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iPod I found someone's iPod on the street. Now what?

P

PSUstoekl

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I found a first-gen black 4gb nano on the street, in its sleeve, in near-mint condition. I'd like to get it back to its rightful owner (I have enough apple goodies as it is), but how would I go about doing it?

Thanks
 
Contact Apple with the serial number, maybe... Does it have anyone in the list of contacts you could... err... contact?
 
assuming it doesn't have anything engraved on the back right?

I say you post on craigs list if you are really motivated and post the location you found it and the day, but leave aspects blank such as the capacity, color and the sleve(make and model).
 
Check for notes and contacts first.
Then check the photos and see if you recognize anyone.
You could also connect it to your computer, and click 'get info' (in iTunes) on any song that they may have. If it is from iTunes it will have their e-mail address there.
 
interestingly, this thing is packed with three types of music: disney, christian and classical. All of it is pirated (tracks have notes like Spaceman Spiff Torrentz)... which creates an interesting conundrum morally, christian yet steals? No photos, no contacts, no purchased music...
 
You could post in craigslist or in your local paper if they have that type of section, with the expectation that the person can identify what music is on the ipod--you might get a lot of fake calls.

Or just call AppleCare and tell them and they can identify the person by SN--possibly--and contact him/her on your behalf.
 
Or just call AppleCare and tell them and they can identify the person by SN--possibly--and contact him/her on your behalf.

That's what I was planning on... how's it done, can anyone give a link? I didn't see anything like that on the applecare website.
 
Just call 1800-APL-CARE

I guess you when the automated system asks what you want say ipod....If you explain the situation they'll get you where you need to be..you'll probably have to be escalated to another department.
 
My father found someone's blue 4GB mini sometime last year whilst out walking.

We:

1. Looked through the email contacts for a possible email address (there were none).

2. Went through the music looking for iTS purchases to see if we could get an email address there (there were none).

3. Handed it into the police, they sealed it, took his details and 8 weeks after we found it the iPod was returned to my father with the details of transfer so it's now ours free and clear.

It works a treat too - gee they're sturdy little buggers.

So yeah, take it to the cops and get them to record all the details - you may have to wait a while but if it's not claimed you have full legal rights to it.
 
I ran into the opposite problem. My son arranged via Craigslist to buy an iPod mini.

We met the guy, and bought it fairly cheaply. When we got it home, I noticed that the serial number had been scratched off the back.

Well, that has the hallmark of stolen property. Since you can see the serial number in the menu, I looked it up on an online stolen iPod directory, and called the police to see if anyone had reported one with that serial number stolen. Both came up clean. (Of course, it could just mean that the person didn't write down their serial number.) Since iPods are so common, and so commonly stolen, there was no reasonable way to determine who it would have belonged to, so we kept it. (In a city of 2 million, there were literally hundreds of silver iPod minis that had been stolen in the previous few months. With no way to match this one with one that had positively been stolen, it could very well have been a legitimate sale...)
 
PSUstoekl said:
interestingly, this thing is packed with three types of music: disney, christian and classical. All of it is pirated (tracks have notes like Spaceman Spiff Torrentz)... which creates an interesting conundrum morally, christian yet steals? No photos, no contacts, no purchased music...
Click to expand...

OK I have solved the problem, your description was just the clue I needed to figure out who lost their iPod...
 

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Chundles said:
2. Went through the music looking for iTS purchases to see if we could get an email address there (there were none).
Click to expand...

I was going to suggest this too. I remember a while back Janey found an iPod and was able to return it to the owner by doing this.
 
I hope one of you guys finds my iPod if I ever lose it...

I purchase from the iTMS, so it should be easy to find me. 🙂
 
PSUstoekl said:
interestingly, this thing is packed with three types of music: disney, christian and classical. All of it is pirated (tracks have notes like Spaceman Spiff Torrentz)... which creates an interesting conundrum morally, christian yet steals? No photos, no contacts, no purchased music...
Click to expand...


Hahahahhhh... 😀

I think the idea of looking up purchased music's email address is brilliant though...but I guess it won't work in this case.
 
PSUstoekl said:
interestingly, this thing is packed with three types of music: disney, christian and classical. All of it is pirated (tracks have notes like Spaceman Spiff Torrentz)... which creates an interesting conundrum morally, christian yet steals? No photos, no contacts, no purchased music...
Click to expand...

Could you explain to this new iPod user how you could tell that these were pirated? (I am completely ignorant about how to steal songs and so far have only copied my legal CDs - although I have a list of songs I want to buy). I'd like to be able to accurately recognize pirated songs on people's iPods and computers.
 
Howard Brazee said:
Could you explain to this new iPod user how you could tell that these were pirated? (I am completely ignorant about how to steal songs and so far have only copied my legal CDs - although I have a list of songs I want to buy). I'd like to be able to accurately recognize pirated songs on people's iPods and computers.
Click to expand...

Spaceman Spiff Torrentz is a music sharing website, so that name being in the song's comments means the song was from there. To look at a songs comments, just scroll to the right in iTunes and you should see a comments column. As for recognising pirated songs on an iPod, i think the only way to do that would be to plug the iPod into your computer (but do not sync), and check the iPod's contents in iTunes.
 
Chundles said:
My father found someone's blue 4GB mini sometime last year whilst out walking.

We:

3. Handed it into the police, they sealed it, took his details and 8 weeks after we found it the iPod was returned to my father with the details of transfer so it's now ours free and clear.

It works a treat too - gee they're sturdy little buggers.

So yeah, take it to the cops and get them to record all the details - you may have to wait a while but if it's not claimed you have full legal rights to it.
Click to expand...
Maybe in Australia my friend, but over here in the good old USA you certainly do not have a legal right to it. The iPod, depending on the size of the agency you are dealing with will most likely sit in an evidence locker for a long time and then be donated by the police to needy children. My old agency used to do that very frequently with all the stolen bikes we used to recover either from an arrest or by way of nice citizens who brought them in as lost property.
Nevertheless, not having a legal right to it does not preclude the Chundles' idea from working. But, it would be based off your asking the police if this could be an option, which they will likely say no simply to cover their *ss. But agian, the size of the agency matters. If you are in small town with 50 cops ro something and they tend to be decent set of officers than maybe, but if it is a large agency like mine was, then the answer is more likely a sorry sir, I just cannot do that. Again, I say craigslist.
 
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