Found a phone in my garden - isolated property - shit scared

[ScarredBunny]

Name changed for this - Sorry if this seem trivial, I know people are dealing with far bigger things at the moment.

I found a phone lying on the ground, about 5 yards from my house.

We live in an isolated property about a mile away from the first road. We have not have any visitors , maintenance people for many weeks (obviously). Delivery drivers, yes, but they would not have any reason to go to this part of the garden/couldn't access it during daytime without us seeing something.
At first I assumed it belonged to one of us, but no!
Phoned the police, have a ref./case number, etc. but they're busy and will get back to us when they can.
The police said to take the phone indoors and wait for their call/visit.

I am worried that the next visit is going to be from whomever the phone belongs to.
The phone is dead as a dodo but I assume it still can be found?

What should do?

@Yesterdayforgotten, Totally explains it All!!

@ScarredBunny yes totally -thinking back trying to remember doing what,where,when etc! and no dog to speak of back then just a couple of tired old ragdoll cats(totally gorgeous), Would never be remote again without dogs-live&learn!! OK so weapon wise, a monkey wrench, lump hammer(i tried to get a taser but illegal here) secateurs..any kind of toolshed/garden regular would do-innane pieces of pipe or oddments of brick or stone from yard..plenty of options for innocuous maiming/self-defence.

@AJTommo - That must have been a little startling too! They wear that sort of thing for lamping I think. But why hide behind your stack?

The Policeman said to us that our dog was the best security system of all.

@Teddy1970 People up thread saying you need power to emit a signal, I lost my Samsung for well over a week and O2 helped me trace it.

There is no way to track a phone that is powered down. None. Nada.

The carrier - O2 in your case - will have a record of the rough location that it was last seen in service, from the signal strength records they can triangulate from their masts. This information is NOT available except to them and law enforcement.

iPhone's "Find My..." uses regular GPS locations logged by the phone itself with Apple, encrypted so only you and your permitted other people can see where it is - even Apple cannot. This info is only available to you (via your Apple account) and not even law enforcement.

Android phones I know there are similar tracking apps and security apps, but I've never worked with them and they'll have all sorts of different features and limits. One thing they'll all share is that they can't track a dead or powered down phone.

When you wrapped your phone in foil, I mean yes that doesn't work to isolate it if there's a strong signal, but even if it did it will have just fallen back to the last known GPS position logged with Apple.

@LilacTree1 - A gun would make me feel safer, yes, if I was on my own.
But with the house full, and being a little frazzled (see what happened earlier when i heard something behind the door - the dog-), probably a very vey bad idea.
What is your view on this?

@theBelgranoSisters - Chilling! but not the good kind.
So anything that you can be quite nasty, not necessarily something you have by your bed/desk. ok.

I reckon it's been dropped by a drone too

@ScarredBunny I am presuming you are not in the UK then if you would feel safer with a gun?

My grammar may be atrocious OP but so is your spelling.

I wasn't mixing things up to 'make them sound crazy'. I was expressing my astonishment that someone posting throughout the night because they were so 'shit scared' they found a 'phone outside..

Who told us they had called the Police about it and kept the 'phone wrapped in foil in an oven while waiting for them to arrive as they were so scared the owner could track it to their home..

Suddenly turned into Chuck Norris, kicking a door open armed with a knife shouting "i'm fucking coming for you".

I was suprised that's all. You have a good day too.

OP

I can see you’d need to be very sure before you had a gun!

I live alone and dream of living in a place like yours so I’d imagine I’d have to be damn sure before using one! Not that I’ve ever even tried one, even just for clay pigeons.

@SpoonBlender - Sorry this is what I understand - So there IS a chip in the phone that gives off a signal, wether the phone is dead or not and this information is not available to us averagers, right?

Re. foil and signal, I realised later that the phone being dead would still give our location as 'last location' if it died here. I didn't know it was dead.
Anyway that trick certainly didn't work on my own phone.

Agree the dog is the best security.

@justasking111 - I am in the UK. Wether I would in some situations feel safer with a gun or not is a theoretical question, it has nothing to do with it being legal or not or me being authorised to bear one or not.

@LilacTree1 - Do you remember this farmer in Norfolk killed a young lad who was trespassing? Makes you think twice about guns, really.

I hope you do find out how it came to be there one day.

@ScarredBunny we are in the UK a family of gun owners, however, would never use a gun on a human being. Have you any idea of the trouble you would be in even if you were experienced in using it.

You found a phone, just put in lights fgs. We had in our area, a flasher, sexual assaulter, never thought to pull out a gun.

@CrazyTimesAreOccurring - not asking for a pass, probably wouldn't get one from you , but how would your spelling be in your second language after the last 24 hours I've had?
Because I was scared, I should try to defend myself? How does that work? anyway I was the first to think it was a little insane to react like that.
No idea who Chuck Norris is. I bet he's interesting.

Timefor Aren't you much braver at 11 am than at 11 pm? I know I am ! Also baring in mind op doesn't seem to have slept at all last night.

@justasking111 Don't be silly, where did I say I would use a gun on a human being?

You're not responding to the correct poster OP and you seem to have left words out of your post.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and all that..

TimeForChange123 op responded to the correct poster

OP I defend the Norfolk farmer. You mean Tony Martin?

I think if you’ve never had this before, you’ve got the dog, try to just live as you were. I’m always a bit puzzled by lights, they enable burglars to see better and they could wear masks anyway.

I heard noisy gravel is off putting for burglars.

"The police have nothing to do at the moment, full stop."  @LilacTree1  really? They're very busy.

And the poster claiming to be an ex-officer.

@Sennetti you'd deduce that a dropped phone suggests it was "in hand" at the time? Really?

I've dropped a phone 3 times. Each time it was in my back pocket.

I bloody love the poster who thinks it might have been flushed down an aeroplanes toilet. Wow.

If you're talking about justasking that poster did jump the gun alittle...excuse the pun

@EthelMayFergus - Thanks. Yes much braver in daylight!

Yes I am freaked out by the phone episode, but I'm not a scaredy cat generally. When the dog was barking the other night I put the lights on and went out to try and get him, not a problem. But he was fixated on a point and wouldn't bulge, I left him to it and went back inside.

Thinking there might very well have been someone there now. Or a fox, preferably.