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A twelve year old student in Suffolk, England, recently used GPS tracking technology to track his mother’s stolen mobile phone, according to the Daily Mail. The phone, an HTC Wildfire, was stolen within weeks of his mother’s purchase of it. It was worth £230, and she placed it on a bar as she ordered a drink.

While the woman, Gemma Richardson, assumed it was gone, as no one had given it to the staff of the nightclub, she told her son what happened. Her son, Kristen Richardson, had previously downloaded a GPS tracking system utility to his mother’s phone. This piece of software allowed him to track where it was. By logging onto her laptop, he pinpointed the precise location of the phone within four meters. The twelve year old then located the address on Google Street View.

The police were then notified of the theft. They found the home in question, and the 21-year-old resident said that he did, in fact, take the phone in the night club.

His mother was reportedly very surprised that Kristen was so tech-savvy in this stressful circumstance: “He told me that he was downloading some sort of technology so he could keep track of it – but I didn’t really take any notice of what he was saying. I just put my phone on the bar when I was buying a drink in the nightclub and then when I looked down it had gone. I felt really stupid and thought I would never see it again.”

While the GPS tracking technology is very impressive in this case, the twelve year old’s tech skills are even more impressive. Who knew that a preteen could be so resourceful in this scenario?

Article Written by Greg Minton