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Cops post 'cell-fies' to help owner find missing phone

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Some policemen in Australia decided to get creative with the concept of lost and found.

Rather than just wait for an owner to turn up, 9News reported that New South Wales police officers came up with a novel way of tracking down a woman who had lost her mobile phone.

The phone had been handed in to the police station in the city of Albury, located about 320km from Melbourne. 

Checking the device, the cops noticed it did not have a passcode lock. So then a plan was hatched.

So, the cops hijacked the woman's Facebook account and posted a picture of her handphone in a jail cell.

The pun-laden caption read: "If you're worried about the battery going flat, don't. By the time you pick it up it will be fully 'charged'. It's a great 'cell' phone."

Another picture that the cops uploaded was one of a policeman with a caption that read: "You should probably put a password on your phone.

"When you are ready to pick it up it will be at Albury police station."

Their creativity was lauded by their boss.

Albury police Inspector Anthony Moodie told The Border Mail:

"It doesn't surprise me, the creative ways which they come up with for getting property back to owners.

"There is no issue about accessing the phone, using it for legitimate purpose to track down the owner.

"Phone users should use the locking mechanisms on their phone so if someone should get a hold of it, they can’t gain access to their private lives."

Inspector Moodie said the owner of the lost phone, who lives in Melbourne, collected her phone six hours after his police officers made the Facebook posts.

 

This is not the first time someone has tracked down their lost phone by following what was posted from it.

A BuzzFeed editor in US found his lost phone in 2014 when the man who was in possession of it his phone somehow assessed his iCloud account and started posting pictures of himself with an orange tree.

Mr Matt Stopera wrote about the man whom he named Brother Orange and this was shared on Chinese microblog site Weibo.

Some of the 22 million people who read about it reposted the story online to help find the mysterious man with the orange tree.

The pair became famous with mattstopera becoming the hottest topic on Weibo.

Brother Orange was eventually found in Guangzhou.

Stopera even travelled to China and their meet up was an event in itself. The pair have became friends. 

Source: 9News, The Border Mail, BuzzFeed


Related report: Who's Brother Orange?

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