14 DAY TRIAL // A Chinese man who works in the pub industry had his iPhone stolen while sharing a taxi with someone. Furious, he texted the thief (presumably on his own number) with a threatening message.
Zou Bin reportedly had around 1,000 contact numbers on his iPhone at the time of theft. Like many users, he didn’t have a backup copy so, naturally, he was very concerned about losing his device.
He decided to try and intimidate the thief, so he texted his phone with the following message.
“I know you are the man who sat beside me. I can assure you that I will find you. Look through the contact numbers in my mobile and you will know what trade I am in. Send me back the phone to the address below if you are sensible.”
According to the report by Xinhua, cited by the Hindustan Times, the thief most likely felt threatened by the message as “Zou works in the pub industry, which in China is widely held to have links with gangs.”
Not surprisingly, within days the thief sent Zou a package containing his SIM card and (hear this) 11 pages of handwritten contact numbers.
“It would take a while to write from one to one thousand, let alone names and a whole string of digits. I suppose (the thief's) hand is swelling,” Zou said.
The thief probably could have extracted the contacts more easily by using specialized software, but he may not be aware of such programs.
An iPhone’s contacts can also be easily bundled as a CSV file. There are probably other methods as well, any of which is much more energy efficient than sitting down to write 1000 contacts with a pen and 11 sheets of paper.
Some have called the thief “sympathetic,” but we’d say he was just really scared.