How to get a stolen cellphone back

[giza]

I saw this over on a Slashdot comment. It's silly, but it seemed to work:

Someone stole my sisters phone in high school (just about a year and a half ago). I just kept sending the phone text messages like:

"This is the Cincinnati Police. This is a stolen phone."

"Cincinnati Bell Telephone Theft Tracking Services - LAST CELL TOWER CONTACTED: #28302"

"THEFT NOTICE: ALL CALLS ARE MONITORED AND RECORDED"

And so forth... The next day she got it back before her first class started. It passed through six hands all with the note: "Return this to Sadie XXXXXXX"

Yay for Social Engineering!

Comments

[flykat.livejournal.com]

i should have done that...

[firestormsix.livejournal.com]

somtimes those "scare-tactics" do work. :)

[wolffit.livejournal.com]

What's to say the phone wasn't just lost and noone ever actually read any of the messages?

I find it a lot easier to believe that a high school student would lose a cellphone than a would-be theif going through effort of returning something stolen instead of just dumping it into the trashcan. But that's just me. :P

- Keman