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.

I really wonder what some people picture when they think of London. It’s not all that different to the rest of the country! Just bigger with more theatres and skyscrapers 😂

Safety wise, it feels the same to me as when I go elsewhere.

I also think many will be lost. Not necessarily stolen at all. My dd is forever losing her phone on a night out.

Yeah, I do think there's a LOT of this- like people who don't separately password apps within their phone but then say they did because they're embarrassed to admit they didn't, or use same pin for phone and banking app etc. Also people lie about their phone being unlocked or writing passwords down as they're worried otherwise the bank won't admit liability and refund the defrauded amounts.

Same. I’ve switched now to Face ID for most of my banking and payments.

I don't think people will their phones et home no, but I've seen plenty of warnings about phone theft being on the rise and London is mentioned. Also videos of lads on bikes snatching them from someone's hands as they're being used, and I kind of assumed it's mostly tourists who are waving their phones around for selfies or whatever.

I won't be leaving my phone at home but also won't take minimise the fact that phone theft does happen and will just continue doing my usual precautions, not using phone while walking along street and using an enabling every security feature on my phone.

I will say though my friends daughter had her phone pinched and despite her having Face ID for her banking, they were able to access it. My bank is faceID too but after so many failed attempts I get prompted to manually enter my password and I wondered if in my friends daughter case, it's just a case of resetting passwords, which may not be too hard when the phone gives access everything needed to do so as her email was already logged in so they'd have access to all password reset links as well as OTP passcodes sent via text.

I know so so many people use easily guessable personal dates as passcodes too and in passwords too, I've guess passwords of some family and friends and they've been 😱 thinking im a genius but they all used their kids name and year of birth or other personal dates like wedding dates that make it very very easy to guess. I'd imagine it's even easier to guess if you've got access to a whole phones contents for more clues too.

Don't get a flashy phone worth hundreds of pounds, and keep it in your inside coat pocket as much as possible around other people. Problem solved.

Leave our phones at home? So we'll have to go back to using cash to pay for things, like we did in the twentieth century, even though many Mumsnetters want to ban cash, because of those tax-dodging tradesmen (who also don't clean the toilet after using it.)

Seriously, though, this is EXACTLY why I don't like the fact that we are made to be more and more dependent on our phones, and that they can contain so many things: your money, your Oyster card, your whole identity. Basically, if you keep too many things in it, and the phone is nicked, or runs out of battery power, you are screwed.

I resist using my phone for things like paying: I will stick to cash, and to plastic cards, thank you very much. I shall resist using my phone for such things for as long as I can. And yes, there is always the chance of it being stolen; street robbery is nothing new, as Charles Dickens knew, and wrote about.

I spend about £20 in cash in a whole year, and I don't pay for anything with my phone. There is a third way!

I am born and bred in East London if you will go around holding you phone out with ear phones in it is almost an invitation to be mugged and not just your phone. Same with very obvious expensive watches or anything of value. I don't think London is anymore dangerous just busy.

Don't come to London then. As someone who lives here (and has never had their phone nicked in 30 years), fewer tourists taking up all the pavements would be a boon.

The thieves also look for the more expensive phones. If you have a crappy phone they'll probably chuck it away further down the road and you'll get it back!

And luckily Charles Dickens didn't live during a time when we effectively walk around with a portal to our life savings. Banks and phones are not as secure as we like to imagine.

There is a wider issue here though, I am not sure how I'd cope if I lost my phone, even without banking apps on it.

Because you need your phone for two factor authentication.

My bank has recently decided that it will henceforth only use texts and in-app notifications for 2 factor authentication and won't use email. But if my phone goes, email is all I have!

Just don’t walk along with it in your hand and you’ll be fine. I have an Apple Watch so if I need to use maps I ask the watch to navigate and stick an earphone in so it reads me the instructions.

I also won’t be doing a wrist strap or lanyard as other posters have suggested as I would have concerns that if it’s grabbed whilst attached to you you’ll just get dragged with it. Really nasty injuries, especially if looped round your neck. I know a girl who years ago was stood on the side of the pavement and someone leaned out of a vehicle and grabbed her handbag and because it was over her shoulder she went with it and was dragged about 50ft up a gravel road resulting in awful injuries to her legs/arms/face which are still scarred to this day.

It does have one of the highest crime rates in the UK and crime is almost twice as high as in some counties. The people who paint it as excessively crime-ridden are annoying, but so are the people who like to pretend it's really no different from anywhere else.

Maybe never leave the house OP as there is a risk of bad stuff happening?

So you can't have a life outside if you don't have your phone glued to you? How addicted and reliant are you? Poor things.

Just suggesting that people leave their phones at home seems to cause a great of hostility in people. 🤔

If you use Google Authenticator for your 2FA codes, they are backed up and can be restored to any phone via your Google account. I have kept my previous phone mostly so that it has this app and the codes on it. Maybe other authenticator apps do the same thing. (Google didn't do this at first, but it now works really well.)

Also note that most (but not all - cough gov.uk cough) sites give you between 1 and 20 "last-chance" backup codes when you sign up for 2FA. You are meant to keep these codes somewhere really secure, like on a piece of paper with your passport and birth certificate. You can use them codes once each if the 2FA app isn't working or available.

This is basic security though. I think people need to take a bit of personal responsibility

We don't need to leave them at home, but I never walk around a city with a phone in my hand, and it baffles me that so many people do. I never take my phone out on the Tube - I don't need it. Phone stays safely in bag, which I hold onto carefully. People just need to use a bit of common sense.

Because that’s the whole point of a mobile phone. People just need to secure them correctly and buy phones with proper security features.

Suggesting it's NECESSARY to leave phones at home to protect ourselves causes increduality and, in my case, laughter. It's such a ridiculous over the top response.

It's the kind of thing my (completely paranoid) PIL would say.

Or people are taking a sensible approach to risk rather than making their lives harder?
Not everyone is such a wuss.

No, that's daft.
Store it in an inside pocket out of sight. Don't keep it in a rear pocket in jeans or half hanging out of a front pocket.
And don't wander down the street with it in your hand where people riding past on bikes or walking past can grab it easily and make off with it.