Thieves making £15,000 a month selling stolen phones as Met Police ‘fails communities’

12 comments

1. Spineless little people who love the smell of their own farts and know they can pretty much act with impunity.

2. Western civilisation is collapsing in front of our very eyes. If Labour can do this in less than two weeks, imagine what they’ll do in five years.

   (David Starkey is on holiday)

3. theres me thinking iphone is secure as its worthless for thieves to steal it. Apple needs to do more, Met just dont care, cant blame them with how full prisons are and last 14 years.

4. Damn I might start stealing phones with the state of the economy at this rate 

5. who the hell is buying some dodgy phone os some dodgy person?

   i want a fresh one or nothing

6. There’s multiple things here which are part of the “problem” – one being that the phones themselves can be locked down pretty hard but ultimately the thieves only care about wiping them and selling on, or scrapping for parts. Unless you’re plain naieve enough to keep some highly sensitive banking info on it with absolutely no locking method, it’s likely safe as houses.

   The other is the usual avenue of “well the Police *do* care but given the inherent complexities of the process as well as both numbers and whatever the priority-of-the-week is, it’s unrealistic to expect more than a phonecall”. With better funding and restoration of abilities to a level that’s on-par with population levels? Then it’s fairer.

   Regardless – people, get insurance. Chances are it’s part of your home insurance but if not, find out, get it. If you can’t afford the insurance chances are having a stupidly expensive phone is probably not a bright idea anymore than owning a Bentley in a dodgy suburb is.

7. If you have an iPhone, I strongly recommend enabling content & privacy restrictions in screen time. This means that even if the phone is stolen while unlocked, the thief can’t get to any account settings (especially your iCloud/Apple ID).

   Here’s how:

   1. Go settings -> Screen time
   2. Scroll down and tap “Content & Privacy Settings”
   3. Change whatever you want from “allow” to “Don’t allow”, specifically “Passcode & Face ID” and “Accounts”
   4. Go back one page and set a screen time PIN (make sure it’s different from your phone PIN.

   Your Apple ID section of settings will now be greyed out, requiring the PIN to even view it. The thief won’t even be able to see your email address.

   Also ensure Face ID is enabled for everything possible, especially banking apps. Or delete banking apps entirely if you don’t *need* them on your phone. The Apple Mail app doesn’t have Face ID but the Microsoft Outlook one does.

   And make sure your Lock Screen requires the Face ID to show the messages (Settings -> Notifications -> set “Show previews” to “When unlocked”) to avoid thieves sending unlock codes to your phone and being viewable if the phone is locked.

8. They don’t ’fail communities’ they are incompetent and virtually useless. There are many reasons why – we can guess them – but the main reason is that the leadership is not able or willing to motivate the ‘troops’ in thief taking, they have too much social work to do, new policies to follow on (and reports to provide) how diversity and gender regulations are being met in recruitment, promotion and retention. No one feels the inbuilt coppers need to stop crime and convict criminals

9. Shouldn’t phone manufacturers allow owners to make the phones useless once stolen? It would go a long way in stopping much of the thefts.

10. Police are useless with stolen phones.
    Had mine stolen at a festival. I signed up the website where you can report it. They never contacted me I had to ring them up and explain my phones last know location is the police station. So they must have it and I want it back.

    And little tip for anyone on iPhone make sure you can’t access settings from your lock screen. As somone could just swipe down and hit airplane mode and it’s gone forever.

11. Ok I’m not denying that this is a massive issue.

    But the way that perp in the article talks about “getting nicked” sounds like ChatGPT was told to write a cliche 🙄

12. To all of those wondering what happens to phones and how (and also to those saying “if an iphone’s locked, it’s locked”) I recommend you take a look at the interesting journey Canadian of Youtuber Strange Parts in Shenzhen…upgrading his own iphone.

    Once you understand how the markets of Shenzhen work, the absolute crazy stuff you can get just in a tech shopping mall and the ability of Chinese “cornershop” electrical engineers then it’s easier to understand that even a completely locked or bricked iPhone is still worth something.