For the latest in this recurring series, we visit Practicalist, which has a tale of a stolen phone that kept uploading its cameraphone shots via ShoZu to Flickr. This isn’t quite as juicy as previous similar stories since the alleged thieves haven’t been caught, but it’s pretty entertaining nonetheless. Certainly worth a chuckle is ShoZu CTO Andy Tiller’s comment on the site that ShoZu’s contact backup feature could be of some additional help to the guy! Now, if only they supported geotagging…
Now, back to the stories where the idiots get caught because of a phone, Textually brings word of a genius who set up a drug deal with a cop via SMS. 18-year-old Elizabeth Burchfield of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, sent a text about buying some marijuana to police officer Phillip Short by mistake. Short didn’t recognize the number, so he ignored the message. However, Burchfield continued to send messages, so Short finally responded to set up a meeting where she got arrested for possession. Must have been about the easiest bust he’s ever made.
[tags]mobile, shozu, stupid criminals, stoners[/tags]
You get idiots everywhere you go, anyway just checked http://www.zyb.com for uploading contacts an calendar.
http://mobhappy.com/blog1/2006/08/30/mobile-phones-empowering-stupid-criminals-everywhere-part-ix/
cleanthcharles@gmail.com
Chris
Haha, what a stupid Oklahoma bitch!
i heard a story from marc davis ex-bekerley now of yahoo:
one of their project phones was lost in thailand or somewhere out there. it just so happens that their software logs all possible info (cell id, bt neighbours) and uploads it to the server automatically whenever a photo is taken.
so in this case, if it weren’t so damned far from california, they could have caught up with the person who 1) either stole the phone, or 2) bought stolen property.
if i recall correctly, marc and his people just really wanted to turn off the auto upload, so they wouldn’t have to see the ‘ahem’ more personal images from the poor sucker.