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Any phone savvy people out their?

[Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 525
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in Mobile Phones #1
Ok i'm going to cut a long story short.

Last Monday, some cheeky dirty thief stole broke my car window and stole my phone, that I didn't realise feel out my back.

Now I thought I put in a key lock to my phone (well android lock anyway) and didn't think they could access the phone.

Anyways I tried to log onto my facebook page and it tells me I have tried to access the account in Dusseldorf, Germany. I certainly haven't been to Germany today as a matter of fact I have never been to Germany.

Now After changing my info on facebook, I have managed to get the ip address and would like to know, how easy is it to track down the person with my phone?

Will I be able to contact the police and give them this information, will they be able to get in touch with the German police to locate the person responsible?

Thanks

Love_able

P.S. I really wasn't worried about the phone I was just pissed the broke my car window for something that would be useless over hear...thieves real are heartless people.

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    Everything GoesEverything Goes Posts: 12,972
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    #2
    There are security apps you could install like Prey. Not sure if you can do it remotely though?

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prey

    If you want to wipe out the data on your phone you could try a remote wipe:

    http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173390

    If its a Samsung this may work:

    http://www.samsungdive.com
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    pi r squaredpi r squared Posts: 4,272
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    #3
    Love_able wrote: »
    I have managed to get the ip address and would like to know, how easy is it to track down the person with my phone?

    Will I be able to contact the police and give them this information, will they be able to get in touch with the German police to locate the person responsible?
    Tracking a phone by IP address is a nigh-on impossible task, unfortunately. If it's a mobile network IP address then basically it's shared between a tonne of phones and identifying which one did a particular thing is something really only the phone operators can do - and they're rarely keen to do it! Further, I don't know if the same is true in Germany but over here it's a doddle to get a throwaway SIM card using fake details and be effectively untraceable. And finally, all of this is assuming that the person who accessed Facebook* from Germany is the same person who took it: it is reasonably likely, especially given the gap in time, that the person in Dusseldorf is just some unsuspecting schmuck who bought a phone from eBay or a "mate" or down the German market, little knowing that their "new" phone was sat in someone's car only a week ago!

    (* I don't know if the accessing of Facebook necessarily means they've broken into your phone - if the FB app runs in the background it may have just performed one of it's checks whilst in Dusseldorf, whilst the phone still remains completely locked).

    Also, importantly - I trust you've changed your Gmail account password already?
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    paulbrockpaulbrock Posts: 16,632
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    #4
    might be worth trying the Plan B app

    http://lifehacker.com/5828197/plan-b-locates-your-lost-or-stolen-android-phone-even-if-you-didnt-install-it-beforehand
    Plan B.... lets you remotely install it using the Android Market Web interface and immediately sends you the phone's coordinates after it does. You don't need to configure it, create an account, or do anything else—-its location will just show up in your Gmail.
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