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ONE OF THE most compelling Tumblr blogs right now charts the adventures of a collection of Dubai residents, entirely through photos appearing online from a stolen smartphone.
Whoever took the phone neglected to turn off the photo upload function in Dropbox, a cloud storage app, which means that every time they take a photo the original owner of the smartphone gets a copy of it on her computer.
Now she has turned those pics into a chronicle of their macho, style-challenged life.
Here’s how the unnamed author of the blog says the incident went down:
five hours after me and my friends landed in ibiza/spain, the four of us found ourselves hopelessly drunk and naked in the sea. we put our stuff on a deck chair 10m away.
… we tumbled out of the water quite irritated. everything was gone. money, purses, smartphones, passports, janas’ birthday presents and evangelos’ clothes (besides his underpants). as far as i remember, this must have happened in the time span of 15 minutes. well, that sucked quite hard.
apparently some guys with night-vision glasses hid in the dunes, waiting for drunk tourists to leave their belongings somewhere unobserved. then they crawled through the sand, stole the stuff and walked away like nothing happened.
She also also claims that whoever stole the phone used the Facebook app to hit on her — via her own Facebook account:
what really made me wonder about their stupidity, was when i checked my facebook profile and found out that they entered my facebook account… AND sent me a personal message from his own account to hit on me.
The Tumblr has about 12,000 followers and the photos are still being uploaded to Dropbox It’s been going on since July 28, and there’s no sign yet that then men have any idea how famous they have become.
Here’s some select photos from the blog, and you can view the full collection on the original Tumblr:
Jim Edwards
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5 hours after arriving she was in the nip. They didn’t waste much time!! Harsh enough about the phone though, no chance of tracking yer man down no?
After all of that we get to see three pictures……..
Click on the link to the actual tumblr account…duh.
P.S. is that a huge packet of cigarettes on the floor in the first photo………
You are so clever Matt I wish I was like you………
If this is not staged then guy who stole it is really thick, also there are quite a few conditions for this Dropbox upload to work the way it apparently now works so it’s really quite unusual to meet all these conditions (no PIN set o the phone first, then auto upload enabled in the app, then background upload enabled in the app, then thief must have an access to WiFi connection too, unless it’s set to 3G, which is very unlikely providing phone owner traveled abroad…). Never mind that allowing him to use phone with syncing dropbox he has also now full access to phone owner’s dropbox too…
Maybe I’m to skeptical, but to me it looks like very clever Dropbox driven advertising campaign :)
What’s better than blog that is searched now by millions people.
Wow, unless somebody does it deliberately, or this story is an epic fail.
Out of pure boredom went to see that blog and grabbed one of the pictures.
Then I checked and why EXIF data for this picture (guy in color boxers and white sleeveless tee on the bridge) and picture meta data says it has been shot with HTC Desire S, then edited in Adobe CS5. Unless exif data has been tempered, edited (why?) then I thought he stole her iPhone not HTC?
I agree it doesn’t read right for someone who has had their phone stolen.
I checked the exif data too and it does say HTC Desire S but if you read the posts on the blog it never actually mentions an iphone being stolen. I think the person who wrote the article just assumed it was an iphone when it read “smartphone”. Just my 2 cents.
Stephen: yeah you are correct, author of the blog does not seem to name make of the phone, I was suggested by number of sites saying it was an iPhone (including this!). However, still very flimsy story, maybe real, but then extremely coincidental…
Also, even judging by quality of those photos, they couldn’t be taken with an iPhone…
Fizi_water has their head screwed on! Enjoyed your comments more than the article lol
On the ball fizi_water, checked the EXIF just there myself. Amending the article now.
Terrible that their stuff got robbed, but really how stupid can you be leaving valuables like your passport lying around like that.
dropbox is brilliant. I installed it after losing photos when the microsd fell out out when I dropped my phone. Great peace of mind having it now.
Did he take any pics of her skinny dipping ha she would be shamed and u wouldn hear of her robbed phone now !
Suarez does love giving thumbs beside white cars
My thoughts too. . . . Bored with the reserves and knowing he has some crawling to do he is abroad crawling in the sand!
Maybe install find my phone app in future
Hell Hafid no fury like a woman scorned!! Lol :)
Fake…has to be fake. That or the “victim” of the crime is as stupid as the criminals.
Why would you not change your Skype/dropbox password.
Why would you not have the phone disabled with your network operator by blocking its IMEI number?
She says she was alone in a more recent post and in the beginning post (which the journal quoted) says she was with friends. A later post where she says she threw a t-shirt at him, he was supposedly laying silently by their stuff … just chillin’! The story in general doesn’t at all check out. Who plots robbery on vacation?
Her entire tumblr is kind of awkwardly racist. I get you’re mad at the guy, but Dubai and its culture itself didn’t do anything on her.
Pfffft…go tell it ireport.
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