This man knows who stole my phone, can anyone help

[yak.h'cir]

Well about 3 hours ago some lovely person let themselves into my friends house and stole amongst other things my mobile phone.

Also annoying was that I'd disabled the GPS on it due to google maps continually destroying my battery when I haven't even opened the program! This is a problem as ages ago I installed a program called cerberus on the phone. So I can't track it but I did manage to take this awesome photo!

Hansom chap I'm sure you'll agree! Anyway, I'm sure he'd be very keen to help me get my phone back if only I could let him know it was stolen. So on the off chance does anyone recognize him? We're in Sheffield and the phone was connected to a network called 'Sohail'. It's gone offline now though.

Obviously the police have all the info too. I'm hoping one of them might know him too!

 

[yak.h'cir]

He's back online and I have his new phone number plus the number of someone who has called him! Still no GPS though. Come on come on turn it on!!!!

 

[yak.h'cir]

oooo, 'audio recording started' I daren't take any more photos as I'm fairly certain it makes the shutter sound when I do...

 

[yak.h'cir]

Bah, it's all quiet.

 

[yak.h'cir]

He does look a bit european! I so hope he can be tracked down!

 

[yak.h'cir]

Looks like he has gone to bed, phone is in the dark and no noise near it. I have been able to make it record and send me videos and any texts/calls but no location yet. I've changed all my passwords and password restores so I think most of my info is safe.

I have the ability to wipe the phone memory and sd memory. Obviously I'd like to do this but it'll probably reduce my chances of him turning on the gps etc tomorrow...

 

[yak.h'cir]

Did you not have a pin/swipe pattern on it?!

Security software, but no actual security...you cant be that retarded surely?

How would having a pin code help me get the phone back? Surely that would just guarantee them completely formatting the phone themselves and guaranteeing I never get it back!

As it is my 'retarded' way has allowed me to get the thief's photograph, new phone number, a list of people he has called and texted and potential if he ever turns the gps on with the icon on the desktop I'll have his location...

But to be honest I just dont use a pin as I found it irritating having to enter it to use my phone.

 

[yak.h'cir]

Cheers everyone! Hopefully he's known to the police and I might have a tiny chance of getting it back!

 

[yak.h'cir]

I thought so, maybe the phone has to be routed. I don't see an option either way and when I ask it to track the phone it just says gps is off

 

[yak.h'cir]

I'm going to wait to see what the police come back with tomorrow before I start doing that. Hopefully he will send a text which gives him away! The sim he's using is a freeby international calling one. I can't imagine the police calling them up and forcing them to reveal the sim card owner...

 

[yak.h'cir]

I have an IP for his wifi!

172.20.10.3

Is that a local one or something that could be of use?

 

[yak.h'cir]

Can you not trust me the details to log into it?

haha, no sorry. He's turned it off anyway. If nothing comes of it with the police I'll load everything I have onto 4chan!

 

[yak.h'cir]

Time to go war-driving round Sheffield.

And look up every "sohail" in Sheffield on UK-Info to narrow down the field, it's an arabic name.

Tempting! It's a shame I'm not clever enough to rig my computer to sniff out a wireless network under that name and then I could drive the streets of Sheffield trying to pick him up!

 

[yak.h'cir]

The IP is not giving me any joy on any of the ip lookups, they think it's a local address...

 

[yak.h'cir]

Still off. I hope my fiddling hasn't somehow tipped him off. Will have to see if he reappears tomorrow!

 

[yak.h'cir]

The phone appears to be still switched off

Definitely wishing I rooted and installed the program properly so it was pretty much impossible to remove/I had the ability to turn the gps on!

Last time I accessed it the battery was pretty low so I'm hoping it's just a case of waiting for him to charge it. Hopefully he won't bother to wipe the phone. If he had a mind to do so I would think he'd have done it straight away.

I'll update if I get anything more!

The police have acknowledged the photo but I'm not sure how much priority/interest they would give in something like this...

 

[yak.h'cir]

I've still got the charger, lot of use it is now! But it's just it's the standard socket most/all? android phones seem to have these days.

Regards installing plan B now I think it might be too late as I've changed my gmail password. I could try and put it back but I seem to remember that you can't go back to an old password... But either way that would also give them access to my emails plus there would be an alert that the program had downloaded.... Something to consider though so thanks for the suggestion!

 

[yak.h'cir]

I'd just disabled it all recently. I'd been having trouble with very short battery life and after using some power monitoring software found that for some reason google maps and facebook kept using gps despite the programs not being in use directly. I was in the process of looking for other solutions but as a short term fix I just disabled the gps/location options, battery life went from ~13 hours to have about 40% remaining after a days use! Of course now I'm regretting this decision... At the time I didn't realize you had to be rooted for Cerberus to turn the gps on.

 

[yak.h'cir]

Well originally they said that as there were no witnesses/evidence there wouldn't be an investigation as such. The only way I'd get my phone back would be if he was arrested for an unrelated crime and happened to be carrying my phone. The police said everytime they arrest someone their phones get plugged into a computer that automatically downloads all calls/texts/phone data and logs it for evidence. This would pick up the phone was stolen.

Which tbh sounds fair enough, I can understand not much if anything to go on at that stage.

Once I started getting data from the phone, especially the photo I called back and they had the officer who attended call me. He asked me to email everything I had to him and he'd pass it onto the burglary unit in the morning. He confirmed by email receiving it and that someone else would be in touch today.

So far pretty good service! They were at the house about 5 minutes after we called (non emergency number!) and feels like they have been fairly honest about what we can expect to happen.

 

[yak.h'cir]

If you can find out the mac address of the router (not the IP) then you can look it up on wigle.net. If someone's logged that access point while wardriving you'll be able to get a rough location on a map.

I've searched for Sohail but there's too many results and you can only filter by address in the US.

Thanks! I've been scanning facebook as well. Not sure I can get the mac address, I'm just hoping he uses it regularly and I can get a list of numbers/text messages that might be of use to identifying him!

I'll never disable the gps on a phone again though!!