# Found phone - what to do **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 8, 2016, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820 "2016-06-08T12:28:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/21 "2016-06-08T19:24:58Z")
Take it to the police. The owner may have already reported it lost. ---
**Author:** ![purplehearingaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@purplehearingaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehearingaid)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/22 "2016-06-08T19:39:01Z")
Is there any way you could post note saying you found a cell but not want kind it’s ? The person may go back there looking for the phone. Did it look like it been on the ground along time ? If someone did contact you they will have to say kind of phone it’s . ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/23 "2016-06-08T19:47:27Z")
How did you get to the ICE contacts? Were there any other contacts you could see? FYI, on Android phones you can have some text on the lock screen by going into Settings-\>Security-\>Owner Info. You can put your backup contact’s phone number there and it will show up on the lock screen. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/24 "2016-06-08T20:54:21Z")
> [@Alley\_Dweller](#): > > The phone is locked, so he can’t place any outgoing calls. He said he tried calling 611 from the emergency call screen, but it didn’t connect. > > If he wants to call anyone other than 911, he needs to unlock the phone first. Oh, I see. Locked as in you need a password or a pattern of taps to unlock the screen. ---
**Author:** ![Casey1505](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dc4da7/32.png) [@Casey1505](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Casey1505)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/25 "2016-06-08T22:09:11Z")
Pretend you’re Lil Wayne. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/26 "2016-06-08T22:46:46Z")
1. Do not take to police. They have 1 billion-ty other things to do than worry about a locked cell phone. It will go into an endless queue, unless you live in Smallville. 2. Do pop the sim card and call T-mobile. Read the rep the number(s) requested off the SIM, have them find the customer, and handle the contact. If the phone is powered and left on, it should be pinging and showing up with T-mobile, just in case the customer contacts T-Mobile. 3. They may also try to call their own phone, another reason to leave it on. You are very nice to go to this much trouble. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/27 "2016-06-08T22:52:18Z")
> [@Spiderman](#): > > … I’m thinking about calling 911 & asking if they can read me the phone # that it’s coming from but really don’t like calling for non-emergencies. > > > [@Doctor\_Jackson](#): > > > > Yes, absolutely inappropriate. Not a bad idea, though. I would suggest taking it to the police and asking them to do it instead. They can work with the 911 call center to set it up at a slow time. Hmmm. I work at a 9-1-1 centre. Hardly a burning emergency, but we’d log it as a Found Property report and send a police officer around to collect the phone. Hardly the most inappropriate use of 9-1-1 any of us would see in an average day. No, we won’t read back the number to just anyone who calls. But we will do that for police and then look up the phone number in our databases to try to reunite the phone with its owner. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2016, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/28 "2016-06-09T00:53:54Z")
I popped the SIM card, but it’s a different size than the other phones that I have so I stopped at a T-Mobile store on the way home. There was only one other customer in the store so _two_ employees helped me. They read the SIM card, but wouldn’t share any specific details with me. It’s part of a family plan, so they called a few other numbers on it, eventually leaving a voicemail on one of them. They took my contact info & if/when someone calls back & _if_ they get an employee that knows anything about this, & _if_ they can find the card with my contact info, I can return the phone to someone. :smack: > [@filmore](#): > > How did you get to the ICE contacts? Were there any other contacts you could see? > > FYI, on Android phones you can have some text on the lock screen by going into Settings-\>Security-\>Owner Info. You can put your backup contact’s phone number there and it will show up on the lock screen. When you access a locked phone, you have to be able to get into “Emergency Dialer”; this will allow you to call 911 (or presumably other country’s emergency numbers also) & it also allows you to call the ICE contacts. When I tried to call 611, I was denied. My phone has “If found call \_\_\_\_” on the lock screen & I also have ICE contacts. FYI, I just played with my phone, if you have multiple #s for your emergency contact (work, home, cell, etc) it calls the first one in the list _unless_ you have chosen one as default/primary. In this case, it was calling a number that wasn’t the one I wanted it to call - the only way I could fix this was to edit the contact, add a new #, save, choose a default/primary when it asks, save, then go back in to edit/delete the (bogus) number I just added. BTW, where it was found the non-emergency # for PD is…911. I’m serious. It was found on a side trail in a large park. The park is a long U-shape with a creek running the length of the bottom & it going uphill on both sides. (It’s hardly the Grand Canyon, but the same concept of water creating a in-this-case-shallow U-shaped gorge over millenia.) There are a couple of bridges that one can cross on foot but cars can’t get down there. One could easily park in one of three different police jurisdictions/trail heads & end up where it was found, with a fourth being less than one mile away. IOW, people from three different municipalities & four different police HQ could walk less than a mile & be in the park where it was found. That doesn’t include people driving from nearby towns. I could see it being a real crap-shoot ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2016, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/29 "2016-06-13T21:50:27Z")
Good on you for trying to restore it to its owner. The owner may well have bricked it and gotten a new one by now but would surely be grateful to get the old one back (can phones be unbricked?). And while it’s too late for the owner of the phone, I too have my ICE info on the lockscreen. My old phone had an actual app that could be accessed from the lockscreen to call specific contacts and some basic medical info. Sadly, that no longer works, as the ability to have usable lockscreen widgets was removed as one of the many “improvements” in Android Lollipop :(. ---
**Author:** ![flatlined](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb9ed0/32.png) [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2016, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/30 "2016-06-13T22:58:18Z")
Just another vote for good on you for trying to find the owner. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2016, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/31 "2016-06-13T23:28:15Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#): > > Good on you for trying to restore it to its owner. The owner may well have bricked it and gotten a new one by now but would surely be grateful to get the old one back (can phones be unbricked?). > > And while it’s too late for the owner of the phone, I too have my ICE info on the lockscreen. My old phone had an actual app that could be accessed from the lockscreen to call specific contacts and some basic medical info. Sadly, that no longer works, as the ability to have usable lockscreen widgets was removed as one of the many “improvements” in Android Lollipop :(. My phone runs Lollipop 5.0.1. I just downloaded an ICE app from the play store. It shows up fine on my lock screen, no problem. It pops up as soon as I press the power button to wake up the phone from standby. ---
**Author:** ![Personal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Personal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Personal)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2016, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/32 "2016-06-13T23:29:08Z")
I found an iPhone in a bathroom stall in a Borders bookstore five or six years ago. There was no security on it, but I didn’t look through the owners apps or data or personal info or anything other than to post a Facebook message saying “My owner has left me alone in Borders. I’m scared. I will be at the front desk.” And I turned it in to the cashier as a lost item. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/33 "2016-06-14T00:27:56Z")
**Update:** The owner called the store back. I got an email from the store, asking me to bring it back to that store (near where I work) or one about 6 miles on the other side of the park, which is inconvenient to me. I took it back to the store near where I work where they said that is their recommendation that they act as an intermediary so the owner doesn’t need to meet a stranger somewhere, despite the fact it is a stranger who is trying to return their property & doesn’t have an issue doing it in a public place, say the PD station parking lot. :rolleyes: At this point, I assume she got her phone back (from pronoun usage I figured out it was a woman). Last I knew someone from the store was calling her to say they had it & she could pick it up. I asked the clerk to leave the card with my email with her phone & explicitly told him I have no interest in getting any reward but would have liked a ‘Thank You’ email. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/34 "2016-06-14T00:35:09Z")
Yay Spidey! ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820/35 "2016-06-14T02:38:10Z")
Sadly, even in this, the Daily Bugle is going to find a way to make you the villain. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/found-phone-what-to-do/756820.md?page=1)