[scotchmi_st]

My wife had her phone stolen recently, in Highbury and Islington tube station. Nothing to be done, by the time she noticed it gone, it was too late. However since then, she's been getting messages from the perps that appears like a message from Apple, with a link that takes you to a surprisingly convincing site, that then asks you to enter your pin. It's clear that not everyone falls for this sort of ploy, but enough do to make it worth the thief's time to steal it, and sell it for parts otherwise.

There are a lot of moving parts to this sort of crime- Apple don't make it easy for you to profit from a locked iPhone, and Android probably don't either. Someone able to write and maintain a convincing-looking website and forward recorded data, someone to take the phone, someone to manage the operation etc etc. Finding out who is stealing the phones would be very helpful in stopping this sort of thing from happening, by cracking the organisations involved.

I get the privacy arguments, but if this does actually help stop thieves, on balance I'm in favour.

[fakedang]

>I get the privacy arguments, but if this does actually help stop thieves, on balance I'm in favour.

News check, it doesn't. London Met has faced severe cuts over the past decade, it's focusing the core team on major crimes, while hiring a volunteer force for the petty stuff like these. The volunteer force can't be arsed to fight a fly, much less catch a gang of pickpockets.

[blipvert]

News check, the Met doesn’t police the underground - that’s the job of the British Transport Police, a completely different force.

[multjoy]

>while hiring a volunteer force

Nonsense. If you’re talking about specials then they have been kicking about since the late 1800s.

[fakedang]

The proportion of duties allocated to the volunteer force has increased much more than what it used to be back then.

I don't mind having the volunteers for duties such as traffic assistance and the like. But right now, it looks like a return to the Bow Street runners era is inevitable.

[jrm4]

If the people were collectively serious about stolen cell phones, the only solution that remotely makes sense is to lean on APPLE et al.

The things are nearly perfect tracking devices. It's absurd to not understand that Apple et al could easily (from a technical sense) eliminate cell phone theft.

[nebula8804]

Well they are trying arent they?

1. Locking phone with "find my" enabled so they can't be reset without enterring your passcode/password.

2. Pairing components to the phone so the phones physically cant be stripped down and components resold.

3. Recently adding a feature to allow you to require touchid/faceid to wipe the phone to prevent a situation where the phone and pin code/password is stolen.

What else should they do?

[jrm4]

Start with...

Once a phone is reported lost or stolen, have it record everything and post that somewhere. To the cops would be nice, but also might be overwhelm them.

No problem, make a subreddit or something and post everything there, etc.

Now I may be missing something from the above, but whatever I havent thought of, I'm certain Apple could. I'm certain Apple could come up with a protocol that would make a stolen iPhone 100% useless, to the point that it would be a near perfect deterrent and thefts would go to basically zero.

But I'm also certain that Apple will not do that because $$$$$.

[nebula8804]

>Once a phone is reported lost or stolen, have it record everything and post that somewhere. To the cops would be nice, but also might be overwhelm them.

I believe you can track the device using the "Find My" app. It utilizes the Airtag network instead of cell towers so does not need cell reception but does need the phone to have battery charge.

>No problem, make a subreddit or something and post everything there, etc.

What are you ever talking about?

>Now I may be missing something from the above, but whatever I havent thought of, I'm certain Apple could. I'm certain Apple could come up with a protocol that would make a stolen iPhone 100% useless, to the point that it would be a near perfect deterrent and thefts would go to basically zero.

The protocol is the above. In the above scenario, the phone can't be unlocked meaning if someone tries to sell it all you need to do is power it on and see the "icloud LOCKED" message with no recourse other than to unlock it.

Furthermore the parts are useless since they are tied to that device. So the only value is the metal scrap or maybe you could resell the case and or parts that haven't been serialized yet (battery?). I know the screen, face/touch id sensor and a few other parts are serialized.

>But I'm also certain that Apple will not do that because $$$$$.

Pretty sure Samsung/Android does not have all of those security features above so I guess they are even more greedy? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[andylynch]

Not much, especially since much of this makes repair etc more difficult. Although maybe they could force iPhone in lost mode to loudly and constantly announce they miss their human, like a lost dog?

[nebula8804]

>It's absurd to not understand that Apple et al could easily (from a technical sense) eliminate cell phone theft.

I think the option to make the lost iphone make noise is there in the "find my" menu. So if you have another Apple device like a mac, watch, ipad etc. you can locate it using the airtag network (ie. not requiring cell service), have it make noise, or remote wipe it.

[pixxel]

> I get the privacy arguments, but if this does actually help stop thieves, on balance I'm in favour

Or adjust how one carries their phone/belongings in super busy high theft areas. I bet your wife is now going to act accordingly. Better this than offloading awareness to more intrusive government surveillance.