being unreasonable when speaking to HTC and I express my disappointment that they can't help, and their software/hardware didn't live up to my assumptions of tracking?

Does anyone else think that if their phone is stolen they can use things to track it, or have I been a naive fool who is now learning a harsh lesson about the limitations of modern technology?

Has anyone had, or heard of, any success in recovering a stolen phone using that software or is it a pipe dream?

I would be most displeased to learn if stealing, and getting away with, a modern hi-tech smartphone was as simple as turning it off (which isn't even what they did, but still...)

So I just wanted to know what everyone else thought about tracking, so I might learn for the future.

Thanks all.

 

[lunatic59]

You might want to give Plan B a try.

I couldn't tell you why the HTC software didn't work, but as long as the phone is on and connected, you should be able to find it.

 

[Slaxl]

You might want to give Plan B a try.

I couldn't tell you why the HTC software didn't work, but as long as the phone is on and connected, you should be able to find it.

Thanks, I'm giving it a go but after my initial failure with the HTC stuff I called Vodafone, the police, and insurance, so everyone knows the phone is stolen and it should be barred and the sim deactivated. So unless they all failed to do that I don't think it would work. But it does look like a clever app, wish i'd asked sooner

 

[lunatic59]

Thanks, I'm giving it a go but after my initial failure with the HTC stuff I called Vodafone, the police, and insurance, so everyone knows the phone is stolen and it should be barred and the sim deactivated. So unless they all failed to do that I don't think it would work. But it does look like a clever app, wish i'd asked sooner

No, I guess it wouldn't work if they are taking it off the network. Sorry to hear about your loss.

 

[takeshi]

What I want to know is have I been spoiled by 24 and James Bond films and led into thinking that phones, and in particular smartphones with GPS inbuilt, especially those set up to relay their location to others, and websites, should be easy to track?

Absolutely. If you want to track your device if lost or stolen then you need to setup up software on the device to do so before you lose the device. These devices don't just broadcast their locations by default. That's a major security issue. Think about it.

Law enforcement can track a device down but they're not going to track lost devices for random people. You need to be proactive and consider finding your device to be gravy rather than expecting to find it. It's too easy to counter any tracking solutions (e.g: by pulling the battery, etc).