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by KJP191 3529 days ago
You think a thief won't go through an unlocked phone they stole? Even if they don't, the person they fence it to will.
1 comments

I think whatever is on your phone would be of little or no interest to either party.
Even the dumbest thief has a smartphone and knows it can contain information at least as valuable as the phone itself, and maybe even nudie pics.
The average burglar wouldn't know that, and wouldn't have anything they could do with that information. They're a drug addict who wants shit to fence for a fix. Burglary of the average residence is an insanely stupid crime with enormous risks and penalties.
Thieves sell the phone on to people who know how to exploit what is on your phone to try to get access to your accounts and money.
How would your phone give them access to any of that? All of that kind of thing is inevitably protected by more security layers they won't be able to break, and meanwhile, the phone itself is worth something once wiped. Worse, the longer they fiddle with your phone, unwiped, the longer they risk someone tracking that phone.

They're burglars, not masterminds.

What I heard is phones are often sold off by burglars to organized crime who do know how to exploit the phone to its full potential (and not get tracked, and properly wipe it and resell it after properly copying off the data/login credentials which is sold to another party, which then package the data with other data and sell that, and so on).

Wish I had some better sources. All I could find from a quick google search is that the market rate for full personal info is $20 -- that is certainly something you can get with email inbox access (which is enough to get Amazon login which would have your full address etc etc)

Keep in mind most services only needs your email address and browser cookies for full access, only banking services etc are 2FA.