Some thieves may be smart enough to know that an iPhone is worth stealing, but they don’t all understand a whole lot about how an iPhone works. This was proven to Katy McCaffrey last month when her iPhone was pinched while on a cruise ship. Though normally one would consider their chances of recovering a stolen phone to be slim, it seems McCaffrey’s thief loves taking photos and — obviously unbeknownst to him — uploading them to iCloud for anyone to see.
For those of you who don’t know, iCloud offers users a feature called “Photo Stream.” When someone takes a photo with their iCloud-enabled iPhone (or iPod or iPad), it’s automatically and transparently uploaded to the cloud and can be downloaded on any other iCloud-enabled device the user owns (including their Mac). As you have already figured out by now, the phone thief has been loading up iCloud’s Photo Stream generously so far.
Nobody could blame McCaffrey for then creating a public Facebook album entitled “Stolen iPhone Adventures” in which she shares 20 photos from the thief’s collection (whose name is Nelson) and lets the world know when and where the phone was nabbed. Apparently, Nelson works on the Disney cruise line, has a pregnant girlfriend who works at the ship’s spa and loves the Mexican coastline.
The thief hasn’t yet been apprehended but, thanks to iCloud, it truly is a small world after all.
Source: Cult of Mac
