Radio 4 today mobile phone theft

[GeoffF100]

The banking apps that I have tried have a passcode as an alternative to biometrics. Lots of goons will use the same passcode for everything and store a reminder on their phone or a piece of paper with it.

There have been a significant number of cases where the victim has had to give up their passcodes with a knife to their throat. The same applies to credit and debit card PINs.

There is a system like that described by jaizan in operation, but thieves get round it by sending the phone abroad.

I use a debit card with only a £120 at most on it to make small in person payments. I have the app for that account on my phone, but that does not greatly increase my risk profile. My current mobile phone is worth about £50. That is less than £200 in total, and I would be likely to get some of that back from the bank if I am hit. I should be able to recover my Google account if it is hijacked. Nonetheless, if I need to carry my phone, I keep it well hidden away and in "Do not disturb" mode whenever I can.

[GeoffF100]

"Santander's head of fraud warns customers about criminals shoulder surfing for phone passwords":

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/sav ... words.html

[Dicky99]

A feature on R4 today concerned mobile phones theft targeted at phones while in use in order get round screen locks.....

... One really useful nugget of information on the programme was the emergency telephone number 159 which can be used to quickly contact any bank to report fraudulent activity. It's now stored in my phone.

how do you quickly call them if your phone has been stolen?

From any other phone

[Mike4]

how do you quickly call them if your phone has been stolen?

From any other phone

I of course carry two phones with me all the time, so that's me sorted!

[Redmires]

"Santander's head of fraud warns customers about criminals shoulder surfing for phone passwords":

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/sav ... words.html

As for Thisismoney/Daily Mail, I read it for over 25 years, but eventually stopped as I'd had enough of the non-political bias

[Julian]

This is not necessarily the case if the apps in question are individually protected by biometrics, such as my Outlook email.

To be blunt this entails installing a more secure email app than the one provided with the phone.
It's something that I have not done, and I care about phone security. I suspect that most people just use the default email client.

I must look at replacing mine.

Another option could be for the major smart phone operating systems - primarily Android and iOS - to provide a section in settings whereby a user could select apps that will only launch after the user has got through a biometric challenge (or PIN conde if biometrics not available). You can turn notifications, use-mobile-data and use-location-services permissions on and off on a per-application basis (at least on iOS which is what I am familiar with) so adding a require-permission-to-launch attribute baked deep into the OS would not seem that difficult to do and I would have thought would be a useful security addition for many people so that they don't have to rely on the security built into the apps themselves.

- Julian

[Infrasonic]

To be blunt this entails installing a more secure email app than the one provided with the phone.
It's something that I have not done, and I care about phone security. I suspect that most people just use the default email client.

I must look at replacing mine.

Another option could be for the major smart phone operating systems - primarily Android and iOS - to provide a section in settings whereby a user could select apps that will only launch after the user has got through a biometric challenge (or PIN conde if biometrics not available). You can turn notifications, use-mobile-data and use-location-services permissions on and off on a per-application basis (at least on iOS which is what I am familiar with) so adding a require-permission-to-launch attribute baked deep into the OS would not seem that difficult to do and I would have thought would be a useful security addition for many people so that they don't have to rely on the security built into the apps themselves.

- Julian

It's also hardware/firmware dependent. My Pixel 6a is on Android 14 the same as my Pixel Pro 8, but the settings options vary between the two phones. Broadly similar but more granularity on the Pro 8. Pixel 6a has fingerprint but no FR, Pro 8 has both.

The more advanced security stuff like biometrics tends to be a more recent thing on laptops too. My gen 13 i7 W11 Lenovo laptop has facial recognition and fingerprint scanner built in, which means I can use passkeys/biometrics with many apps/services there now.

[Arborbridge]

And I've heard representatives of the BBC on more than one occasion say they keep a close track of complaints about political bias. And they record whether the complaint is about the BBC being too lefty or too righty. They take the view that provided the complaints of left bias and right bias are arriving in broadly equal numbers, they are getting the balance about right.

I have heard that too but as you say it's from a BBC rep who like the lass said - would say that.
I forget the satire that used the tag "because of the unique way the BBC is funded..."

This is also mentioned in John Humphreys autobiography. THis was written after he retired, and he's absolutely no friend of the BBC bosses, or men in suites, but he is also very clear that they spend a lot of effort over maintaining balance and goes into some detail about what this means in practice. Worth a read in places, but a bit boring unless you are particularly interested in detail.

Arb.

[GeoffF100]

To be blunt this entails installing a more secure email app than the one provided with the phone.
It's something that I have not done, and I care about phone security. I suspect that most people just use the default email client.

I must look at replacing mine.

Another option could be for the major smart phone operating systems - primarily Android and iOS - to provide a section in settings whereby a user could select apps that will only launch after the user has got through a biometric challenge (or PIN conde if biometrics not available). You can turn notifications, use-mobile-data and use-location-services permissions on and off on a per-application basis (at least on iOS which is what I am familiar with) so adding a require-permission-to-launch attribute baked deep into the OS would not seem that difficult to do and I would have thought would be a useful security addition for many people so that they don't have to rely on the security built into the apps themselves.

You can do that with a third party app like AppLock. I had a look in the app store. It bombards you with adds apparently. Nonetheless, I am not sure what that would achieve for email. Email is not a secure medium anyway, so I am not bothered about privacy, I am bothered about having my gmail account hijacked, but that is effectively the same as having my Google account hijacked. Fortunately, the are recovery procedures which should work if that happens. It is a good idea to make sure that you have a set of recovery codes and regularly access your Google account from another device though.

[modellingman]

Currently, people can buy mobile phones, do a factory reset and sell them.

I would think it should be relatively easy to discourage that.
1 Ensure every phone has a unique serial number stored internally & registered with the phone maker
2 Allow customers to register their ownership of that phone on a database
3 Require all the mobile phone networks to check the serial number against the database

Obviously this wouldn't prevent export to countries that don't participate or breaking for spares, but it should cut out a lot of demand for stolen mobiles.

As for Radio 4 Today, I listened to it for over 25 years, but eventually stopped as I'd had enough of the political bias.

Its not the hardware that the crims are after, its the access to bank accounts, etc where the value lies for them. Selling the phone on after ransacking the victim financially is just a small bonus.

modellingman

[GeoffF100]

Currently, people can buy mobile phones, do a factory reset and sell them.

I would think it should be relatively easy to discourage that.
1 Ensure every phone has a unique serial number stored internally & registered with the phone maker
2 Allow customers to register their ownership of that phone on a database
3 Require all the mobile phone networks to check the serial number against the database

Obviously this wouldn't prevent export to countries that don't participate or breaking for spares, but it should cut out a lot of demand for stolen mobiles.

As for Radio 4 Today, I listened to it for over 25 years, but eventually stopped as I'd had enough of the political bias.

Its not the hardware that the crims are after, its the access to bank accounts, etc where the value lies for them. Selling the phone on after ransacking the victim financially is just a small bonus.

I thought the opposite would be true. There is a huge amount of mobile phone theft. Do you have any numbers for the amount of money that the banks are paying out for mobile banking fraud? I have not been able to find anything, just isolated reports in the press. What matters to a mobile phone theft victim is the cost of replacing the phone, not what the thief can get for it.

[simoan]

I thought the opposite would be true. There is a huge amount of mobile phone theft.

Is there really? Everyone I know has a mobile phone and has owned one for 10 years or more. I am not aware of anyone I know that has had their phone stolen. One of my bug bears is the abuse of statistics by the media in order to create a story. The BBC is as bad as everyone else. This Radio 4 piece seems typical of that phenomenon.

[modellingman]

Its not the hardware that the crims are after, its the access to bank accounts, etc where the value lies for them. Selling the phone on after ransacking the victim financially is just a small bonus.

I thought the opposite would be true. There is a huge amount of mobile phone theft. Do you have any numbers for the amount of money that the banks are paying out for mobile banking fraud? I have not been able to find anything, just isolated reports in the press. What matters to a mobile phone theft victim is the cost of replacing the phone, not what the thief can get for it.

I agree that the cost of replacement matters to the victim but what probably commands greater concern and certainly greater urgency is minimisation of financial inconvenience and loss. An unlocked phone (ie one snatched whilst in use) can be a gateway to amounts vastly in excess of its replacement cost or fenced hardware value.

Years ago, when smartphones were the latest new thing and relatively expensive compared to their non-smart contemporary products, phone snatching was about the value of the hardware. The crims now have high value wristwatches as the hardware target of choice.

modellingman

[GeoffF100]

I thought the opposite would be true. There is a huge amount of mobile phone theft.

Is there really? Everyone I know has a mobile phone and has owned one for 10 years or more. I am not aware of anyone I know that has had their phone stolen. One of my bug bears is the abuse of statistics by the media in order to create a story. The BBC is as bad as everyone else. This Radio 4 piece seems typical of that phenomenon.

Here are the statistics for London for January to October 2023:

https://www.met.police.uk/cy-GB/foi-ai/ ... tober2023/

39,532 in a city of 9 million. That works out to about 1 in 150 chance per annum, but not everybody carries a mobile phone. 50% perhaps? If you do carry a mobile phone, having your phone stolen would appear to be roughly a once in a lifetime event. More if you walk down the road with your eyes glued to your phone, less if you keep it hidden away. What proportion phones that are stolen also have at least one bank account drained as a result. A small to very small proportion, I expect.

[simoan]

Here are the statistics for London for January to October 2023:

https://www.met.police.uk/cy-GB/foi-ai/ ... tober2023/

39,532 in a city of 9 million. That works out to about 1 in 150 chance per annum, but not everybody carries a mobile phone.

Or lives in London...

[GeoffF100]

Here are the statistics for London for January to October 2023:

https://www.met.police.uk/cy-GB/foi-ai/ ... tober2023/

39,532 in a city of 9 million. That works out to about 1 in 150 chance per annum, but not everybody carries a mobile phone.

Or lives in London...

The crime rate is about a third higher where I live in West Yorkshire than in London, but it is about a third lower in Devon and Cornwall:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/866 ... by-region/

Here are the ONS figures for the UK as a whole for the year ending September 2023:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... tember2023

Figure 2 says that 0.6% of people experienced "theft from person" (which is much more than the Met number for mobile phones). 1.48% suffered from criminal "computer misuse". It looks like mobile phones are more likely to be hacked than stolen.

[GeoffF100]

Figure 2 says that 0.6% of people experienced "theft from person" (which is much more than the Met number for mobile phones).

Delete the comment in brackets! The numbers are consistent with mobile phones being the items most likely to be stolen from you in person, which makes sense.

[simoan]

Figure 2 says that 0.6% of people experienced "theft from person" (which is much more than the Met number for mobile phones).

Delete the comment in brackets! The numbers are consistent with mobile phones being the items most likely to be stolen from you in person, which makes sense.

As with all statistics you need to be very careful how they are collected, what is included, and what is not. For example, how many mobile phone thefts would be included when actually a handbag containing a mobile phone is snatched? i.e. a perp stole a handbag that just happened to contain a mobile phone along with all manner of other items. Is that a mobile phone theft? One thing that is well established is that overall crime against the person has been steadily falling and yet the fear of such crime is still high. This gap between perception and reality is purely down to reporting in the media, such as the piece on Radio 4 that started this thread.

[GeoffF100]

For example, how many mobile phone thefts would be included when actually a handbag containing a mobile phone is snatched? i.e. a perp stole a handbag that just happened to contain a mobile phone along with all manner of other items.

In that case the theft of the mobile phone may not be counted. There will also be cases where mobile phones are stolen, but the theft is not reported to the police. For both reasons, the number of phones stolen may be undercounted. As I have said, not everyone carries mobile phone, so you need to take account of that to estimate the likelihood that a mobile phone will be stolen if you carry one. Some people keep their phones well hidden (though hiding them in an expensive handbag is not likely to be effective). You need to take account of that if you want to estimate the risk that a mobile phone on display will be stolen.

The published statistics give us an indication of the risk. The risk appears to be small on a year to year basis. Nonetheless, if you are not careful, you are likely to have your phone stolen eventually.

[UncleEbenezer]

Or lives in London...

The crime rate is about a third higher where I live in West Yorkshire than in London, but it is about a third lower in Devon and Cornwall:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/866 ... by-region/

Here are the ONS figures for the UK as a whole for the year ending September 2023:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... tember2023

Figure 2 says that 0.6% of people experienced "theft from person" (which is much more than the Met number for mobile phones). 1.48% suffered from criminal "computer misuse". It looks like mobile phones are more likely to be hacked than stolen.

Methinks the point was not directly about the crime rate, but rather that London has so many visitors - notably millions of commuters - that the 9 million figure you had used invalidates your conclusion.