What if I lose my iPhone? Many readers must have read the online summary: if you have a location software such as Find my iPhone installed on your machine, or if you have opened iCloud and the person who "picked up" the phone has taken a picture of your face or location and other EXIF information, then you may find your iPhone by following the steps. But what if the person who "picks up" the phone pulls out the card and turns it off? Today, a news report in Hangzhou Metropolis Express told us a strange story: a Hangzhou girl, after her iPhone was stolen, finally found her mobile phone at 6XX of XX Building by using the ICCID code of a Taobao seller, which made her exclaim: Powerful Taobao! (Weibo: "This is a race with thieves, the girl wins": //weibo.com/1314608344/z89Xil5MI ）

However, the reader also felt a sense of fear when he found his mobile phone for the girl: relying on an ICCID number, he could "locate" Room 6XX of XX Building. If this technology is used by someone who wants to target him, is the world too dangerous? In fact, you can rest assured that this is not the "positioning" as we saw in the police and bandits film, but there is another way. You don't need to worry about the iPhone leaking your information and throwing it into the drawer.

So, how did the girl get her mobile phone back?

First, see the process introduced in the article: after the girl failed to report the case, she found her own Activated by the thief with another card, the owner of Taobao provided the ICCID number of the card; Then, through the second Taobao store, she "directly located her mobile phone" and located her mobile phone at 6XX Building. The girl took the police to the door and got her mobile phone back! (The flow is shown in the figure below)

After reading the full text, the first impression is that the second Taobao store located the location of the mobile phone by virtue of the ICCID number found by the first Taobao store. Can it really be so positioned?

First, let's take a look at the introduction of "mobile positioning" (Via Baidu Encyclopedia):

Mobile phone positioning refers to the technology or service that obtains the location information (longitude and latitude coordinates) of mobile phone or end user through specific positioning technology, and marks the location of the targeted object on the electronic map. There are two kinds of positioning technologies, one is based on GPS positioning, the other is based on the positioning of mobile operation network base stations. The GPS based positioning method uses the GPS positioning module on the mobile phone to send its position signal to the positioning background to achieve mobile phone positioning. Base station positioning is to determine the location of the mobile phone by using the measured distance between the base station and the mobile phone. The latter does not require the mobile phone to have GPS positioning capability, but the accuracy largely depends on the distribution of base stations and the size of coverage, and sometimes the error may exceed one kilometer. The former has high positioning accuracy.

So, which of the two positioning methods does "ICCID" use? From《 》In this article, we know that GPS positioning is based on the GPS receiver chip inside the mobile phone. This chip outputs coordinate values while receiving and processing GPS signals, but cannot locate when the mobile phone is turned off. So the girl should not use GPS technology to retrieve her mobile phone.

Could it be the base station positioning? The principle of base station positioning is that the wireless signal of the mobile phone is transmitted through the base station, and each base station has a certain coverage. Therefore, the location of the mobile phone can be roughly determined by querying the base station through which the mobile signal is transmitted. However, as mentioned above, the error of this method sometimes exceeds 1 km. Therefore, it is unlikely to be a base station location. Our conclusion is further proved from the following description of positioning accuracy:

The probability of positioning accuracy within 50 meters launched by the FCC of the United States is 67%, and the probability of positioning accuracy within 150 meters is 90%. On the one hand, the positioning accuracy is related to the positioning technology used, and also depends on the external environment providing services, including the radio propagation environment, the density and geographical location of the base station, and the positioning equipment.

Did Taobao invent the third positioning technology? No！ If you really want to be like this, why do you open Taobao? Wouldn't it be better to be Sherlock Holmes?

Look carefully at the article. The second Taobao store provides "Xiaoshan repair address". Can we start with "repair shop"?

Before following this clue, the minicomputer first found Apple's after-sales customer service phone number: 400-627-2273. Xiaoji said that its iPhone was lost, and asked if the other party could help to check whether it was sent to the repair shop to unlock the machine. After the other party asked for the IMEI number, the other party reported the model and color of the "lost" mobile phone of the small phone, but regrettably told the small phone that the after-sales service of the knowledge software here recommended that the small phone report the case first, and then gave the small phone a phone number of the nearby authorized repair shop, told the small phone to call the repair shop to inquire, and suggested that it would be more convenient to "let the police come forward".

Since the authorized repair shop can check, does this girl's mobile phone come back like this? On Apple's official website, the Xiaoji found the address of an Apple authorized repair shop in Hangzhou, and an address on the second page, "No. XXXX, Xiaoshao Road, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou", attracted the attention of the Xiaoji. This address is exactly the same as the information disclosed in the article

The first reaction of Xiaoji was to call and confirm. However, before making a phone call, Xiaoji wanted to do some homework, so it started from Taobao store:

First query "ICCID positioning" to see which company provides ICCID positioning services, and the results

No result? Then look at "ICCID iPhone", which is sorted from high to low sales:

Xiaobian selected the one with the highest sales volume. The owner said that "as of December 1, 2012, 133 iPhones had been recovered from all groups", and there was a prompt marked "Important":

When checking ICCID for everyone, the shop owner will also help you pay attention to whether there are maintenance records. Because if there is a repair record, the store can help find the repair address. Once you have this address, your iPhone will have a major clue! The chance of recovery is greatly improved! Once you find this address, you should immediately notify the police to intercept the aircraft together. If the machine is still at the after-sales point, it can be taken back directly. If it has been taken away, you can check the information of the replacement person and finally take it back!

And detailed experience sharing of netizens to find the machine:

Xiaoji selected several of them and found that they basically retrieved their mobile phones from the mobile phone repair shop: some had just been sent to the repair shop for processing, and some had been taken away by "repairers", while the repair shop chose to appease people and take the initiative to privately compensate the owner for a new mobile phone, which is consistent with the information reported.

So far the truth has come out: In fact, the so-called "positioning" is not directly related to ICCID 。 Taobao sellers provide the service of "Inquiring the activation number ICCID for the last time through IMEI". After finding the ICCID, you can further inquire the mobile phone number, and learn about the mobile phone clues through the real name account opening information filed at the operator's office. But the most important thing is that Taobao sellers "pass the" authorized receipt repair shop "by the way Search for maintenance records: According to the owner of Taobao, if a thief wants to sell, he must clean up the original system. 95% of his inquiries have been flushed. However, the key to getting the phone back is that the owner of Taobao can find the maintenance records through some way.

As for whether the authorized repair shop can help the owner to find out whether to send the repair information, the small machine has not harassed the authorized repair shop. Considering that these repair shops earn risk money, the mobile phones sent may be stolen. Once the owner comes to the door, he may have to pay for his own money, and then harass them to ask about this situation, No one can recruit after changing (I also hope everyone will not harass these authorized stores).

Finally, answer the two questions asked by friends on Weibo:

Q: Can you still find a useless sim card by swiping it?

A: From the above analysis, it can be seen that whether you can take back the mobile phone is not too much related to what kind of SIM card you use to reactivate the machine. The key is that if the mobile phone is sent to an authorized maintenance point for maintenance locally, and you can query the maintenance record of the machine through a certain way, plus the evidence in hand, taking advantage of the time difference between sending the phone for maintenance and taking back the machine, You can have a chance to get the machine back

Q: Did I lose my mobile phone and go to an authorized repair shop to wait for it?

A: Cough 20 yuan is a reassuring message, and let professional people do professional things. They earn hard money, which is really not expensive In addition, when I look down the comments, I will find that someone has taken several pictures to thank the shopkeeper after finding their mobile phone. What do you think?

Finally, I ended with a private letter from a netizen who knows the inside story and Xiaoji. He said, "There are many ways..." Any phone number, email, address, IP, IM number, photo background, etc. may be exposed instantly. "We used to say, Nobody knows you are a dog on the Internet In fact, many times, we expose a lot of information unintentionally, and the excavation of these unnoticed information will lead to the "magic" stories written by journalists.

PS: Disdain the reporters who mislead the readers just for the sake of good stories.

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