Cops came to our house a couple weekends ago looking for a stolen iPad. Turns out the Apple “find my device” reported our address because someone chucked the stolen iPad in a field across the street and apple tech reported the coordinates of my wife’s phone since it was the closest apple device that phoned home detecting the (stolen) device (they have some “anonymous” reporting feature in the background, I think based on low energy blue tooth).
At best, this was inconvenient for us. The cops presumed guilt. I allowed them to search my yard but didn’t invite them into my house as we knew we were innocent of any wrongdoing. But, it definitely freaked us out.
This could be a lot worse. What if instead of calling the cops, the people who had their property stolen looked at “find my device”, found my house at the center, and showed up at my door armed and angry? Someone could easily have been seriously wounded or killed.
I sent feedback to Apple. They weren’t too receptive.
Burn your Apple devices, or at least disable location services.
The claims of privacy when in the apple “hive” seem to be just that.
My guess is that apple “honored the claim” by not providing your personal info, rather your phone’s high-precision lat long. CSPD can take it from there…
Great reminder that even though there still remain a couple of written documents that state “presumed innocent”: it’s remains up to us to remind authorities of such a construct and stand up for our own rights. Too often, they’ve discarded critical thinking capacity in favor of the all too convenient siri directive.
FWIW, I did follow up with the police department after doing some research, and explained why my house was at the center of the reported “circle” and why they shouldn’t base much at all off of that data, other than “it might be within 1 km of here.” Not sure if it will make a difference. Our main concern was they would come back with a warrant and toss our house all based on bad/misunderstood information. Luckily that didn’t come to pass, but it is easy to imagine how wrong that all could go. Police have a difficult job and I support their efforts, but they also need to understand the limitations of the “evidence” they rely on to get innocent civilians out of bed after dark on a Saturday night.
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