To think we will have to leave our phones at home

[Pippy2022]

Fraud and phone theft is becoming such a problem I think it will reach a point where it's safer to leave the smart phone at home, certainly when visiting a city like London.

Maybe smart phones will become such a risk - as in our lives are on them - we will stop using them and revert to bricks? Use tablets at home etc.

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

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).

So that's not very many then

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.

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It's like saying everyone gets stabbed in london

Wouldn’t say I was either.

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.

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.

I was referring to Greater london

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

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 😆

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.

Yes and you still added on just over 5 million.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is a bizarre thread. Over 9million people live in London. Do you think none of us shoud carry phones, or should we encourage Nokia to go back to making 3210s? I've never had my phone stolen - touch wood - and nor has anyone I know. We all live in London. Be aware of your surroundings, don't be careless with your belongings and be aware of how to mitigate fraud is the best you can do.

Technology is constantly improving and will continue to improve, a reminder of keeping belongings secure is the best way forward!

Fraud is not isolated to phones and in my world of fraud investigation it's quite low down on the list for victims of fraud and actually more secure than a lost purse due to 2fa and fingerprint/face recognition.

So although phone theft maybe high, being drained of your money, not so much!

High up is stolen cards, with the ability of contactless it's quicker and easier for the fraudster to rack up debt before the victim realises. Fortunately fraud monitoring systems are continuing to evolve to try and prevent fraud as much as possible!

Another one higher up than phone fraud is people being the victim of scams and receiving suspicious links and all we can continue to do is educate people on these types of things!

Keep your belongings secure, read up on scams, no need to set people back a decade or so!

I have one colleague that got knocked down by a Lime bike outside our office in the City. Doesn’t mean hundreds of thousands of people are being mown down by cyclists, does it?

I don't think this will happen because people use them to call work/home if trains are late, and most people sit on them on the train too

But I suppose that's not the topic of this thread- getting knocked down by a Lime bike. The phone snatching is being reported on in quite a few papers, London having some of the worst hotspots. However, tbh phone snatching is not as bad as some of the much more serious crimes of London in the past (when surprisingly it was a lot more of an interesting place to be) so unsure why the OP is getting worked up about it!