This Woman's Phone Was Stolen in Nashville and Ended up All the Way in China

For many of us active in the 2020s, most of our lives can be held on our phones. Whether we have a ton of important pictures saved on there, hold several bits of valuable personal information in it, or solely rely on it to perform most of our daily functions, smartphones have become an integral part of our day-to-day lives. It should come as no surprise that losing a phone can become a major disruption, leading most of us to hold onto our phones with the utmost care.

In the worst-case scenario where you accidentally end up losing your phone, however, there are all sorts of ways for you to try and recover it. Jordyn on TikTok (@jjjooorrrdddyyynnn13) knows that all too well at this point. While vacationing in Nashville, she ended up losing track of her phone during the trip. She did everything she could to track it down only to find out that not only was it stolen, but it ended up all the way in China. The story gets even wilder from there.

Jordyn captured her entire phone's wild journey on her TikTok. She posted her comprehensive updates in early September 2023, but at the time of posting, her phone had been stolen for over a month. According to her, she had been vacationing in Nashville, Tenn. when her phone went missing while she was at a bar.

She was ultimately unable to find it at the bar, but luckily, she had an iPad through which she could use a "Find My Devices" app. She was able to report her phone as "lost," which presumably put the missing device into lost mode and rendered it unusable to anyone who might have picked it up. Jordyn ended up filing a police report to see if they could track it down.

Unfortunately, the phone wasn't exactly staying put in one spot. Because of this, the police couldn't visit any particular location for fear of the phone making another jump.

While she ended up having a nice weekend, she eventually returned home to find that her phone somehow ended up in Georgia. Some time later, it began making the rounds in Florida, popping up at several different cities in the state.

It was then that Jordyn started receiving strange texts claiming that her missing phone could be pinpointed. These included links that would supposedly let her officially track down her phone. She didn't necessarily trust these links and didn't dig too deeply into them. She continued keeping tabs on her missing phone throughout the first week of August, but it eventually ended up in the wildest of places.

If her app is to be believed, Jordyn's phone went from Nashville, TN all the way to Guangdong, China. It's certainly not every day that your lost phone crosses international waters to end up in a completely different country. Unfortunately, Jordyn's troubles didn't end there.

Once in China, she started receiving strange texts that were basically asking her to take her phone out of lost mode under the presumption that the sender was helping her with her phone woes. When she refused to, she received texts riddled with explicit language and thinly veiled threats to her cybersecurity.

Needless to say, she didn't comply and left her phone inaccessible. And luckily, she doesn't exactly want it back at this point. She'd gotten a new phone mere days after she'd gotten back from her original vacation. And while keeping track of her phone, she actually made some interesting discoveries.

Turns out, many people who have lost their phones have gone through the same experience when tracking them down. Folks in the comments section and even Reddit threads shared their own experiences with having their phones stolen and subsequently receiving threats from unknown senders that were identical to the ones that Jordyn had received.

It's safe to assume that Jordyn will take better care of her phone now. She also hopes that her story will serve as a cautionary tale to any other unfortunate souls who have their phones stolen.

"If this ever happens to you, don't click links [and] keep your phone on lost mode forever," she advised.