I had two stolen last year, and the other night I’m pretty sure I witnessed someone stealing someone’s smartphone from a public charging station, even though I was outside smoking at the time.
I’ve learned a lot about the black market for stolen smartphones, and now I realize how insane it is to ever turn your back on one for even one second.
Be sure to warn everyone in your family and friend and coworker groups, especially those who are very young or very old and may not know how prevalent smartphone theft is.
None lost, none stolen. I don’t even lock mine (to the horror of my kids). Of course, I rarely leave the house these days and when I do the thing stays in my pocket.
Now that’s nuts. I never had a phone stolen or lost, but if I ever had, at least it’d be locked. I could easily cope with the loss of my hardware, but the loss of my data and identity would be a lot worse.
None lost or stolen. My wife had one stolen ages ago (I think it was a Motorola Razr, to date it) in a public bathroom.
I used to never lock my phone but started using the thumbprint reader on this one. I figure someone with access to my email and texts basically has free reign over all my accounts between password recovery and two-factor authentication.
Newer email clients along with some domains now require “app passwords” for devices. Essentially, you can’t check your email on your phone, at least with an email client, with your regular password. You have to log on via a browser, create an “app password” and use that. It’s a few extra steps, but if you no longer have control of that device (lost, stolen, sold etc), you can delete that password so your email can’t accessed by any device that was using it (you can use one password for all your devices or individual ones individual devices).
It was annoying the first few times I did it, but it’s actually kinda nice. It also means you can reset your main password without having to go around and change the password on all your devices.
A few years back, I’m at Myrtle Beach. Sitting on a bench on the boardwalk waiting for the sunrise. I had two phones with me at the moment. A small feature phone that I actually used as a phone, and a cheap Android phone with a cracked screen but a much better camera (which is what I was using it for.) So at one point I want to text the person I was at the beach with. I put down the Android by my side, send a text with the feature phone, reach down for the Android—and touch someone’s hand, which was on my phone. He pulls his hand back, pats me on the shoulder and says “I’m just kidding” and wanders off, chatting with his friend. I think they were both drunk.
I’ve never lost one or had one stolen, but I’ve temporarily misplaced mine at work a couple of times. (before I retired) Recovered without incident, fortunately.
But my wife’s iPhone was taken from her purse by a lightning-fast pickpocket in the Paris Metro a few months ago. It was literally five seconds from the time she dropped it into her purse, turned to say something to our kids, and turned back to realize it was gone. We immediately tried calling it and chasing around the area looking for suspects, but there was no hope.
Obviously it was a bad thing, but part of me has to respect the skill involved.
(For the record, we went straight to the Apple store on the Champs-Élysées and had the phone remotely bricked, making it valueless to the thief.)
Had a phone stolen about 15 years ago at an art center in Jakarta. It was upsetting and it cost money to replace the phone, but other than that there were no consequences.
I’m not worried about identity theft if my current phone fell into the wrong hands - there is nothing on my phone that would do anyone any good, unless random photos of my cats could be used for nefarious purposes. Sure, I have a few hundred phone numbers that matter to me listed, and some of them are for local politicians, community leaders, that sort of thing - but it’s not like my life or the life of anyone whose phone number I have is going to be compromised if someone else gets their hands on those numbers.
I accept that a stolen phone could be terrifying if it fell into the wrong hands, but as an old-fashioned phone user who doesn’t put compromising data on my phone, I gotta wonder - what info do other people keep on their smart phones that I’m missing?
It’s not the data (photos, texts) on your phone that’s most concerning, but the access a thief would have to your online accounts if your phone is not locked. That’s a wide open doorway to identity theft that can turn out to be a nightmare.
Eh, I would say the majority of phones are not stolen for identity theft purposes, they’re quickly reset to factory state and given a new SIM card and resold.
Is it even possible to do a factory-reset with a locked-out phone? I only know Android, but I wouldn’t know how to do it without first getting access to the system.