Hi everyone,
I’ve had something really strange happen over the past few days. Multiple people have come to my house saying they lost their headphones, and that the location is showing my house. They claim they were at the nearby park when they lost them, but when I ask to see their phone, it literally shows my address as the location.
I have no idea what kind of sick joke or weird situation this is. I always tell them to call the police if they really think something is here and let them do a proper search. But instead, they just leave and come back later with someone else—like an older sibling or friend—saying the same thing.
Has anyone else experienced this? It’s making me really uncomfortable. I don’t have their headphones. There’s nothing in my house. I’m starting to worry this could be something more serious.
I also hasn’t left the house in like 2 weeks and I never go to the park. And because there is a nearby park by my house they always say they lost them their like??? How do I stop this because it’s making my parent and my siblings uncomfortable. And one time it was an Indian guy and he wouldn’t leave the house he was just going around and knocking on neighbours doors and pointing at my house like??
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You should report this to the non emergency line because even if it is nothing it’s better to be safe than sorry
Tell your sibling to return the headphones.
Sounds like a scam, but I’m not sure exactly what it is.
Multiple people? You’re definitely being harassed by someone.
“I’ve lost my headphones” is undercover police code for “I want to buy drugs”
There was a similar thing in san francisco area I think due to a default location, could it be something similar?
This sounds like a scam to try a home invasion or something. I’d deny access and report it to local law enforcement.
If they did I’d tell them to call the cops because they can suck this duck
This sounds like a scam someone’s pulling and they’re using your address. Idk what the scam could possibly be tho, very weird. Are they asking for apple head phones? Maybe give apple support a call then
Wouldn’t know. Don’t open the door
Install a ring door bell system. Tell your siblings not to open the door without checking the ring app.
Okay – very unlikely, but have you had a look around your own property, outside? Maybe someone picked these headphones up at the park and flung them in your yard as they walked past?
Honestly, I don’t quite understand if this is one person coming back several times with different people as support, or just random, unrelated people… all claiming they left their headphones in the park and they now seem to be at your house. Can you clarify?
we only had this happen sort of to us one time. but our neighbor really had picked up the wrong headphones at the gym. a dude was looking in our car windows, in our house, all around the fence. the cops eventually came and our neighbor realized what happened. easily sorted.
but multiple times definitely seems sus. do your parents or siblings go to the park?
sounds like you are being targeting for a robbery. I recalling hearing about this same scenerio years ago (like 2017). Stranger does this hoping to be invited into home so they scope out the place & possibly learn more about you. Definitely worth reporting.
Airtags arent perfect, and it’s the same technology tracking the airbuds usually. And its not perfect. Its actually resulted in people being murdered because someone thought his property was at a house that it was not at, because airtag told him so.
People assume its accurate, but its not, it could be easily at your neighbors house, or 3 blocks over, and it says its your house.
I’m not telling you this to worry you, but to inform you so you can inform these people, that just because it says its there doesn’t mean its actually there.
Get security cameras, and keep up with your “bring the police and you can come look” offer.
They’re casing your house. Please tell siblings NOT to open the door for anyone they don’t know.
I don’t think this is a scam necessarily, people think these location markers are exact when they really aren’t. it’s very common for it to show a phone or headphones at a specific location when they aren’t actually there. There was an article about what sounds like a similar situation a few years ago: https://gizmodo.com/iphone-find-my-apple-maps-mistake-houston-house-1850312915
I would definitely report that to the non-emergency line. That sounds like a scam but I don’t know to what end.
Write to apple, might be a software glitch
Even better, why ask then to call the police when you can pull your phone out on the spot and be like “wow this is the third time, I always call the cops when this happens and they get it sorted” and see how fast they flee
If this is a new type of scam…and it definitely sounds like one even if I don’t understand the mechanics behind it…I wanna know about it now.
I’d call the police. Let them talk to them.
Maybe the criminals are using your WiFi and that’s why it’s showing they were at your house. I would monitor my WiFi to see what devices have been connecting and ban any you don’t recognise and also change your password.
Nope, but we regularly have people drive up our long driveway because their GPS told them it’s the road to such-and-such town. It’s just our driveway, has never been a road, and dead-ends at our house. And yet, every year, we get five or six people at least… sometimes big trucks, which have a heck of a time trying to turn around when they realize they’ve gone wrong. People put far too much trust in the accuracy of technology.
This actually happened to me. I talked to them outside and they walked up and down the street. I asked them when they last had them and it turned out it was the evening before. They had been out and Ubered home. A neighbor is an Uber driver unbeknownst to me, but his car was parked in front of my house. Turns out they had left them in his car and he hadn’t found them yet since they were his last ride. His wife told me it happens all of the time.
There is a feature on Find My that literally shows when you’re zero feet from them. If the phone says zero feet… they’re in his pocket.
This comes up on the r/scams subreddit fairly often but I don’t remember what advice they gave. If you search over there, you’ll bring up a bunch of posts just like yours.
I’ve had a few friends who were on the other end of your situation, one in particular they genuinely lost their phone and tracked it to a neighbors house. They talked to the neighbors, to no avail as they were like “no we dont have it fuck off”. Thought for like 2 months that the neighbor stole the phone. Found it under some shit that was being moved a little after that.
Sometimes location software bugs out and leads to weird occurrences. Not sure if thats your case, and I dont wanna give false security.. but it could be as simple as a software glitch.
No headphones, but I had a teenager come by and say his phone stolen at the gym was at my house. I told him and I don’t have it and I don’t even go to the gym. He came back with his mom about 1/2 hr later.
I’ve seen videos on YouTube about a guys address kept coming up as where lost iPad was. Def report it. It might be a apple issue again. Look it up I’ve seen videos maybe you can get some info from YouTube. It messed that guys life up until it got fixed. Strangers kept accusing him of stealing their things.
If its making you uneasy, its worth reporting to the non-emergency line. Better safe than sorry!
But to maybe help you not worry toooo much, my mom used to have my location and one time in the middle of the night it reported my phone in the middle of the local river. She rushed into my room super scared just to find me awake and sort of confused.
Ramped up paranoia here but they could be checking to see when you’re home or not. I’d tell them to hold on, then call police to send someone out, so the cops do a report and get their names, ID etc. Better safe than sorry?
Yes, I tell them to come back with the police.
Some GPS services are not accurate. Your home could be at the center of a cell. So if object is anywhere in the cell, your address shows up.
A related post from r/scams that you might find helpful.
I wonder if your address ends in .00 in some coordinate system, like 21.00 north 47.00 west, and those headphones’ data is only good to one degree, so 21N 47W is showing as 21.00 47.00 . Headphones are in fact somewhere in your city, but not right at your house.
I once had somebody come to my house demanding their iPhone back. I had no idea what it was about back then. Now I have some idea
My girlfriend lost her earbuds and she tracked them to a house. We didn’t talk to the people.
A month later we found them in my girlfriends car
This happened to my family a few years ago. Strange woman came to the door with the same story.
Long story short- our neighbor had the phone. So you can’t 100% trust those addresses.
Turned out that the person at the door was an out of town visiting nurse. Our neighbor worked at the same hospital, and found the phone in the restroom at the end of the day.
She was going to turn it into lost and found in the morning, so left it in her car. In the garage, not 15 feet from our property line.
This might be a scam, or it could be a geo-IP issue if it’s always different people.
https://theweek.com/articles/624040/how-internet-mapping-glitch-turned-kansas-farm-into-digital-hell
Would let the police know & get my gun ready
There was a video I saw on YouTube or tiktok where some guy had tons of people saying the find my kept directing people to his house.
Do you know for definite your siblings haven’t picked them up?
I think these people are little bit simple.
I always assume that any kind of location detection or gps is only a general guide to within a few house numbers or so.
Sometimes they take me straight to the door but not always. I don’t literally believe what it says on the screen, I just take it as a rough guide.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gimlet/s/fkcbboHAoY – this is getting old, but Reply All did an episode on this happening to a couple fairly often. I don’t think it’s a scam, just bad signals.
Is it possible that the person stealing the headphones does not have an Apple phone, and someone in your household does?
AirTags / AirPods will alert nearby iPhones if they are not paired, but remain in proximity for long enough, to alert you that someone may have planted one on you without your knowledge in order to track you.
I am not actually sure what communication protocol they use to do this (Bluetooth vs WiFi) but the lost devices obviously have to connect to something to alert their owners of their location. I am 99.99% sure there is no way for AirPods to contact a cell tower as they are far too small to have a cellular transceiver in them…. So that means they are most likely using Bluetooth communication to alert nearby phones, and those phones are forwarding the communication over cellular data or wifi back to the server.
If there are stolen Apple devices, with no direct wifi connection, in one of your neighbours houses and they are sending signals to your phone that may explain why they appear to be coming from your house. Alternatively, perhaps one of your neighbours is stealing your wifi and they are connecting through his or her phone.
The location tracking for those things is not great. The simplest solution here is that your sketchy neighbor, the drug dealer, is stealing headphones from the nearby park.
Yes, I was at a party at a bar, watching a friend. I noticed him because he had the same Carhartt high vis hoody, but 4 maybe 5 sizes smaller. He was pretty drunk.
Twice his group sat at our table. I noticed my hoodie was moved to a different position. And I was went to put it on. But my friend pissed off some other chick, and the other chick threw punch, but didn’t connect.
My friend who was 15-20 years younger, and a trained knife fighter/ martial artist, marked her 5 times with indigo ink paint marker. And held the chick’s arm behind her back.
Before I stepped in to break it up. But the old chick puked on me, my hoodie over my arm half on shielded me from most of it.
That made the old chick the laugh of the night, and that was before she discovered the ink on her face above her eyes, across her left cheek and ear, across left side her throat, the down inside of her right arm and across her lower belly.
My friend told the waitress “The Ink is a warning, if I used my knife she would be dead in 4 to 5 minutes.” Please tell her. Tipped the waitress, paid 60 bucks for the old lady’s group.
About 3 hours later. Knock on the door. Its the guy with the hoodie and the old lady. The guy asking for his ipods, and a pelican flash light. I didn’t have the flashlight. But he got his puke covered ipods back.
This is a common scam. Theyre keeping track of whos home at what time, so they can rob the house. Ive heard this exact scam happening countless times across the country, and read 50 reddit posts about exactly this
My apple devices sometimes ping at my neighbors house…
Don’t even open the door for strangers.
Not headphones but I had a girl come looking for her phone. I let her look around in my backyard for it. I’m a 45 year old man and I could tell this girl had to still be in highschool. She was alone…and I look kind of intimidating (330 lbs, beard closer to my belly button than face, my head was shaved at the time.) Oh also she was barefoot and she kept saying her parents would kill her if her phone was lost.
I figured any highschool aged girl more scared of telling her parents that she lost her phone more than me potentially being a creep had to be legit. My wife was at work and my daughters were inside. I locked the doors to the house and had my kids play video games while I helped this girl look. We didn’t find it. But I’m 100% certain that the girl was being honest.
Not saying it can’t be a scam etc. but I’m certain that this girl wasn’t at least.
I believe I recall someone’s house showing up all the time and I don’t recall the reason, maybe it was some debug-mode default value which happened to be some poor guy’s house. But I thought I remembered some resolution where, if there was no valid pings, the device-maker moved it to the center of some lake or something. I couldn’t find that story, but I did find this.
‘Find My’ App Brings iPhone Owners to Wrong Home
This looks like a follow-up to the story above
Sheriff scolds Apple over ‘Find my iPhone’ glitch leading strangers to Texas dad’s door
Scary stuff when this goes wrong.
Lawsuit reporting by a lawyer on yt:
Cops Use ‘Find My iPhone’ App, Search Wrong House, Hit w/$3.8M Verdict
I think most likely it’s a cell-tower triangulation issue, that is common.
Or it’s some nefarious means to request entry into your home. I think someone else pointed out that the device being tracked could be in their pocket to make it look like it’s at the location.
Or some twist on swatting.
The police pulled up to my house years ago because FindMy indicated a lost item was here. It’s not always accurate.
Neighbors dog carried the phones to your bushes.
There is an episode of the reply all podcast that covers a similar issue with phones showing their location at someone’s house. I’m afraid I can’t recall which ep but the blub will liklry cover it. If I recall correctly, they did figure out what was going on.
Data points
I live in a rowhome and just ran Apple’s Find My app:
As I write this I’m sitting in front of all three devices.
Obviously, accuracy is not perfect, especially in a city.
Worst case scenario
Someone’s planted something on you property (possibly hidden out front) or faking the image & using it to scope out the contents of your home in order to plan a burglary.
It’s a squirrel or magpie
I had a similar situation happen some months ago where a young woman I’ve never seen before and claimed she had tracked her wallet to my house, and asked to be let in to look for it. She wasn’t aggressive or anything, but there was no way her wallet was in my house, so I declined, and she left without incident. Very strange tho.
Location detection is only accurate to within 3-5 meters, so it could easily be a neighbouring location.
Don’t answer the door?
This sounds like a scam. Phone “shows” the headphones at your house because he has them. They harass you long enough that you’ll cough some cash to get them to go away.