What I find incredible is that despite having precise location coordinates the police did not recover it. I think we underestimate the extent to which not capturing petty thieves influences people's trust in "the system" in general.
I've had two things stolen from me recovered and both times it was part of a larger sting operation.
I'd imagine if the police followed this phone they'd find hundreds of phones and other stolen goods at the location.
That's the exploit the criminals are working from: do the unenforced petty crime repeatedly as an occupation.
It's probably More profitable for reducing crime to hunt those people down because they're doing it operationally whereas some perpetrator of a crime of passion isn't doing it multiple hours every night.
Also, I'm not actually advocating for locking those people up so much as getting them on the right track. That kind of initiative and organization is admirable, just stop robbing people with it
Totally agree. This is the essence of the 'broken windows' approach to crime prevention. Anecdotally (I live in north london) a large proportion of burglaries are committed by a small number of individuals, and in fact when a single gang were eventually apprehended a few years back it put an end to a serious spate of break-ins. When a mate was burgled in his area some years before that, the police found the perpetrator but did not pursue to prosecution as there was a sudden reprioritisation to anti-terrorist work. There is a disconnect between police priorities and the helplessness ordinary people feel when crimes that violate their homes and sense of security are not taken seriously.
For the record both times were auto theft. One was in Davis CA and the other was in Los Angeles CA.
I never got a full story other than it was some larger operation where plenty of other things were recovered.
I think if you walked into a police station and said you had something stolen when very reliable tracking information and was able to convince a detective, they'd likely be very interested. By as cynical as you want but things like that are exactly why they took the job.
I'm pretty sympathetic to the defund movement but catching occupational criminals sounds pretty much exactly what I think the police should be doing
I had an iPhone 4 stolen that I left at the gym that I was working at as a part time fitness instructor.
I found the location of my phone with the then new feature. I called the police. They met me at the house where the phone was located. The person who lived at the house said he didn’t take it. The police couldn’t do anything.
The catch is, the guy was telling the truth.
The next morning, I looked up the owner of the house next door where the phone now reported it was. I called the owner who said it was a rental. He asked his tenants did they steal the phone. They denied it too. They were also telling the truth. But they did tell me that their neighbor actually worked at the YMCA where I left it.
I called the manager at the YMCA and he had the person bring the phone back.
So the moral of the story is that I falsely suspected two people of stealing my phone based on its location.
The police in the UK don't see FindMy info as sufficiently precise for a search warrant.
There's enough news stories about American police raiding the wrong address based on FindMy that the UK justice system simply refuses to see it as sufficient evidence.
Which is partly why phone thieves in the UK get to operate with near impunity.
12 years ago, when I just arrived in UK and was renting a room in a house, one day in the morning we got woken up by banging on the doors by police looking for one of our housemates. They kept asking him where is the phone, he showed them all phones he had but they were not the phone they were looking for.
He was a door security in one of the clubs in central London and apparently a police officer lost their phone in that club last night and gps did point at our address so they assumed he stole it. They kept searching the whole house, including my room until they finally found the lost phone in another room. Another flatmate went to that club that night for a party together with security guy. Strangely after they found the phone they kept searching.
In the end they finally told us they were not really looking for a phone but for a police badge that was lost together with the phone. The guy said he found only phone, I think he was laying but that is not part of the story.
Point is, they have ability if they have motivation. Took them only few hours since party was over to come knocking, 7 officers, and do the search.
I guess the security guy living in the area where GPS was pointing could be considered extra evidence but surly if with enough phones stolen and clear pattern of them going to the same area they could collect enough evidence.
I think, they don't do it for each phone because they don't have resources and these are low priority not because they can't do it.
A lost warrant card (the police badge in question) is a pretty huge deal apparently.
You are correct though that stolen phones are deemed low priority, the term used for it is "volume crime".
"Why don't the police use findmy" comes up nearly weekly on the /r/policeuk subreddit. Same answer every time - too inaccurate for a warrant, not enough priority to put the work in to develop further evidence to pursue a warrant.
I wonder if the lock screen could take a picture of the person trying to unlock - maybe only turned on when "find my" phone is activated. Could that be enough grounds for a search warrant?
Apple ought to be able to determine these concentrations/pathways of known-stolen phones with a query to whatever database backs Find My.
The query may be easy for the most-egregious operators.
It may be in Apple's interest to look for them, too. "Don't steal Apple phones. A trillion dollar company will pay a data scientist to bust you at scale."
Find My doesn’t leak device location to Apple, so they do not have this data. (iirc it works something like this: the device includes a public key in its broadcasts and nearby devices encrypt their location for that key and send that blob to iCloud)
I can go to iCloud.com in a browser and ping my phone’s location. They may not be initiating these pings or storing the data, but it’s well within their capacity.
You could also voluntarily share the device location with Apple and friends as part of reporting it stolen. I don’t really care if Apple knows where my stolen phone is after it’s stolen.
I can only speak for Swedish police and the current legal situation but if they had a location on my apartment building for example, it would not help them.
My two buildings have over 128 households. And even if they got a fix on one gate, that's 16 households. And the law says you cannot enter anyones home without a court order here.
What about coming into the building/complex (but not the apartment), going near the GPS location, then using something like Bluetooth or WiFi to detect proximity to the device to figure out what to search?
Once a criminal, always a criminal. I don't understand while we allow criminals back into society; if someone chose to commit a crime once, there's no reason to think they won't apply that same calculus again and again.
Are you being serious? I can’t tell but I can’t imagine why you would be serious. People getting out of prison have a huge stigma from people thinking this way and it makes reintegrations much harder than it should be.
Anyway, most people are criminals just waiting to get caught. Most people speed, jay walk, go through red lights at least once in their life, unintentionally lie on tax forms, forget to declare things at customs, etc. You’re probably a criminal, the odds are not in your favor… so, if you are serious, you should take a look in the mirror.
> Most people speed, jay walk, go through red lights at least once in their life, unintentionally lie on tax forms, forget to declare things at customs, etc.
None of those things are nearly as bad as large-scale phone theft. And contrast the words "unintentionally" and "forget" with intentionally stealing property that you know belongs to someone else.
Personally, I’d rather hire an ex-con who said they were desperate than someone who did it “accidentally” (I.e. a kleptomaniac whose only treatment was a prison cell. Yes, that’s an actual mental illness.) but most people speed on purpose, jay walk on purpose, run stop signs… on purpose. These crimes actually put people’s lives at risk and steals literal time from people’s lives! That’s surely worse than stealing lumps of metal, glass and plastic that can be easily repurchased at nearby stores throughout the world?
Anyway, there is only one crime that usually cares whether you do it on purpose or not. That’s murder. Virtually ever other crime doesn’t care whether it is on purpose or by accident. It’s not like when you pull someone’s criminal background, it says: jaywalked by accident. You either do the crime, or not. Most people on this planet perform crimes habitually and on purpose (sometimes without even the knowledge that they did a crime!). It doesn’t matter. Most people are criminals…
> but most people speed on purpose, jay walk on purpose, run stop signs… on purpose. These crimes actually put people’s lives at risk and steals literal time from people’s lives! That’s surely worse than stealing lumps of metal, glass and plastic that can be easily repurchased at nearby stores throughout the world?
You'd rather have someone steal your phone than jaywalk in front of you and force you to slow down?
Replacing my phone with a police report is basically free and minimal hassle. Restoring from a backup is painless.
But putting the life of myself, my passengers, and the idiot walking in front of my moving vehicle at risk?? Do people actually value a replaceable object more than lives that can never be replaced?? Is that a thing?
I’m fairly certain it does not. I dated a parole officer in my 20’s where I heard all kinds of things about ex-cons that I never knew about. They have a hard life because of people like you when all they (usually) want to do is get back to a normal life after fucking things up.
One thing I find really interesting about the country I’m currently living in is that nothing you get arrested for will show up on a background check unless it is specifically related to the job you’re applying for. Thus theft will show up for retail, but not for writing software or secretarial jobs. I wish the US did something like that so people could have a fresh start in a new career.
Police are like a help desk, you need some juice to get escalated to someone who is empowered or gives a shit.
The patrolman is there to take a report.
In a case affecting me, a guy was stealing low value items from my porch every week. Solution: i got the surveillance video on TV and it caught the eye of a detective lieutenant who knew the guy.
The easiest path to this sort of thing is to know cops and phone a friend. Otherwise, 500 people were grifted that day… nobody cares.
This is because the police in the system are, largely, more worried about going after crimes for larger numbers/institutions. IE: A city walmart will stage police, and pay for them.
A police organization will focus on whatever channel the support comes from.
In addition to being largely built on the idea of escalation instead of compassion.
Look at the use of the word “petty” - to the person who’s entire life is on that phone it is not petty at all.
Police is not interested in petty crime.
(A thief in this story was likely connected to a vast "organized crime" network, but try to prove this to the police when you are filling the report and they see just another stolen iPhone).
The phone will be sold for pennies on the dollar to an immigrant owned repair store that doesn’t ask any questions and then will go to a local sketchy wholesaler and then will go to one of about 15 or so companies in Dubai, Hong Kong or Shenzhen (for example https://www.hanggroup.com/price/https://www.lcdone.com/https://www.actionlogistics.com/). A coordinated effort to shut down these companies could probably make phone thefts decline dramatically for at least a couple of months.
> What I find incredible is that despite having precise location coordinates the police did not recover it.
I'm not sure how precise they really are, for the purpose of recovery anyway.
One day, the police knocked on my door while I was staying at a hotel. They were looking for a just-lost iPad, and the "Find-My" feature put it right by my room.
Problem is, the room was in a multi-story structure, and the pin, when I looked at it, was in the middle of the hotel (any so was my room).
Police here are known for not pursing such crimes. I reported an attempted property theft to my local police, having caught the perps on my security camera. The police weren't even interested in the video.
I guess if someone tries to shoot me in the head point blank, but the cartridge fails to fire and the perpetrator runs away, then everything is fine, since no crime was committed in the end.
You will surely see some people here saying that the broken windows theory has been debunked (I used to be one of them), so that's why I did not use that phrase, but at the very least I don't think the equation for pursuing the thieves is "the phone is worth 1000 quid, the investigation is 2000, therefore it's not worth it". I think we are too heavily discounting people's lost trust in Police effectiveness that happens because of stories like that.
Reminds me of listening to an engineer justify removing a $5 protection IC (after component-shortage inflation) as the thing it was protecting was $3.
No, if that $3 part takes an ESD discharge, the entire $1000+ assembly is now (as far as the customer is concerned) scrap and needs to be RMA'd and replaced or repaired at our expense and the customer will, quite correctly, think it's unreliable junk from now on.
Even if it was just a $5 part protecting only a $3 part, it still makes sense to keep it. The logistics of returns and customer support for even a small percentage of returns would potentially be worth it.
That would need careful cost-benefit analysis. My instinct is to keep the protection or find a way to retrofit cheaper/available parts too maintain it. But then I'm not in the cheap and shonky consumer tat business.
Sure, the investigation is worth more than a single phone, but you're pretty likely to find 50 phones.
You're very, very unlikely to be robbed by someone who's doing it for the first and only time in their life. Most likely, you'll come across a gang of organized criminals, which you can now put in jail, and recover value worth tens of thousands of pounds, return it back to their owners, restore faith in "the system", and possibly uproot a major crime operation.
It's such a massive fucking win I don't understand why they don't enforce it more.
Pull a few officers of Twitter duty, and maybe do some real police work?
The cost of handling an order of magnitude more cases is significantly expanding the service. Everyone wants excellent public police, health care or education when it affects themselves. But going from average to good to excellent public services take more and more effort. Few countries today are willing to have the long-term public commitment and taxes to make that a reality.
The issue in the UK is that the Police suffers from scope creep. The UK police force has been criticized for expanding its scope to include enforcing anti-hate crime laws and investigating "non-crime hate incidents." (hard to believe that the country that gave us Orwell came up with that phrase). This has diverted resources from more important tasks and led to the allocation of time and money towards activities such as painting their cars in rainbows and raising pride flags in public ceremonies.
Whatever you think of those side-activities, I'm sure fewer people would have any problem with them if they were confident that their possessions would be recovered if stolen (and more important crimes prosecuted).
>The issue in the UK is that the Police suffers from scope creep. The UK police force has been criticized for expanding its scope to include enforcing anti-hate crime laws and investigating "non-crime hate incidents."...
This ^^ People get frustrated with the fact that they report a robbery or a break-in and the police take no action. But then they read about court cases involving 'hate crimes' which consisted of nothing more than someone being called a name they found offensive, or a dog being taught to do a nazi salute.
Obviously these cases are rare [that's why they make headlines], But the fact they happen at all doesn't do the police's reputation any favours, when there are 'actual' crimes being effectively ignored through claimed lack of resources.
None of the things you are complaining about have much of an operational impact on the British police.
You know what does?
The wholesale destruction of the NHS and ambulance services leading to the police being the first response to mental health issues.
Police are the wrong agency to deal with this, but currently in the UK, the police are pretty much always the first (often only) to deal with MH issues and get people into care/section them etc.
There were 34,000 detentions under the act. Of these, only 4,150 were detentions following a Section 135 / 136 place of safety order (the bit of the Mental Health Act that the police can use).
There is no way to recover stolen possessions with a high degree of confidence as there are countless of those types of incidents all the time every day. Most police forces already have less resources than they could use for the more serious cases. Reliably handling lesser serious cases that are even more plentiful would be a large increase in activities and even larger increase in effort. And since a large part of the cost of public services are salaries it would mean a noticeable tax increase. Probably for a long time. Other than that what you are asking isn't really possible.
Somehow the priorities seem to be misplaced. On the London public transport, you're reminded every 3 minutes that you should report "unusual" behaviour to the police, including unwanted staring ("Call 61016 - See it, say it, sorted."), yet they're unable/unwilling to track down a stolen item worth ~£1200 even with accurate GPS coordinates available.
There's two things. Maybe it doesn't prevent further crime as well as targeted saturation does, but it sure is nice when the police show up when they are called. Most research focuses on the first but the second is what GP was referring to.
Yes I’m sure if the police used “targeted saturation” in my neighborhood where in the entire county it’s only 3% Black, neither me or more likely my 6 foot 5 20 year old step son would be targeted for “looking suspicious”.
For reference, it’s the most affluent county in GA (not saying much in the grand scheme of things) and I work remotely at $BigTech. So while I make over twice the median household income for the area, we still get looked at suspiciously.
I hear you, and that sucks. Targeted saturation is exactly that IF you live in an area with lots of crime: they look for areas where crime concentrates and do lots of extra stops and extra police presence. If you don't live in an area with lots of crime, it's not targeted and they're doing something else, probably not constructive.
Rather than allowing nerd academics sitting in ivory towers to control our conversation look outside. Have you lived in a city with high crime rates? I have and my friends/family yearn for the return of days to policing neighbourhoods.
Have you been a minority living in a neighborhood where “you don’t look like you belong”?
I had a house built in the most affluent county in the metro area and I make over twice the median income of the area - in GA - thanks to the fact that I work remotely for $BigTech.
My family constantly were looked at suspiciously. The county was an infamous “sun down town” as late as the 80s.
The work the police do has almost nothing to do with "having a general location of a crime." In a boring, trivial sense there is probably always a crime of some sort being committed in every large apartment building. In general, unless the stolen item is unique or special in some way, going in "to get it" will almost always be the most expensive option. People could be hurt, the police could get the wrong person, the item could be damaged, etc. Also you would probably not get your phone back! It would be evidence of a crime and in custody for a long time.
I have a lot of critiques of the police, but I really don't think we have put them in a good position to retrieve stolen property AND I think trying to retrieve stolen property is generally a really inefficient way to make victims of crime whole.
Isn't getting the phones back only the secondary goal? Isn't the more important thing to put the thieves behind bars so that they can't steal any more phones?
>I think we underestimate the extent to which not capturing petty thieves influences people's trust in "the system" in general.
The biggest reason I've stopped voting for democrats is because of this. If you ever experience being the victim of a crime in a city/state run by democrats it's a slap in the face how little the police care. Hit and run? "Submit a report online." Have a meth-head living in your garage and they're screaming violently for hours? "Call the non-emergency line--it's not illegal to be crazy." This can't be a effective way to run a city, but in California it's the norm.
How not? You’re claiming that the reason people don’t trust the police is because they don’t go after petty crime - not because there is a history of corruption, targeting minorities, abusing power, and coverups
This is a manifestation of the “broken windows” theory of policing, championed by Rudy Giuliani when he was mayor of NYC. The theory was that cracking down on minor crimes like vandalism, jaywalking, and the squeegee guys, more serious crime would be reduced. It was ludicrous as stated, of course, and has been debunked.
But its real value was reassuring middle class voters that “something was being done: — after all they could see it!
It also meant a crackdown on the lowest level drug dealers and harassing young black men just minding their own business. This was largely invisible to most of the aforesaid middle class voters, but allowed cops to report great crime statistics without havinto take any risk by going after the real criminals.
* not to be confused with the “broken windows fallacy” in economics.
Not true. What was done in the 1990s was very different than what it evolved to later, mostly after Giuliani.
Like any metric driven process you need to be careful with the metrics. After awhile the compstat system became part of the internal political machinery of NYPD. It was a means to reward friends and punish rivals. People got stuck in the middle.
So the equivalent of mid-level directors at NYPD did what people do - cooked the books. If they were expected to yield a 20% increase in citations, they’d find some bullshit way to get them. If they needed to reduce rapes, they would charge assaults.
This happened because of poor governance and that the people who pioneered statistics driven policing were from the transit police and were able to overstep the normal bureaucracy.
The incompetence of leadership and fostering of a toxic culture is continuing with the knee jerk responses. We’re ignoring crime and fostering a broken culture in the police forces nationally.
They can't, because ehm... . So you can't arrest these people in UK.
Also weapons are banned there, so can't even defend yourself.
Just lay on the ground and let yourself to be mugged. UK logic is funny.
I run a business dealing with used games retro games consoles, and a not-insignificant part of this involves buying and selling faulty items. E-waste chains, especially for devices like iPads and PlayStations, are ridiculously complex, international and informal.
Honestly wouldn't be surprised if the thief here really was just a chav on a bike that flogged the phone off cheap to some guy he initially met on Facebook Marketplace. That guy probably paid a couple of quid to some random in India to attempt to unlock the phone remotely (without telling the buyer how he does it), and when that failed it would have been shipped to a contact in China who the buyer knew paid $x for a iPhone with an uncracked screen.
Also interesting to see the difference in culture. In Australia, if you lose your phone (almost always from falling out of your pocket, I've never really heard of anyone having theirs stolen), you just call it every couple of hours until the person who found it picks up. Then, you fling them a bit of cash or booze when you go to pick it up and everyone's happy.
Same experience in my home country, Algeria. In most cases you'd call and someone would be happy to meet and give you the phone, and they won't take money. This happens even though most people don't have iPhones, and carriers don't lock phones, so technically it's easier to format the phone and use it or sell it.
This has happened with me in the US twice. My wife lost her phone, daughter lost her phone. Made a call, "Sure we'll wait here." Got the phone back both times.
Back when the iPhone first came out, one of my friends got one. One day we ended up going out fishing on a boat with another guy and we all left our phones on the dock so they wouldn't get wet, and I signalled to my wife to pick them up. Apparently she didn't understand my hand gestures or whatever and left them there, and they disappeared. For the two junky flip phones there was a happy ending - someone dropped them in the window of a park ranger's truck - but the iPhone was never seen again.
Losing a smartphone today can have a profound impact on people’s lives. You lose your ability to pay for things (unless you have physical cards with you); you lose access to your email/bank/github/etc. accounts protected by 2FA so you may not be able to work; you may lose your airline/train tickets (unless you have a physical copy with you) so you may not be able to travel.
Maybe it’s time for more severe punishments for phone theft? The slap on the wrist thieves get today doesn’t seem like much of a deterrent, especially compared to the outsized harm this kind of crime causes to the victim as we rely more and more on smartphones for authentication.
But the reality is that we're fast approaching a future where every service assumes you have a smartphone and leaves you SOL if you don't.
As an extreme example, my previous workplace had a "smart" lock on the door that could only be opened with a bluetooth-enabled smartphone and a dedicated app. It was immensely dumb and everyone hated it, but the owners thought they could save on keycards by doing this and so they did, because every employee had a smartphone anyways.
I second this with the caveat that stealing someone’s car simply means they don’t have transportation (cost aside). For many theft of a phone could be losing all the things the OP mentions. Your average consumer has no idea what backup codes are. Your average consumer relies on the no contact pay. Your average consumer relies on 2FA.
There is a massively more inconvenience (cost aside again) in having your phone stolen versus your car. It could upend your life a lot worse than having your wallet or laptop stolen as well.
There are only so much things we can expect from the average consumer and theft of a phone massively changes that persons life.
I’m for increasing the resources put into specifically phone theft.
My laptop was stolen from the airport (inside security!) and I had needle like precision with where the cops could find it. Nothing was done and I simply got back the insured value for it and the items with it. It put me out of work for the trip I was taking but I’m not your average consumer and everything was backed up and I did still have my phone. If my phone had been taken and not on me I would have been in a much larger world of pain (though I have backup codes, etc.).
I don't have a mobile phone and regularly have issues with SMS based auth or a mobile phone regex match being the only option for a multitude of services.
This is precisely why it's constantly argued that a phone is not a good 2nd factor for authentication. The auth data should be on a device that is basically worthless except for the data it holds which in turn is also inaccessible to someone else.
Arguing for laws that are "tough on crime" is regressive and doesn't even solve the actual problem.
I think they mean that just passing laws that make it punishable by say 30 years in prison to steal a phone would be regressive, since the punishment is in no proportion to the crime.
However, what would actually be nice if, like people here have suggested, is that the police would actually bum off to retrieve stolen phones, bikes, etc and then deliver whatever appropriate penalties to the perpetrators if found.
Doesn’t matter if it’s only a small punishment so long as people get their stuff back and the thieves learn they’ll be sought after.
So basically, we don’t need better laws here, simply enforcement of them.
> Losing a smartphone today can have a profound impact on people’s lives.
This is the actual problem. Theft is also a problem, but not all that relevant.
"Tough on crime" doesn't really prevent crime when the incentive to commit it is still probably higher than the disincentive no matter how "tough" and getting caught is still unlikely.
A trivial, but more relatable, example of this line of (criminal) reasoning is that people are more likely to enjoy extreme sports vs a high paying "dangerous job" despite working the job being less lethal, less accident prone, and a much greater net positive.
> a phone is not a good 2nd factor for authentication
That's an argument for a phone not being the best 2FA mechanism. The argument for phones as 2FA isn't predicated on them being optimal, it's predicated on them being (1) present in almost all cases and (2) easily used.
Obviously yes, it would be safer if we'd all carry around password-locked yubikeys. But we aren't going to. We do have phones in our pockets, though.
Something you have and something you know, yes. But isn't the thing you have supposed to be separate from the client you're using to authenticate?
We're talking about the case where the phone is stolen. There's almost no reason to steal an authentication device other than harassment or tactical delay of access.
You are techincally correct, the best kind of correct, but just for balance I should mention that cavaliers like me end up merging the factors by having all their logins saved on their phones (modulo fingerprint prompts etc.).
> Arguing for laws that are "tough on crime" is regressive and doesn't even solve the actual problem.
There are definitely tough on crime laws that would solve or mostly solve the problem. Unfortunately these will mostly be cases of the cure being worse than the disease (e.g. panopticon with facial recognition and use of face coverings leading to jail time).
I always wonder why we don’t use decoys more. Have seemingly tipsy girls stand waving their phone around for a cab and a cop a few feet hidden away. Then stiff penalty. It’ll make people think twice about whether their “mark” is legit.
> Unfortunately these will mostly be cases of the cure being worse than the disease (e.g. panopticon with facial recognition and use of face coverings leading to jail time).
Not necessarily. Even if we didn't catch any more criminals than we do now, you could probably reduce the problem a lot just by making sure the ones we do catch actually go to jail.
Good lord, no. I don't lose any of those things, not even the 2FA.
> compared to the outsized harm this kind of crime causes to the victim as we rely more and more on smartphones for authentication.
For goodness sake, push back! I didn't even allow for the presumption I have a phone to read QR codes for restaurant menus, because of where I saw that was heading. Never allow anyone or any place to presume they can rely on your smartphone for something they should be responsible for.
I noticed places I work for started to try this, and put a stop to it right from the beginning by asking if they were going to start paying for my phone contract, and buy the phone from me, so I could buy another private one. Putting it in black and white makes it clear what's going on; which is work trying to get (a) free hardware, services, and (b) free work out of hours.
Anticipating the nightmare a lost phone would cause me means I do not use my phone for payments, banking apps, or tickets/passes whenever I can get away with it. As for MFA, I have to grit my teeth every time my phone is the backup. Losing your phone is like losing your sight now.
> I do not use my phone for payments, banking apps, or tickets/passes whenever I can get away with it.
Which is becoming less and less often in my experience. I was recently at an event that used SeatGeek for ticketing, and the only way they'd give you tickets was digitally through an iOS or Android app.
Hence why a person basically needs to be cyborg to function in modern society, via phone. You are not a person unless you are effectively part machine. So stretching the analogy as far as it will go, phone theft should be considered dismemberment, or organ harvesting or trafficking.
You can pretty much say the exact same thing about stealing someone's wallet or purse. There's a lot of travel advice to the effect of "don't keep everything in one place". A phone is no different.
A phone at least has the benefit of being backed up. In theory, I could log into a couple accounts on a brand new phone and have access to everything within tens of minutes. Contrast to the hours of phone calls and weeks of waiting it takes if I lost my driver's license, passport, etc.
And though a phone can be used for payments, it must be unlocked. Not true of the physical credit/debit cards (swipe or tap) or cash found in a wallet/purse.
If you have non-backed-up 2FA tied to your phone, you should fix that. Batteries die, and phones can be physically damaged, bricked for some software reason (they're computers, after all), dropped into the ocean or off a cliff, or just legitimately lost (ie: falls out of pocket into the cracks of a car seat and battery dies).
I won't weigh into the punishment-deterrent argument at all, I'm merely pointing out that in theory there's actually a lot less disruption having your phone stolen vs having a wallet/purse stolen. Both suck, of course. Replacing a phone is almost certainly more expensive, but it should be significantly faster to recover from. And backup your 2FA.
My wife and I are doing the digital nomad thing flying across the US and staying in hotels. I’ve thought about what would happen if I lost my phone and/or my wallet.
- I have a cellular equipped Apple Watch and iPad that both independently get regular SMS messages along with my phone.
- I can sign into my Mac and get text messages.
- I have a second wallet in my bookbag with a few lesser used credit cards, a little cash and my passport card for ID
- my wife is my backup recovery source if I get locked out of my account.
Doesn't this actually depend on relaying the SMS from the phone? I don't think delivery works if your phone isn't in range of the laptop.
Even the watch seems to require the relay to work for receiving [1]:
> To receive SMS, MMS, or push notifications from third-party apps on your cellular Apple Watch, your paired iPhone must be powered on and connected to Wi-Fi or cellular, but it doesn't need to be nearby. You also need to be signed in to iMessage on your iPhone to use Messages on your watch.
Shouldn't you be able to walk into a phone store, get a new one and automatically sync all your files, passwords, etc., then pay for the phone using that data?
Well, I don't think I am. I think the easier it is for me to get a clone of my phone, the easier it is for someone else to get it. If at&t makes it really hard to get a clone, okay, but that makes the offering less useful. A seven day waiting period might make fraud less lucrative, but it also means I'm without a phone for a week, so what's the point
At least once we reach the point where we use passkeys everywhere - which as far as I understand is the safest authentication method? Then a new phone will not have the trusted keys since they are stored in the hardware of the stolen phone.
If my own anecdotal experience is anything to go by, we tend to carry IDs in the phone wallet case. Lose one, lose the other. Sigh.
The worst part is, I know this is a terrible idea, and yet I carry all my eggs in the very same basket.
At least I've had the good sense to leave my physical driver's licence in the car I use 99% of the time after we got a driver's licence app - I can now simply show the police my cellphone with a QR code and a control animation on it, and they can verify my licence class and expiry date on the spot.
I’m one of the only people I know with a wallet style phone case with cards/id in it but I think I’ve just decided to go back to a separate wallet/card case. Will help thin down the phone too since I’ll probably just go caseless.
> you lose access to your email/bank/github/etc. accounts protected by 2FA
I wonder if apps like Microsoft Authenticator are better for this. They sync 2fa codes to your Microsoft account. Naturally, the question becomes "Doesn't that make Microsoft a single point of failure? If someone know's your Microsoft password, they can get into your Authenticator and all your other accounts basically don't have 2FA anymore"
From what I can tell it doesn't look like Microsoft has an answer to this, unless there's something obvious I'm missing. On the bright side, though, if you lose your phone, your 2FA codes aren't lost.
This seems like a large amount of trust to be placing in Microsoft, since anyone with access to your account would also have access to your shared secret for every site. I would wager that they also would have access to your communications medium and password stores as well, in most cases, since you'd likey have bought in to the wider ecosystem.
Restoration of the 2fa codes onto a new device doesn't seem to require communication with the original device, so I don't think there's client-side encryption going on.
The Authenticator also has password vaulting features, but I agree that would be a bad idea for both your 2fa codes and your passwords to be in the same place (even worse if you use Outlook!)
I specifically have multiple phones setup with my Google Authenticator account for this reason. If you don't have a spare phone, I recommend purchasing a used old android phone for $30 just for the peace of mind.
If you are really paranoid. Backup codes can be copied without you noticing. Even bigger risk if you bring them along while traveling, or worse, leave unattended in hotel room.
The Authenticator apps store keys in Secure Enclave (or at least I hope so). Which in themselves are 2fa by not being copyable thus requiring direct access to unlocked phone before using.
Of course that also comes with bigger risk of you locking yourself out, by forgetting Lock Screen password or phone getting bricked for some stupid reason. Printed paper don’t have that problem, except can also easily be lost.
My 2FA is all using Yubico Authenticator, so even TOTP codes are on my Yubikey rather than my phone. I keep my backup codes in 1Password in case I lose my keychain.
Maybe this is helpful, I was just saved by Google/Android's implementation of this recently and wanted to offer a couple notes for folks that haven't had this misfortune yet...
1. Find My Phone is great, you can remote lock, wipe, and mostly importantly, add a custom message. The message I wrote for the cab driver in Mexico is /very/ different than what my default message would've been.
2. Don't get over-zealous about revoking Device Admin permissions. If you remove that privilege for Find My Phone, then it can't *really* lock down the phone the way you'd like (and probably can't initiate the full remote wipe). It's odd, it definitely puts the phone into a state where it looks and feels locked, but you can swipe down, access settings, get into the Google Account area and unlock it.
Bonus thought for nomady/travely types:
3. Having your wallet stolen is damn near a living nightmare, especially if you're traveling or... 12 hours out from boarding a flight out of the country. Tips: Some credit card apps will let you access a "virtual number", and in lieu of that, a friend with a debit card can WesternUnion/MoneyGram you money nearly instantly (assuming you have some way of contacting them - without a phone / whatsapp contact, etc, that can be challenging - thank god I know my parent's cell phone numbers by heart)
Last random thought -- I carry a bag/purse/fannypack on me basically always. From now on my new wallet has a keychain loop and is wallet-chained into my purse so I can't set it down accidentally. Maybe even something similar with a soon-to-be Pixel 7 Mini hopefully. The hassle is one thing, the inner shame and self-annoyance is another.
- First, I think one of the weak spots is people having way too big phones for what any single hand of theirs can confidently cling on to
- Secondly, I think some paranoia-like awareness of your surroundings whenever you're outside is more warranted than people want to accept. This includes a quick look up from your phone and at the people all around yourself every few seconds
- Third, to the prospective thief: I don't think a bicycle is a great choice to try and steal my phone on in a fully crowded city like friggin London.
I sure as hell will catch up to you sprinting on my feet quicker than you can get the hell out of the area without crashing
Motorcycle/moped has been the popular vehicle for street theft in London for a while. Quite regular reports of phones snatched out of people's hands by the passenger on a passing bike.
Totally agree on the phone size thing. I can't imagine someone grabbing my small phone out of my hand in a swift move while texting one handed, best case scenario they knock it to the ground.
An e-bike already moving at speed on a roadway is going to outpace pretty much any human very fast. You have no chance to catch up in the submission post's described scenario, IMO. Once they're out of sight the game is over.
In the case of actual e-bikes that are driven on the roadway, you would have to be weary of one unusually closing in on you. I don't see how one would miss that, also you shouldn't even be standing in reach of the roadway.
But if you mean those e-scooters, then those aren't significantly faster than bicycles and would have to yield to car traffic soon enough for me to catch up on foot.
I mean E-bikes on roadways. In the posted article the author is replying to a text while waiting to cross a roadway. Common enough scenario, I do that all the time and don't flinch at passing bikes because bike phone snatching isn't a thing where I live.
I've seen the snatch phone from hand thing happen in London - happens insanely fast.
Covid and the rise of ebikes have helped the crooks. Face coverings are more acceptable and silent ebikes can creep up on someone on a sidewalk and provide a sudden burst of acceleration to get away.
I don’t think e-bikes have qualitatively changed this — I’ve witnessed these snatchings for over 10 years in London and they’re just as effective on a normal bike
If they do bypass the activation lock and resell it, anyone buying a second hand device or parts can check it and the seller reported to local law enforcement for selling stolen goods.
Blocking via EMEI should be routine as soon as reported stolen to police and network.
In fact, I think this is why organised operations quickly ship stolen phones abroad: the EMEI may be blocked and tracked in UK/EU but it won't be in China...
UAE China Russia India and almost all of Africa are not in GSMA blacklist program which means the phones still work there (and iPhones sell for a premium in some of those places as well). Find my iPhone lock is very effective in making it less profitable unless they are able to phish the password out of you.
One note with WiFi only Apple equipment (mainly iPads here); there are ways to use diagnostic cables and software to 'rewrite' the device serial numbers to 'bypass' activation lock.
It requires a 'clean' serial, WiFi MAC, and Bluetooth MAC, the three things a WiFi only device uses to authenticate to Apple during setup.
iPhones and other cellular connected devices? Nah, not gonna happen, though there are weird jailbreak-esque 'bypasses' that will get the phone past setup, albeit still 'locked' when you reset.
I'm sure ebay has their fair share of stolen goods. A lot of what you see sold as refurbished are returns and trade-ins. When you return an item for example, to Amazon, they don't restock it. Instead they throw it in a bin and auction it off by the pallet to second hand resellers.
Why would they? This is just one of the many ways they take advantage of everyone else. Most phone snatchings aren’t happening in China so this is an easy way to reduce their import bill for phones.
The final destination is unlikely China. Usually these phones are then transported to Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong or Guangzhou and from there flown back in a suitcase to various countries in Africa.
During the Seattle 2020 "events", I was walking by then started hearing loud noises all of a sudden. Turns out, thieves had broken into the nearby Apple store, taken many iPhones and then the "stolen" signal was somehow pushed into them, making them make a loud sound and show a "this is stolen" kind of popup on their screen. The thieves just dumped the stolen iPhones on the ground probably to avoid attention from the cops.
I got a used Iphone SE second generation 2020 for $140. It’s perfectly usable, feels like new, it’s not a theft magnet and if it gets stolen I didn’t lose much, aside from the inconvenience of not being able to do anything till replaced, probably a ruined afternoon or whole day. The previous older Iphone is still a good backup for multifactor authentication and keep it in a safe place at home for such cases.
Unfortunately, I don't think that's how it works. I had a Galaxy S1 stolen once, when it was already quite old. A friend of mine had his GS7 stolen, also several years old and in quite bad shape.
I think thieves will just act on an opportunity and see later if the device is worth anything.
You may be right though a latest / greatest Ipnone worth $1000 (sporting features I dont give a damn) makes me uneasy to use on public transportation. Here in NYC such things get snatched from peoples hands on the train along with gold jewlery and other expensive gear. I dont want to attract that upon myself, no thanks. $150 phone which works decently could be stolen too but the hole in the budget is an order of magnitude smaller so I can stay relaxed at least.
Yeah, I used to have a rusty roadbike that looked so unattractive I thought it’s like ontouchable and I found the solution to bike theft. Nevertheless, one day a thick chain was cut and the bike was gone. So, yes, anything gets stolen
> Here in NYC such things get snatched from peoples hands on the train along with gold jewlery and other expensive gear. I dont want to attract that upon myself, no thanks.
Why would you want to live in a place like that? I can't think of a single city in Australia where that would be a concern.
Whilst I can understand that there will be many people in such circumstances, I suspect the majority are not in them who elect to live in such areas.
As a European, sure. But I'm not suggesting AU/NZ is the only area in the world that is low crime. I'd imagine with a European passport you have access to many countries with low crime rate areas with little effort, no?
> I suspect the majority are not in them who elect to live in such areas.
I suspect the contrary. People seem very keen to stick around family and friends, and tend to prefer to not make major changes. Whenever I suggest such an option (move countries, not necessarily continents), people always seem dismissive. However, I expect this to be somewhat local / culture-based.
The issue is that these areas are usually the big cities where people will tend to flock for the jobs. Sure, their small towns might be quiet, but there's no work there, especially if you want a more "intellectual" kind of job. I'm curious how this will change with the rise of work from home, though. I know many people who've moved out of Paris to random tiny towns thanks to this. So, moves are being made. But crime has been increasing in smaller towns, too...
> I'd imagine with a European passport you have access to many countries with low crime rate areas with little effort, no?
I honestly don't know which countries those would be. Especially since they shouldn't be on a path such that, a year or two down the line, they'd resemble my current country, France, which mostly excludes the rest of the EU.
As regards the passport, it should allow me to move there for an indefinite amount of time, and ideally allow me to work from there. Mostly, an EU passport allows me to visit many places, but not settle (I don't qualify for the "rich people" visas).
Those are fair points. My response was quite flippant and generalised. I do understand people have ties to their homes, but I wonder what level of sacrifice is an acceptable amount.
For me, keeping myself and my family feeling safe (and that safety being based on the reality around me) is a non negotiable.
I completely agree. My point was actually like your bike example.
The phone may not be, in itself, expensive, so a painful loss if it came to be stolen (or otherwise no longer available - say you break / lose it). But since more and more things are tied to it, it can be a giant PITA to lose it. For example, my bank accounts 2FA is tied to it, and they specifically don't allow having multiple phones. If my phone is lost, I have to physically visit a branch office to reset it.
I actually just picked up two 2020 iPhone SE's for traveling. New SE's were $99 this Black Friday and I'd argue it's the best value phone. It has a fantastic camera, and performance that still matches flagship android devices. $99 Android phones are all crap in my experience.
Carrier locked to straight talk or total by Verizon for 60 days. You had to buy one month of prepaid service for $30 and they unlock automatically after 60 days.
So total price was $130 but I am using the 5gb of data as a hotspot for my laptop this weekend anyways.
Someone I know in London had a super old Pixel 2 stolen while he was texting by a guy on a bike. The thief took one look at it and threw it back as I assume he is only looking for iPhones or higher end phones.
One thing that jumped at me instantly when reading this was that it matters if you're a slender bodied person or a hulk of a dude walking down the street with your phone in your hand. If you're the former extra care and attention must be given specially in busy and unsafe places near metro stations.
It also came off as wide eyed to keep referring to the thief as "they", most certainly the thief on the bike was a guy and keeping this in mind can be useful information and should have been at the top of this person's "pro tips".
Lesson No.1: Don't use your phone in public while strolling about, oblivious to what's going on around you.
I used to cycle to work down a pavement which was divided into half for walking on and half cycle lane. I lost count of the number of times I had to swerve round people strolling along [often in the dedicated cycle lane part] with their phone either clamped to the side of their head or held out in front of them watching something on screen --completely oblivious to the world around them.
If I'd been of a criminal disposition, I could have trivially plucked the phones from these people's hands and been away and out of reach before they even realised what was going on. And I could have harvested 3 or 4 phones every day this way. And that's, just commuting to work, not actually seeking out victims.
I generally have sympathy for anyone who gets their 'stuff' stolen. But not much I'm afraid for the kind of people who can't even walk down the street without their fucking phone permanently attached to their face. Completely ignorant of the fact they're getting in other people's way and almost causing accidents, wherever they go.
At the train station we find peoples phones regularly. It is astonishing how dumb the process is for returning such a sophisticated piece of electronics.
Any person who finds it can be expected to make some small effort to return it. Dropping it off at lost & found items is already pushing it.
IMHO in locked state it should have a button to call the carrier and the carrier should make an effort to register a phone number, email or address. Iphones do have a lost mode but I've never seen it in action.
A found phone is essentially a brick without any visible id code.
So the real world process is now like that of all other dumb luggage. It goes to lost & found, you register the loss and wait for it to be found, dropped off, registered, if the item matches your description you get 5 days to pick it up where it was found, then it is send to a central location which could take a good while! Then you pay 15 euro to have it send back to you. Bank and id cards are destroyed. But how do you identify a brick? Expect to be without a phone for at least a week.
You could be standing there in front of the closed doors but there is no way to return your belongings.
There remains much to do in this service area.
If there is a standard finders reward it might even be worth it for the thief to return it. I'd much rather pay say 30 bucks to get it back. The thief just switches it off and has it stripped for parts. If the standard reward is good enough people will make a serious effort getting it back to you.
Truly wild would be if it could use the back camera to continuously scan a crowd to identify its owner. Draw boxes around the faces with a different color and a bleep for potential candidates so that one can walk towards them.
Display a name or id number to broadcast over the train station, mall or airport announcement system.
You report it stolen to your service provider. They blacklist the IMEI and it's unusable in most of the world except for countries that do not respect the global blacklist. Like... China.
Seems to be time for something like 'Kensington Lock' where you have your gadget always on a leash. Oh, and instead of remote wiping the ability to initiate self-destruct by burning, exploding :-)
This was great! It prompted me to check what the story is for Android/Google. I hadn't realised there's https://www.google.com/android/find which lets me find/lock/wipe it.
Also extra handy: I can make it ring _even if silent with my one-plus physical silent switch on_. I'd not actually worked out how to do that before, and it has been very annoying the odd time I lose it and it's silent.
Thats a problem for people who use privacy roms, there is no "find my devices" from google, since there are no google services in the ROM, because thats the whole point of using it.
Your best hope is basically not to have your phone stolen.
Location tracking rarely helps recover a phone or prosecute a thief. If you don't like being followed all the time, implement private phone tracking such as in Next cloud.
How did the phone report the location from Shenzhen when the phone is wiped? Did they replaced the SIM card with a PIN free SIM with data? Why would they do it?
The Find My network relays the lost message from the stolen phone via nearby apple devices. Airtags use this principle to locate itself despite only having bluetooth
One thing that isn't clear is does Theft and Loss protection still apply when you're traveling outside your home country? I can't seem to find any info on the AppleCare page that confirms this.
"If service is not available for the Equipment in a country outside of the United States, You may be responsible for shipping and handling charges to facilitate service to a country where service is available. If You seek service in a country that is outside of the United States, You will comply with all applicable import and export laws and regulations and be responsible for all custom duties, V.A.T. and other
associated taxes and charges."
I havent confirmed this in practice, but I do asked several agents and supervisors at Apple support and they state it does work when travelling internationally. What they said though is that in some countries they'll only be able to ship new device to your home address in country where you bought insurance.
That’s what apple has largely done and that’s what a lot of small repair stores complain about. Requiring an AppleID to activate a phone, tying components to the crypto processor on device, etc. all is part of this - and it just happens to make repairs harder, used parts worthless, … There’s a pretty big tradeoff here.
Most components in an iPhone today are programmed to the device and will either warn you with an on screen prompt, or refuse to work at all if you move them to another iPhone. It hasn't seemed to stop theft tho, I suspect a large number of people are falling for the iCloud phishing scams after their device is stolen.
This is one. Data shows that Apple's technical solutions and policies (e.g. disallowing repair for phones marked lost or stolen) caused iPhone thefts to plummet when they were rolled out, and were so effective that they became a model for the rest of the industry.
"Thefts of iPhones in London fell by 24% in the first five months of 2014 compared to 2013, while in San Francisco they fell by 38%, and in New York by 19%, according to data from the New York attorney general's 'Secure Our Smartphones' initiative, following the introduction of the kill switch – officially called "activation lock" – feature in the iOS 7 mobile software which lets owners remotely wipe and lock their phones if they are stolen."
I don't understand the problem here. Living in EU country. Nobody would ever try to steal so publicly from you.
There will be some deeper problem in London, hmm hmm hmm. I wonder what is it.
