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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Film student Anthony van der Meer had his iPhone stolen and the thought that a stranger had access to all of his personal data really concerned him. What kind of person would steal a phone? Where do these phones end up? These were his biggest questions. To get answers, Anthony had another phone stolen from him on purpose, but this time he followed the thief using a hidden app and made a captivating documentary film about the whole process.
"Find my Phone" was possible because of a spyware app called Cerberus. Using it, van der Meer was able to remotely track and control his phone whenever it was turned on and connected to the internet. Anthony listened to the thief's calls, read his messages, took photos, and even recorded both audio and video. The filmmaker then compressed everything into a thrilling 21 minute documentary movie which highlights how easy it is to spy on someone in the digital age. The video has already been viewed by more than 1.7 millions of people.
More info: anthonyvdmeer.nl (h/t: petapixel)
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @03:14PM
My biggest surprise, when I saw the movie, was how long it took before the phone was stolen.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @03:20PM
My biggest UNsurprise was that it was stolen by a non-white, Muslim foreigner.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @04:02PM
My biggest surprise is that you came to that conclusion despite the fact that the theft was not observed and no pictures were taken until a few days after the theft when the phone came back online, making it much more likely that the person in the videos was not the thief but someone who bought it on the black market.
(Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Tuesday December 20 2016, @04:30PM
No, they saw the phone get stolen, they just didn't have the camera rolling at the time....
They saw who it was who stole it, and it was actually the man shown...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 20 2016, @07:04PM
Biggest surprise? That you are able to come to any conclusions at all, working with your lack of observation. As has already been stated, the theft was observed, but the camera was turned off at the moment the theft occurred. DERP!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @05:17AM
You might be the derp for blindly believing that.
Stolen when the camera was off? Well maybe I guess. *You* will never know for sure.
Go put on your derp hat.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Tuesday December 20 2016, @09:02PM
It certainly looked like a bunch of people were tempted to steal it though. Casing it and walking around to see if anyone was watching. My guess is they were trying to see the brand and rough value if they did steal it. When someone finally does steal it we find out the thief is very poor. The phone wasn't resold, it was used. My guess is that if a new flagship phone was used one of those first people casing the phone would have stolen it for resell.
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