Soooo apparently this guys phone was stolen and his find my phone pinged to my house. So two cops come to my door. I obvs don’t have it but offered to help etc. I checked my front and bakc yards in case someone chucked it. Then a few mins later the guys watch pings to the house next door instead, which is absolutely wrong as well. The guy was very nice and showed me tthe tracker on his watch, it had my exact address as location. Has this happened to anyone else?? Wtf
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apple maps and google maps are both so inaccurate I live in NYC and it takes 5 mins for it to show me I’m going in the right direction. I’ll be heading towards 5th Ave, it shows me heading towards 6th Ave. even when I turn wifi and bluetooth on it still does the same sort of thing.
This happens to a couple in a Super Tech Support episode of Reply All I listened to years ago. I don’t remember why anymore, but this is the one:
I vaguely remember. It has to due with the couple living in an area where there are very few residents, I think they are pretty much the only ones there. Due to hat and how the triangulation works their address gets pinged as the location for Fond My services.
Find my thought I was on the opposite side of town once. 7 miles off probably lol
You probably were across town you just didn’t realize it yet. Find my can never be wrong. Right?
/s
“I obvs don’t have it…”
Oh okay since you said so.
I know there’s a scam that goes around where the phone the person is looking for will actually be on them (so Find My says it’s “at your house”), they just want to case the house for valuables for a break in later. I wouldn’t trust it at all.
And they will bring cops with them…
Could easily be fake cops.
Dressed up cops
Were they wearing ascots?
No more home alone for this guy
Are they delivering St Anky beer?
Holy shit
Pretty sure that the tech is designed to use the location of the last phone that saw it, therefore it would falsely lead to your house until another phone sees it and then a third would let it actually triangulate.
Not exactly how it works but close enough. As soon as any device with an internet connection that is part of the FindMy network pings any other device that’s part of the network, it’ll upload the current location of itself and the identifier of the device it pinged. It’s the location of the last ping, not the current location of the last device that pinged it.
Hmm I feel like that is the point I was trying to make even if I didn’t say it precisely that way, thank you though.
Pretty sure you said it the same way but used different words.
Police in UK won’t investigate this because of the inaccuracy. Where are you?
Someone robbed a small case from my car and I had an AirTag in it, waited until the signal stopped moving and called the police on that house, arrest and got my case back
Find my never has the address 100% right when I leave stuff at work (sometimes I leave my keys/airpods at my desk while I run downstairs for lunch of just pick up a snack). It also sometimes takes a while to update. In this case it could’ve been the person who has it stopped near your house before turning it off. Location pinged off your Apple device, shows the guy it was last at your address.
Simple solution: When the strangers (or cops) say that Find My shows the phone is inside the house, just ask them for their phone number and call it. If no phone is heard ringing in the house, then buh-bye.
If his wifi is turned off (even when there’s no wifi connected) it can really throw off the location, I had my wifi turned off the other day at work (there’s no staff wifi and I always use my data but have wifi turned on despite it not being connected so I don’t have to turn it on when I get home) and when booking an Uber home it initially put my location at a 10 minute walk away from where I was, then after I’d booked without noticing it put my location at the right place and I had to cancel it because it was too far away to move the pickup location
iphone gps location accuracy is notoriously wrong sometimes. this is why location based ‘shortcuts’ trigger dont work.
Same thing happened to me few weeks ago. Two guys knocked on my door saying his find my ping my house. So I let him check him the house kitchen and backyard. It wasn’t there obviously! Then his ping shows next door so he left.
This hasn’t happened to me but I’ve seen posts like this a few times over the years. Haven’t seen one in awhile, I had hoped whatever the issue is had been resolved.
Okay first of all, I’m not a lawyer but I would not voluntarily allow my property to be searched.
Secondly, this sounds like a scam. I’d call the local PD and ask if they have any record of sending officers to my house. I’d suspect they’ll tell you no, and the “cops” at your door weren’t cops. They were dressed up to case your house
Happened to me. Lady came to my office looking for her son’s phone. Her find me showing our address. I nicely told her never seen it, she nicely said thank you and left.