To think we will have to leave our phones at home

What do you mean? People stealing it out if your hands/pocket etc?
You quote London stats but what are the stats for other cities? I imagine similar numbers for places like Paris and Madrid.
People rely on phones for transport (railcard is on an app), navigation and paying for things, plus communication. People aren't going to give that up.

There are different ways to represent statistics OP. 1 in 250 risk for Downs syndrome seems alarmingly high, until you look at percentages, and all of a sudden its only 0.4%, which sounds nowhere near as bad.

Same as phone being stolen every 6 minutes - looks quite a lot, until you realise that over the course of the year that's only 1% of total London population, and that's not even taking 20 mil visitors into account. But no one's gonna click on an article that says 1%, so 1 every 6 minutes it is.

You have to think, do I actually need a bank app on my phone if I have another device at home I can have the app on, how often do people actually use these bank apps when out and about.

It takes a fingerprint and occasionally a passcode to get into my banking app even when the phone is unlocked. And a fingerprint to get into Google wallet too.

We've got fingerprint access on messages and email as they may contain sensitive messages, things like security codes for 2fa.

And obviously don't display messages on the lock screen.

Etc... there's lots of pretty simple ways of making a phone less vulnerable.

And we don't have any banking apps - we don't need them when we're out of the house, we have a separate iPad which we use only for banking etc, don't do any surfing on it.

"In Westminster, for example, there were 92.29 per 1000 of the population, that is pretty high."

But that's a misleading statistic.

The population of Westminster is actually one of the lowest of all the London boroughs.

But it has a very high number of people passing through all day every day, for work and tourism. Probably one of the highest of all the London boroughs.

So yes, if you are comparing the number of phones stolen in Westminster to the population of Westminster, then it will appear high.

A better statistic would be number of phones reported stolen vs total number of people in the borough at any point during the day - but you'll never get a reliable figure for that.

And it wouldn't serve to instil panic in anyone, so no one in the press would be remotely interested.

Yes, many on a thread on Mumsnet, who's demographic will be typically more sensible, more cautious and therefore more unlikely to have a phone taken from them.

Yes and you still added on just over 5 million.

But your anecdote doesn't align with mine, I was born and grew up in a 'vibrant' part of West and the South London and my part has been gentrified so I'm sure the crimes are nothing like they were when I was younger but still DH and I still work in central London, we both have family in London as we are both from there and between us family and friends, colleagues we know of 7 incidents of crimes ranging from phone theft, bag theft, mugging and threatening behaviour in the last 3 years. Please don't tell me my experiences are not normal.

It’s weird because the Stab capital of Europe was for a long time Glasgow, and although people did make comments here and there about it - I don’t remember such a great moral panic about how stabby and dangerous it was. Or maybe there was but I just didn’t notice it since I’m from there 😆

You should probably recount. You’re about 6m people out.

I was referring to Greater london

DH had his motorbike stolen from the locked car park of out first London flat within about 30 mins of parking up. It was do f half a mile away because they couldn’t get it started. But neither of is has had anything else taken in 25 years.

15 million?? What areas does that include?

Phone theft across the whole of London a London that has a population of 9.6 million last time I checked and if you only use the population of London as your reference you maybe underestimating your risk of having your phone stolen or overestimating the risk of getting your phone stolen. I would look at the details statistics before you were blasé about your phone usage in 'London'.

In Westminster, for example, there were 92.29 per 1000 of the population, that is pretty high.

Wouldn’t say I was either.

It's like saying everyone gets stabbed in london

No, this is normal if you take reasonable care.

I lived in London for over ten years and most of my friends still live there and I know only one person who has had their phone stolen. It was in Blackfriars.

I had my phone out sometimes in London but I’ve never had my phone (or anything else) stolen. I had it sensibly put away in zipped pockets or bags when I wasn’t using it, the same as I’d do everywhere, but I wouldn’t say I was particularly cautious.

I recall one friend from about ten years ago who had their bike stolen too. He was new to the UK, and I think it was unlocked outside of his (secure entry) flat in Clapham.

Many people on this thread are saying similar. Stats show the vast majority are not getting their phone stolen. It’s not “lucky” not to get anything stolen in London.

.

So that's not very many then

The last phone I had nicked in London was in about 2007, a Nokia brick, and I'd fallen asleep on the tube holding it.

(I've lived in London for 22 years).

Or its just not as common as people think, given 15 million live in london

It takes a fingerprint and occasionally a passcode to get into my banking app even when the phone is unlocked. And a fingerprint to get into Google wallet too.

Don’t you have secondary password protection on your banking apps? I have to Face ID to get into mine even when the phone is unlocked.

Any evidence that this actually happens to Joe Blogs?

Yes, I'm sure you are right, but to say, 'never' surely depends on how long you have lived in London, how privileged you are and were. If you grew up in the area of West London I did there was a high chance you would be mugged and a lot worse! It is wholly contextual and using such a broad geographical area for the statistic in here means that you wouldn't know where the risk is higher and the risk lower in 'London'.

I mean the OP's proposition is not workable for many of us. Two of the people I know who had phoned stolen whilst walking back from a meeting, had to take this phone calls. Lessons learned and headphones are now used but they aren't as clear.

Except that the thief can put on aeroplane mode which will block the signal wiping your iPhone, unless you’ve been through some fairly non- obvious steps to change your settings. Although in fact I think that may only work for Find My iPhone, not for wiping it, so you may want to double check that.

Plus it took the thieves less than 2 minutes to lock my colleague out of his phone, so might be a good idea to practise a bit to make sure your time is eg sub 1 minute (bearing in mind if you’ve actually just been mugged you’ll probably be in shock and take a few seconds to compose yourself).

Or you could think about accepting the fact that your assumptions may be wrong and your phone really isn’t as safe as you believe. Which is exactly what I did after my colleague’s phone was nicked and I realised I’d been massively naive/ignorant.