Harrogate Police use Twitter to track iPad owner 6,000 miles away

Harrogate police have used Twitter to reunite a lost iPad with its Thai owner who lives nearly 6,000 miles away.

The iPad was handed into Harrogate Police earlier this year and PC Ed Rogerson was convinced that social media could help find its owner.

Using photographs which were accessible without logging on to the device, PC Rogerson found a photo of a flight ticket and several photographs of who he believed was the owner.

He tweeted a photo of the owner, which was re-tweeted by over 2,000 people and used Twitter’s search facility to find the name on the plane ticket.

The search led to an inactive Twitter account in the owner’s name and by contacting one of her followers, PC Rogerson was able to make contact with the owner.

PC Rogerson said:

When I started to try and locate the owner of the iPad I had no idea that she’d be in Thailand, but thanks to the power of social media I was able to identify her, make contact with her and arrange to get the property returned.

The response from the online community was amazing. Thank you to everybody on Twitter who assisted by re-tweeting and giving me tips on how to locate her.

The owner of iPad, Jukjik from the Nakhon Ratchasima Province of Thailand was thrilled to get the good news, she said:

I was very, very pleased and very happy when I heard that my iPad had been found. I can’t believe you managed to track me down just through Twitter! Now I can see all the photos I took when I was in England and have a nice reminder of my holiday. A big thank you to PC Rogerson and North Yorkshire Police.

Social media is a valuable tool which the police use regularly to help prevent and detect crime, issue safety messages and find missing people. It is free of charge, quick and simple.

Any lost items which can store data such as computers and mobile phones are destroyed if they remain unclaimed, this is to protect the personal data contained on the device.