Retrieving a Stolen iPhone in Under 72 Hours

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Within 53 hours I was able to get a stolen iPhone safely into police custody. Here's a rough timeline of the steps I went took to get the phone back to the rightful owner:


Saturday, 2/4/2012 @ 8:45 AM -- iPhone was "lost" (i.e., stolen).

• Called stolen iPhone and it rang four times before going to voicemail, suggesting that it was powered on and had reception. Used the "Find iPhone" app to locate the phone using the Apple ID credentials of the stolen iPhone, but it was unable locate the phone.
• Using the "Find iPhone" app, sent lock code to stolen iPhone to ensure that it was locked and required an unlock code to access the phone.
• Using the "Find iPhone" app, sent messages with sound to the stolen iPhone stating that the phone was lost and to call ###-###-#### (my Google Voice number). No response.
• Shortly thereafter the iPhone was powered down by the "someone" who had possession of the phone.
• I had the owner of the stolen iPhone change passwords to accounts accessed by the iPhone (e.g., Gmail, Dropbox, etc).
• Setup the email account used as the Apple ID of the stolen iPhone to forward a copy of all mail from "noreply@me.com" to an account I setup at Boxcar. The reason for doing this was to have push notifications sent to my phone moments after the stolen iPhone would be powered on and receive the commands that I sent from the "Find iPhone" app.
• There's a Boxcar iOS app that I installed on the device that I was doing the tracking from.
• Opted not to report the phone as stolen with AT&T yet since I wanted to be able to continue tracking the phone. 
• Also opted not to remotely wipe the iPhone via the "Find iPhone" app for the same reason.
• The "Erase all data on iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts" option was turned off on the iPhone. This was a good thing since it prevented the stolen iPhone from being wiped by 10 failed passcode entries and becoming un-trackable. 

Sunday, 2/5/2012 @ 10:00 AM -- the iPhone was powered on by "someone" and the location of the phone was identified.

• I received a push notification from Boxcar showing that an email from noreply@me.com was received. That meant that the stolen iPhone was powered on and was now locatable.
• Used both the "Find iPhone" and "Find Friends" iPhone apps by Apple to track the location of the phone.
• Another option was logging into iCloud with the Apple ID and password associated with the stolen iPhone ... which I did.
• Location of the phone tracked to a residential address.
• Used Google maps and street view to look at the house.
• Identified the owner of the house using PropertyShark.
• Gathered information about the owner using Intelius.
• Again, sent messages with sound to the stolen iPhone stating that the phone was lost and to call ###-###-#### (my Google Voice number). No response.
• The phone was powered down by the "someone" who had possession of the phone roughly five minutes after it was powered on.
• Checked AT&T for any unauthorized calls. There were no unauthorized calls.
• A police report was submitted online to the police department where the phone was stolen. 
• The police department where the phone was currently located (different city than where the phone was stolen) would not accept a report directly since the theft occurred in a different city.

Monday, 2/6/2012 @ 10:46 AM -- the iPhone was powered on and left on.

• Using both the "Find iPhone" and "Find Friends" apps, the GPS location of the stolen iPhone was the same address as the address that was identified on Sunday.
• A police report was submitted online to the police department. The location of theft was intentionally left vague, implying that the theft occurred in the city where the phone was currently being tracked to. The police department was willing to accept the incident report.

Monday, 2/6/2012 @ 1:04 PM -- Called the records and dispatch departments of the PD from the city where the stolen iPhone was currently located.

• Gave the incident report tracking number to dispatch.
• After a lengthy conversation, dispatch agreed to send an officer to the house and that the officer would call me back if I needed to cause the stolen iPhone to make a sound.

Monday, 2/6/2012 @ 1:36 PM -- Received a call from the responding officer.

• The police officer stated that he went to the residential address.
• The officer stated that the owners of the house were at the residence.
• The police officer gained possession of the phone.
• The police officer asked me for the unlock code and some contact data that was on the phone to verify ownership.
• The officer relayed the convoluted story that the individual who had stolen the iPhone told him.
• We agreed to check the phone into the police department's chain-of-custody and the stolen iPhone will be picked up by the rightful owner soon.
• Called the police department from where the phone was stolen, stated that the iPhone was retrieved by another police department, and the case was closed.

... and that's a happy ending.

Apple has more information about locating a lost or stolen iPhone here.

Related articles

• NYPD meets FMI: Cop nabs iPhone thief in NYC (tuaw.com)
• Home invasion suspects caught with iPhone's help (tuaw.com)
• Find my iPhone/iPad2 in iCloud (phobe2phile.wordpress.com)

Sync Oracle Calendar to Google Calendar + iCal + iPhone

I've been searching for a reliable method to automate the synchronization of events from Oracle Calendar (formerly CorporateTime) to my Google Calendar, iCal on my Mac, and internal iPhone calendar on my iPhone.

Recently I learned of a promising iPhone app available at iTunes called Todo+Cal+Sync that could do most of what I was looking for with synchronizing calendars. However, I didn't want to fork over $14.99 for an application that, instead of importing Oracle Calendar events into the native iPhone calendar, added an additional calendar application on my iPhone. Synthesis AG, the developer of the Todo+Cal+Sync application, is required to do this because of limitations imposed by Apple's iPhone software development kit (SDK). In other words, Apple does not allow 3rd part applications, such as Todo+Cal+Sync, to access the internal iPhone calendar, nor sync with iCal. This is a risk/benefit that Apple needs to manage; is the benefit of restricting access to the internal iPhone calendar worth the impact it has on the development of 3rd party applications and subsequent ripple effect? Until Apple's iPhone SDK allow such access, I did not want two calendar applications and continued looking for something that would better match my needs.

After digging around and tinkering with different solutions, I worked out a method that did exactly what I wanted. To make this solution even better, it cost $0 - in other words, FREE!

Below are the steps that I came up with to make the calendar sync work for me. Steps 1-3 are also useful for those who do not necessarily have an iPhone or iTouch but want to sync their Oracle Calendar with other devices and/or calendar apps that support Google Calendar's CalDAV sync.

1. Begin by changing your password for your Oracle Calendar user account. Make it a unique password that you are not using anywhere else. In other words, your new Oracle Calendar password should not be the same password as you're using for other email accounts, online banking, eBay, PayPal, etc. This new password should also comply to any password policies that may exist for users of the Oracle Calendar system.
2. Create a "magic" URL using SyncML2iCal.com. This URL will be used in step #3. You will want your magic URL to look something like the following:

Example - Oracle Calendar supporting https on port 443

http://sync.syncml2ical.com/?serverurl=https://YOUR.ORACLE.CALENDAR.COM:443/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=syncml&user=USERNAME&pass=PASSWORD&eventsdb=./Calendar/Events?/dr(-7,30)

SECURITY WARNING - There is an increased security risk with this method. It's up to you to determine if this is a risk you are willing to accept and that it doesn't violate any policies or restrictions imposed by the organization running the Oracle Calendar service that you are using. The risks include:

• Unauthorized interception of your password from the URL as it's being transmitted to SyncML2iCal.com or from SyncML2iCal.com.
• SyncML2iCal.com itself becoming compromised and allowing an attacker to intercept your password.

In my opinion, the likelihood of the above risks happening are medium to low. You can keep this risk on the lower end by never connecting to untrusted networks or using insecure wireless, which includes wireless networks that use WEP encryption.

Additionally, you will need to determine if the impact of an unauthorized user obtaining your Oracle Calendar password would have a significant impact or not. In most instances, I would imagine the impact would be low.

This is why doing step #1 above is critical in helping minimize the impact if your password was compromised.

Anyone using an application that syncs using the SyncML functionality of Oracle Calendar should take the same precautions irregardless if he or she are using SyncML2iCal.com as a proxy to convert SynchML to iCal format.

3. Go to Google Calendar and add a new calendar by selecting Add by URL . You will use the URL you created from step #2. You may also want to change the display name and color of this new calendar on Google Calendar.
   
   Do note that Google has stated that external feeds added via the "Add by URL" method should be refreshed every 24 hours.
   

4. Download and run Calaboration from Google Code. This will allow you to add your Oracle calendar to your Mac's iCal application. Before you can add the new calendar, click on preferences within Calaboration and enable allowing read only calendars to be added. Make sure your new calendar is selected and let Calaboration do the setup work for you. Your Oracle calendar will then sync with iCal.

5. Use iTunes to sync Oracle calendar from iCal to your iPhone.

One minor annoying issue I came across was with how day events and day notes from Oracle Calendar were handled by the time they showed up in iCal. Day events and notes from Oracle Calendar showed up in iCal as being a blocked all-day event from 0000-2359. As a quick temporary solution I simply denied day events and notes within Oracle Calendar and re-synced. This temporary approach was acceptable for me since I use Google Calendar to manage my daily notes and I can look at a user's Oracle calendar if I need to know if he or she is on vacation, on-call, etc.

As for effectively managing tasks using your iPhone, see my previous article titled, Tools To Get Things Done.

Steve

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Test Lab: iPhone, Ubuntu, and XP in VMware

I recently purchased an iphone. I was totally stoked - but I realized that there weren't any Linux native tools to activate my iphone. Apparently one needs to use iTunes to activate, and iTunes is made for Mac and Windows. Ultimately, to activate my iphone, I had to borrow a laptop running XP.

Now that my iphone is activated, I'm unable to upload mp3's using my computers running any native Linux tools (or XP in VMware). Oh yeah, and in order to jailbreak, from what I've researched, one needs either a Mac or Windows.

The most success I've had is with VMWare Server running an XP Guest on my Ubuntu box.

Here's what I started out with:

• Ubuntu 7.10
• VMWare Server 1.0.4 build-56528
• iPhone (1.1.13)

Within VMware:

• XP container with all of the latest patches
• iTunes 7.6

Before doing anything, I backed up my VMX file for my VM image of XP. Then, I edited the original VMX and added:

usb.generic.skipSetConfig = "TRUE"

The most success I've had is after I do the following:

1. Cable up iPhone to USB port -- Cancel out of camera import dialog box
2. Doing a `lsusb` shows the phone there. Ok, not a step, but a confirmation of sorts.
3. Startup VMware - turn on XP guest. While it boots XP...
4. In VM, go to VM | REMOVABLE DEVICES | USB DEVICES and make sure "Apple Inc. (port 1)" is checked
5. (Warning: Windows Talk) Log into XP
6. Go to the control panel, administrative tools, and launch the services app
7. Click on the "Apple Mobile Device" service. Hmmm..no options to start | stop | restart
8. So, back in VM, go to uncheck "Apple Inc. Iphone (port 1)"
9. Now recheck "Apple Inc. Iphone (port 1)". Windows will detect the new hardware
10. Back in Windows, go to services again and click on "Apple Mobile Device" again. Restart the service.
11. Awesome - iphone detected. Windows pulls up a window asking to import photos.
12. AHHH - blue screen! haha, so typical!!!!!

So, I still haven't figured this out yet. I've gone through the steps uninstalling Quicktime, Apple Software Update, and Apple Mobile Device Support ... and then reinstalling iTunes (which installs everything). I'll continue working on this. Any comments to help figure this out will be greatly appreciated!