Dutch honeymooners use WhatsApp to trace BB owner

Dubai: A Dutch couple who came to Dubai on their honeymoon, left with great memories, a treasure trove of goodies and possibly friends for life after tracking the owners of a lost mobile using a smart phone application.

Ouarda, 18, and Driss Amir, 27, from Rotterdam, had arrived in Dubai earlier this month, just two days after getting married, hoping to spend a fortnight here, sightseeing and shopping.

They did all that, but in between were equally happy to spend some time and money of their own for a greater good.

“We were walking back from our dinner cruise at the Creek when my husband suddenly stumbled upon a BlackBerry phone on the grass,” said Ouarda.

Twist in the tale

“You can always buy a replacement handset, but what about the private pictures and other data reaching the wrong hands? So we had to find the owner,” said the new bride.

As it turned out, the phone’s battery was completely dead and this meant, being iPhone users, they had to first go shopping for a BlackBerry charger to get the phone up and running.

“We couldn’t do it the next day as we already had a desert safari lined up, but the day after we made sure that we bought the charger before anything else,” says Ouarda.

However the couple’s real adventure began after the phone was charged and they discovered the SIM was blocked.

After much pondering, Ouarda came up with the idea of trying the WhatsApp and sent out messages to all the contacts retrieved from the phone.

Several hours later, they got a response from someone who knew the owner – Dr. Vishwas Chhabra.

“Thankfully it was my friend who knew that we had lost a BlackBerry curve and as soon as he received the message from the lady, he flagged it to me,” says Dr. Vishwas Chhabra, whose wife had misplaced the phone.