I live along a highway, or at least what passes for one in this relatively rural area I live in. And a week or so ago, I was walkin in the front yard to check out the damage the snow plows had done to my yard along the edge of the road, and what do I find, but an IPhone.
It was pretty dirty, and had clearly been there for at least a few weeks. There had been 2" of snow within the last few days prior, so it had been buried in some snow. I assumed it was toast. But on a whim, I bought a generic charger at Radio Shack & whatdya know, it powered up. Of course the service to it has been turned off by whomever lost it. I tossed my sim chip from my crappy phone into it, and it does function.
So I'll bet you can guess the questions. While I'm basically an honest person, and would gladly return it to it's rightful owner, I also don't feel compelled to enter into some Grail-like quest to find this person.
Is there a SIMPLE way to track down the owner with some sort of ID in the phone? I'm not inclined to just start asking everyone I see & then have to fend off all the "yeah... sure, that's my phone... yeah, that's the ticket" I'll no doubt encounter. Is there some secret (not so secret?) ID number in/on it that I can just give to AT&T? Someone told me that they are insured when bought new & whoever lost it probably already got a new one... that seems too easy to exploit to be true??
On the other hand, if I just decide to "gift" it to my wife under the old 'finders keepers' rule (I get/make maybe 2 calls a month on my own crappy phone, so I have no real use for it myself), would I be putting her in any jeopardy?? I mean is it traceable in some fashion once the sim chip is swapped out? Not to get all cloak & dagger, but if it belonged to some less than savory individual, I wouldn't be happy to have her harassed.
As you can no doubt figure out, I'm not all that cell phone savvy, so any insights for true gurus would be great. Thanks.
It was pretty dirty, and had clearly been there for at least a few weeks. There had been 2" of snow within the last few days prior, so it had been buried in some snow. I assumed it was toast. But on a whim, I bought a generic charger at Radio Shack & whatdya know, it powered up. Of course the service to it has been turned off by whomever lost it. I tossed my sim chip from my crappy phone into it, and it does function.
So I'll bet you can guess the questions. While I'm basically an honest person, and would gladly return it to it's rightful owner, I also don't feel compelled to enter into some Grail-like quest to find this person.
Is there a SIMPLE way to track down the owner with some sort of ID in the phone? I'm not inclined to just start asking everyone I see & then have to fend off all the "yeah... sure, that's my phone... yeah, that's the ticket" I'll no doubt encounter. Is there some secret (not so secret?) ID number in/on it that I can just give to AT&T? Someone told me that they are insured when bought new & whoever lost it probably already got a new one... that seems too easy to exploit to be true??
On the other hand, if I just decide to "gift" it to my wife under the old 'finders keepers' rule (I get/make maybe 2 calls a month on my own crappy phone, so I have no real use for it myself), would I be putting her in any jeopardy?? I mean is it traceable in some fashion once the sim chip is swapped out? Not to get all cloak & dagger, but if it belonged to some less than savory individual, I wouldn't be happy to have her harassed.
As you can no doubt figure out, I'm not all that cell phone savvy, so any insights for true gurus would be great. Thanks.