Can I recover my phone?
April 18, 2014 12:17 PM   Subscribe

I lost my phone in November. I tried using Location History and Where’s My Droid to track it to no avail, then gave up and bought a new phone. Today, I noticed that about a month ago several selfies of a handful of guys in an electronics store had been uploaded to my Google Photos online. There is no location data associated with the photos, and from what I can tell I can't find it on Location History or Where's My Droid now.

Clearly they have access to my accounts on the phone, which poses a security issue, but I'm wondering if there's a way I can track them or find out where the photos were uploaded from.
posted by gregoryg to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
If you view the EXIF data (online viewer here) embedded in the photo, does it show any GPS data?
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:24 PM on April 18, 2014


Response by poster: Only

GPS Version ID 2.2.0.0GPS
Altitude Ref Above Sea Level
GPS Img Direction Ref Magnetic North
GPS Img Direction 32

none of which I think is useful. Google Photos doesn't list any location for it in its own details.
posted by gregoryg at 12:32 PM on April 18, 2014


can you see if they've posted the photos anywhere else using google image search or tineye?
posted by desjardins at 12:44 PM on April 18, 2014


Can we have a link to the images?
Personally I would backup the pictures in case they get deleted, then post this story to Reddit including a link to the images. The audience there is huge and somebody will recognize someone.
posted by w0mbat at 1:37 PM on April 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


Have you tried this? it should work, if it's still signed in to your google account(which it should be, if it's uploading photos to that account).
posted by emptythought at 2:06 PM on April 18, 2014


Google's Android device manager should also work, since the phone is still linked to your account.
I would find the location and report to the police. You also have the ability to lock the phone or make it ring loudly, if you can deal with a confrontation.
posted by Tobu at 3:31 PM on April 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


« Older Does a bear sh- Wait... what does he do in the...   |   SF/Fantasy books with a 'big reveal'? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.