Lost and Found

My smart phone has a protection application that will help me find it when it goes missing. If I lose my phone around the house, say under a stack of papers or wedged under a couch cushion, I can log on to a special web page from my computer, ask the software to dial my phone and have it ring at the highest decibel level it can muster with the most obnoxious ring tone in its repertoire - even if the phone is powered off. I tested this feature recently with my phone on the table next to me along with (and this is unfortunate) the family cat. A few seconds after the computer made the call, my phone came screaming to life and flopped around on the tabletop like a catfish just pulled onto the dock. Poor kitty went from purring to perturbed in one second flat.

The phone protection app has other really cool features as well. For instance, it will with a single mouse click put a cross hair on a map showing the exact location of my phone at the moment I am looking for it. This would have come in handy for my last phone, which dropped out my pocket at a rest stop along Route 95 in Delaware. Not that I would have considered backtracking 100 miles to retrieve it. I mean, come on, it was Wilmington. There is no phone worth making that drive.

The most intriguing feature of this phone protection business is the message option. The web page doesn’t go into much detail on this, simply stating: “show a customized message on your home screen for anyone who finds your device.” Yeah, the person who finds my device. Got it. We all know what that really means. If my phone is stolen, I can send a message directly to the thief telling him or her just how I feel about this violation.

I tested this feature at once, sending the following message to my phone: “Hey motherf%$ker, I know what you did. I’m coming to get what’s mine.” And just like that, bing, there was the message on my phone’s screen, bordered in red with multiple exclamation marks.

I tried it again. “Yo, a-hole, I listened in on your calls to your girlfriend and tracked her down. We met up at nice restaurant you could never afford. I bought her some nice wine. Whispered beautiful things in her ear using words you don’t even know. Yeah, you can guess what happened after that.”

And again: “Listen up %&#wad, I’ll only say this once. I work for the Agency. I have access to drones. My phone will be replaced. You won’t be.”

This felt great! A sense of virtual empowerment. The victim taking charge over the scumbag crook. But the message to the stolen phone is not the end of the story. No, sir, it’s not over. With another keystroke I can lock my phone, ensuring that the thief will never use it again. And finally…the release of the poison gas.

O.K., there is no poison gas feature. Sigh. I’ve notified the software developers. Maybe in the next version.