Two-fifths of mobile phone thefts in Europe happen in UK, shows insurance data

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/26/mobile-phone-theft-europe-uk-police

by DangerousCap2473

26 comments

  1. Purely anecdotal of course, but travelling round Europe people arent glued to their phones and blindly walk down the street with it on display for easy pickings

  2. I’m a fast walker and always shocked by how many phones I could easily grab if I was scum.

    With how much they cost and how much personnel info / financial info on them people really need to be careful these days.

  3. I wonder how many of these are made up. The police won’t look into it anyway.

  5. Genuinely, why is this? Is it lack of police presence? Lack of enforcement? Sentencing failure? Lack of fear of the public getting involved? Increase of profiles willing to engage in this sort of crime?

    Why are we so bad for this specific type of crime?

  6. Two of every five phone theft insurance claims received by that company – so the title is very misleading. We don’t know how their customers are distributed or the company’s market share. Edit: or what share of theft victims have their phone insured and make a claim. I suspect UK may be higher than other places for this in particular.

    Not that that makes it ok though. I think phone snatchers should receive much harsher punishments and much more resources should be put into catching them. 

  7. The decline of the social fabric is much worse than people realise or care to consider in this country. 

    I know nurses who can’t go to their cars during or after a shift. I’ve been with or seen women getting harassed in the streets. And, relevant to this article, I quite recently saw criminals targeting students (who I guess had just graduated or something as they had their special hats on) leaving their campus with their phones out. Hell, I’ve heard people casually talking about stealing phones at the train station because they could make £1000 in a week by selling them on ebay.

  8. Why Labour are focusing on making people upload a selfie to watch porn rather than tackling this is baffling. It would be such an easy win for them.

  9. Do they pay compensation to the victims when caught? Or is it just a slap on the wrist, some community service and maybe a short stint in jail?

  10. I mean, this is based on one insurance company’s claims and it’s not at all clear if the data is weighted for its market share in each European country. So two-fifths of SquareTrade’s European claims are in the UK, but what proportion of its European policies are in the UK? This article doesn’t tell us and we can therefore derive no useful information from it.

  11. Once it’s stolen, you will trace your phone to China after a few days.

  12. What do people expect?

    Do we think that crimes like the explosion in shoplifting is because people are hungry or just because its essentially been decriminalised? Even Greggs are no longer having food on display people are happy to shamelessly happy just grab what they want and walk out because they know there are no consequences.

    Even if you get caught, you just leave behind what you tried to steal and get to walk out.

    All these crimes that the UK just happens to be the epicentre of happened because the last governments incompetence and this one just seems to be saying hold my beer.

  13. I’m still surprised mobile phones are being stolen given location tracking and being able to brick it remotely.

  14. It’s always the same a holes with Nike tech fleece that they probably stole as well.

  15. To be fair, we probably have a lot more dangerous proscribed terrorists that the police should definitely prioritise.

  16. When I visit London now, whenever I get my phone out it’s constantly at the back of my mind that I shouldn’t have it out and to hold it tightly.

    It’s really not a nice thing to have to constantly have running through your mind, who would want to live in a society like this.

  17. We should give police a pay rise, they do such a great job. Also we should let in more unidentifiable, jobless criminals that will help too.

  18. My head is on a swivel in London, if I need to pull up my phone for maps I’ll hunker against a wall and gaurd it, anywhere else I’ll use it freely but if I just someone advancing behind my (I’m a slow walker) I’ll pull it to my chest

  19. Liberalism for you – everyone can just do what they want- oh but you can”t drive a petrol car or say what you think !

  20. There’s a certain shop on Ilford lane where I’ve seen, both personally and online, on multiple occasions phones ending up there after being snatched

    The police pretty much said they’re helpless when it comes to dealing with this

  21. Austerity economics, save £30 on your taxes due to police cuts and in a few short years you can be spending hundreds more in insurance.

  22. Maybe the government should spend more time and resources trying to fix problems like this, instead of the online safety bill or whatever its called

  23. Police do nothing about them…you catch the thief and batter them, you’d get done for it.

    Literally cannot do anything.

  24. Two-fifths somehow sounds more than 40% – or in other words – less than half.

  25. I’m intrigued on the demographics of these mobile thieves.

  26. Walking around London you feel like there is a protected class of criminals who get a free pass. Even outside of London in most major towns you fet the same vibe.

    Walk around most European cities and you don’t need to check your 6 before answering a phone call.

    Farage talking about basic law and order will be an election winner. Lovers will keep talking about “tough on the causes of crime” but really a few more ping pong tables for the wannabe gangsters of the inner cities won’t stop industrialised crime we have now.

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