Dire warning to Aussies after woman tracks down missing AirPods: 'Very dangerous'
The 30-year-old says she confronted the man who stole her earphones, but authorities have warned against following in her footsteps.
An Aussie woman's dramatic chase to find her AirPods after they disappeared from her bag has sparked a confronting warning from authorities and a technology expert. Alexandra Parmenter has told Yahoo News Australia about how she managed to track down her earphones to a stranger's house by using the Find My app on her iPhone.
Victoria Police have urged Aussies not to follow Parmenter's example after the 30-year-old realised her headphones were missing while shopping in a charity shop in Hawthorne in the Melbourne’s east, which she points out “is one of the richest areas of the city”. She tracked them until she found the home of the person who she claimed took them.
“We would always recommend calling Triple 0 in these instances and not taking matters into your own hands,” a spokesperson told Yahoo News.
But Parmenter said she was prompted to act because the police were "quite unhelpful" when her Prada wallet was stolen from her car earlier this year. She said she opened her Find My app and could "see them moving".
“I assumed that the person was walking so I went down the road chasing where these AirPods were," she said.
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Parmenter said she kept “pinging” them for about 20 minutes, until she arrived where they were — at a line of six townhouses.
“I could tell that the AirPods were there so I rang all of the doorbells for probably five to 10 minutes straight,” she said, admitting she caused a bit of a scene.
“People were walking down the street and were asking exactly what I was doing, because I obviously looked a little bit stressed, pinging my phone, and I looked a bit confused.
“I said that someone had stolen my AirPods and there ended up being a little bit of a crowd around me. I think by ringing all of the doorbells and the person realising that I wasn't going to give up and that it would embarrass them in front of their neighbours was the thing that got my AirPods back.”
A short time later a man walked out of one of the flats with the stolen goods. “He said, ‘Here they are and they won’t stop making this noise’,” Parmenter said.
“But then when he handed them back to me they were incredibly damaged. And I said: ‘They’re damaged’, and he said: ‘Oh yeah, I found them like that’, which I do not think was the case.”
By “damaged”, the 30-year-old explained that the AirPods have “what looks like bite marks on them”, but miraculously they’re ok. “Even though they have bite marks, they still work, still charge (although the case doesn’t close properly) and I use them every day,” she said. “I’m still yet to buy another pair!”
Aussies urged not to take on thieves
Technology expert and founder of Ready Tech Go Lisa Du said unfortunately, there is an increasing trend of people using the Find My app to track down goods that are missing or stolen despite the potential risks.
"I have heard of more people doing this, but it could be very dangerous," Du said. "You should always be wary when approaching strangers and putting yourself in a situation like this.
"People have this new tool in their hands and can find their missing items and want to act on the information straight away, but it's not always a good idea.
"If it were me I would not be going to someone's home, or I would at least bring a friend with me. Calling the police with the location information would definitely be the better approach, but I don't know if they would really even take on a matter like this."
Husband, friends shocked by woman's exploits
It wasn’t until Parmenter got home that she realised how dangerous her brave exploits could have been.
“When I told my husband and my friends, they told me to never do that again,” she said. “But I just figured that I would catch the person walking and ask for them back. I know it seems dangerous to go about finding your stuff yourself, however this was on a main road in Hawthorn.
“It’s not something I would do later on in the day or at night, and not something that I would advise anyone to do. However, I just wanted my stuff back and I could see where they were.”
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