Terrible Find My iPhone Glitch!

appleguy123

appleguy123

macrumors 604
I use Find my iPhone to follow my dad on his travels, and I was using it when it randomly switched to another person's location. It showed exactly where he was for a second, and then it switched to no location available with just an overhead view of where he was located.
I've got a screenshot if you want it, but I feel it might be an invasion of privacy for the person involved.
 
Im sorry but I call BS on this. You have to register your devices first with your mobile me account and then your devices have to be set to allow for find my iPhone. Unless two phones magically have the same UDID I don't see this happening.
 
chrono1081 said:
Im sorry but I call BS on this. You have to register your devices first with your mobile me account and then your devices have to be set to allow for find my iPhone. Unless two phones magically have the same UDID I don't see this happening.
Click to expand...

I can show you the screenshots if you want.
I don't really see what my incentive to lie would be. I'm not driving ad revenue from my thread. :D
 
appleguy123 said:
I can show you the screenshots if you want.
I don't really see what my incentive to lie would be. I'm not driving ad revenue from my thread. :D
Click to expand...

I should have reworded. I'm not saying your lying I meant to say that what you saw is probably a glitch not actually someone elses cell phone.
 
You can file a bug report at apple.com/feedback.

Pick the product, and one of the drop downs should allow you to change it to bug report.
 
This could be serious and I'm really interested to know more. Could you post the screenshots but perhaps blur out the other persons name? Thanks.

This definitely needs to be reported to Apple.
 
chrono1081 said:
I should have reworded. I'm not saying your lying I meant to say that what you saw is probably a glitch not actually someone elses cell phone.
Click to expand...

Whether the location was accurate or not if he saw someone else's name and number that's still a pretty big security and privacy hole. Maybe if he had tried he could have wiped out that guys phone.*

I remember buying a used phone and restoring my own backup but pandora was still signed in to the previous owners acct. Could be an issue with the pandora app but stuff like this does happen.
 
Text the person and tell them what happened. Maybe they will contact apple and get something resolved. Or sue the crap out of them.
 
calvy said:
Text the person and tell them what happened. Maybe they will contact apple and get something resolved. Or sue the crap out of them.
Click to expand...

I don't have the phone number, only their name and location. Just to be clear, it doesn't happen every time, only happened once.
I'll get those screen shots up ASAP.
 
This is my find my iPhone screen. I've switched them both to satellite to further secure the victim's and my own privacy.
6e8b4199.png

This is the one it switched too. I only had adobe ideas to edit the photo, so it's rotated.
0d8b4eff.png
 
Glitch

I had the same thing happen with my wife's phone. It switched to following another phone. It happened twice, 3 days apart, switching to the same person and location each time. My wife says that she had turned off wifi on her phone each time, about the time that it switched to following someone else. I spoke to my wife at work on her work phone and confirmed that she was there, so it wasn't a case of her lying about her whereabouts. Very strange! This glitch could cause some serious relationship problems if it is happening to others.:(
 
appleguy123 said:
I use Find my iPhone to follow my dad on his travels, and I was using it when it randomly switched to another person's location. It showed exactly where he was for a second, and then it switched to no location available with just an overhead view of where he was located.
I've got a screenshot if you want it, but I feel it might be an invasion of privacy for the person involved.
Click to expand...

So following your dad isn't an invasion of privacy? Interesting...
 
Interstella5555 said:
So following your dad isn't an invasion of privacy? Interesting...
Click to expand...

I guess he gave her permission to do so. My GF and I do the same with our respective travels. It comes in handy when you call and ask for info/directions/weather reports. And if she doesn't want to be tracked she can easily disable it for a while.

As for the glitch: well there are millions of tracking requests per day and if the server transmitts only one digit of the phones ID wrong then you end up with someone elses phone info until the next request is sent. Not too surprising that that happens once in a while. Since you can't use that to target a specific person at a specific time it's rather harmless IMHO.
 
Your first picture shows 8:05 am with 71% battery. And the picture with the said mysterious stranger's phone and location was taken 20 minutes before at 7:45 am with your battery at 98%?

That makes no sense... sorry your story has too many loopholes. If you claim to have taken one of them on a different day at a different time, then who is to say you simply didnt just log into another Apple ID?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Back
Top