DUBAI: A German woman whose iPhone was allegedly nicked in Spain traced the alleged thief to Dubai after the man’s pictures taken on the phone landed in her Dropbox account.
And the day-to-day activities of the UAE-based man is now at the centre of a global campaign by the woman who claims to be the smartphone’s rightful owner.
The woman alleged her phone was taken at night in late December while she was out on the beach with friends in Ibiza, a Spanish resort island in the Mediterranean.
Four months after the alleged incident, when she opened her Dropbox account, she noticed 15 new pictures inside her “camera upload” folder.
In late July, she published the pictures in a blog (lifeofastrangerwhostolemyphone.tumblr.com), often using hilarious, even disparaging, descriptions.
One picture shows the man standing next to a vintage car with UAE plate number. In another image the same man was seen posing in front of Matajer Centre supermarket in Sharjah. Other pictures show him dancing, having tea and posing with friends near a mosque.
The man is also seen posing on a beach with the Burj Khalifa in the background.
“This is one of the first pictures he accidentally uploaded to my folder. The skyline in the background was easy for me to recognise... He is obviously in Dubai,” she wrote.
The blogger, however, did not give her name and offered little by way of her background (she admitted taking an architecture class).
Her blog had become an instant hit, as she describes each picture taken by the man who she claims has her iPhone. She invariably used the epithets “poser”, “happy” and “chilled” as subtitles.
‘HAFID’ AND AFTER
Later, the blogger identified the man as ‘Hafid’, which she said she had found out through her own research. The blogger, however, did not respond to XPRESS’ query regarding the authenticity of her claims.
And while most readers of the blog are amused by her witty posts, not everyone is convinced. “Very funny,” said one follower, “Although I suspect that this is viral marketing by Dropbox. Nobody is as dumb as ‘Hafid’.”
On July 28, a certain ‘Eleonora’ reacted to a post, accusing the blogger of racism. “Great idea, but it’s funny how your racism shows in virtually every sentence you write. You’d be better off sticking to just showing the pictures ... By now I’m happy you and your friends’ stuff got stolen. You sound like a terrible person.”
And in a surprising twist, a certain ‘Hafid’ wrote a comment for a July 28 (most of her blog entries were dated July 28) post on August 4, saying: “And remember you are the idiot who went on a beach in darkness and expected all your stuff to be there when you got back. How stupid is that… You weren’t staying in a tent, you had a hotel where you could have kept all your belongings in a safe. You deserve to be taunted by your iPhone just to remind you not to do it again.”
