LAD Drives After Phone Using 'Find My iPhone' Only To Find It's In His Car

Phones nowadays are laced with all sorts of security so that if they go missing they're easier to find or shut down.

There's a load of insurance to go with them, several walls to get through - like pass codes, finger print ID, facial recognition and about 17 passwords - as well as phone trackers that pretty much come as standard on most handsets.

The latter can sometimes be fairly complicated and confusing, though, as Gareth Robinson from Bradford found out.

Credit: Facebook

Gareth had lost his iPhone and had presumed it was stolen, so he was desperate to track it down.

He turned on his iPad and logged into the 'Find My iPhone' app. Much to his delight, he found that his device was somewhere nearby.

The 36-year-old decided to jump in his car and drive around, following the app, in order to catch the culprit who'd run off with his phone red-handed, or so he thought.

After an hour behind the wheel, investigating a 'shifty' person who he had labelled as a suspect, he was still no closer to finding his dog and bone.

But, as it turns out, Gareth had gone on an hour-long wild goose chase, as what he was looking for was actually on his passenger seat.

Credit: Supplied

The signal from the phone isn't quite enough for the tracker to determine its exact location, so it gives a fairly vague radiant.

It could have been anywhere in the big circle in Bradford, so Gareth felt he had to drive around to search the entire area. Of course, as he moved, so did the tracker, which led him to believe the 'thief' was on the run.

On Facebook, he wrote: "Lost my phone so used 'find my iPhone' tracker on my iPad... Boom, locked in. Some shifty fucker round here has it.

"Drove around for a good hour and even stalked a suspect's house 'cause they stood outside looking shift.

"It must be close by, but they're on the move, bet they know I'm onto them...

"Oh wait, what's this on the passenger seat?

"Case closed." [sic]

Luckily, he's seen the funny side, as did his wife, Caroline, who's presumably not let him forget about it.

"[He] actually followed someone in his car as he thought he had it," Caroline, 32, said. "Turned out it was on his car seat. He was looking for it for a good hour. Hilarious!"

Unlucky, LAD, happens to the best of us. Move on.