According to Daily Mail Australia: On Saturday Bella Crooke, from Melbourne, had been to a friend’s party where she lost her smartphone and the moment she realized that it was lost she dialed it, soon a security guard answered the call and assured her that he will hand it over to the police. However, Crooke was not able to reach the police station till 1 p.m. the next day, Sunday and she was not aware as to what all pranks police had been playing with her Facebook account. The security guard handed over the phone to the police at New South Wales country town of Albury. The police officers who were present in the police station soon realized that Crooke has carelessly left her phone without any passwords and hence they were able to access her social networking sites. The Albury police also left a message stating: “You should probably put a password on your phone. When you are ready to pick it up it will be at Albury police station. [Smiley] ” The tech savvy police officers started posting their selfies to Crooke’s Facebook account and further also posted a photo of Crooke’s smartphone being “locked up” in the jail. Then this image was followed by another post which read: “If your [sic] worried about the battery going flat, don’t. By the time you pick it up it will be fully ‘charged’. It is a great ‘cell’ phone. ”
After some time police officers came up with another post which read: “The phone is still here. Ready to be released early for good behaviour. Just waiting on Bella to post bail.” To add more fun the police also started sending texts to her friends informing them the probable clues of her lost phone. Crooke was not aware about all these messages being posted to her Facebook account however later that day her friend shared all the messages posted to her Facebook account by the police and also gave her the details of Daily Mail’s coverage. Finally, on 12th April, Sunday morning, when Crooke landed up at the Albury police station, she did not even give her name as the police instantly recognized her. Crooke says: “They just recognized me. A few people popped their heads out and said ‘Is that the girl with the phone?” It seems the police had been waiting for her since morning and they asked her: if she had checked her Facebook account, which Crooked confirmed that she had not checked her account. Crooke took all this act of police sportingly and when the police made her see all the posts that they had posted on her Facebook she started laughing. Crooke is happy to have been reunited with her smartphone. She has posted a message to her Facebook account that says: “OMG…reunited! Obviously a slow morning at Albury police station!! I walked in (still dressed like a bogan coppers didn’t ask my name just ‘have you seen Facebook?! Haha Legends in blue.” To the humorous police Crooke says :”It’s good humour and I’m just glad I got my phone back. Thank you to the boys in blue for returning the phone and having a good sense of humor.” Bella Crooke has reclaimed her lost smartphone, to a certain extent the unprotected phone helped the cops to trace her down; however, the humorous cops seem to have breached her privacy by posting messages to her Facebook account and they must have checked all the information about her friends through her account definitely not missing all her personal information and her selfies. Though, Bella Crooke seems to be O.K. with all these hilarious act of the police, it seems now she has locked her phone with a proper password. For all readers, always be alert and protect your phone as well as all the online accounts with proper passwords and also be careful when you share all your personal information on the social networking sites as the crooks and burglars might use that information for illegal acts.
