London Phone Snatching - Advice

104 replies

Stardust35 · 16/09/2024 09:45

Hi, I'm planning a solo day trip to London in a few weeks. There are a few things I want to do there, and I have a rare day off work coming up so wanted to take myself on a day out! I used to love going to London and visited friends there often but haven't been in a few years.

I keep hearing about phone snatching by criminals on mopeds, and am a bit worried how to prevent this. I'm likely to need my phone out a a lot for directions on google maps as I want to visit a few different places during the day. How common actually is this and does anyone have any way of minimising the risk? Or am I overreacting! Thanks x

OP posts:

Theyhadalovelytime · 16/09/2024 18:53

It's the phones in people's back pockets that completely confound me!

urbanbuddha · 16/09/2024 19:15

The “idiots pockets” my old neighbour used to call them.

crockofshite · 16/09/2024 20:21

Bemusedandconfusedagain · 16/09/2024 17:56

I know someone who did this and when her phone got snatched she got dragged along the pavement a way before they let go. Poor woman was in a real state physically. Personally I'd rather someone got my phone than risk that.

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Ah, good point.

Pookerrod · 16/09/2024 20:52

Abouttimeforanamechange · 16/09/2024 18:49

On average 143 phones were stolen per day in London in 2023. Most common borough being Westminster

Westminster contains a lot of crowded tourist locations and large stores. I bet if one could see phone thefts, bag thefts, pickpocketing incidents plotted on a map, they'd be clustered around Oxford Street, Covent Garden etc.

(I once worked in a West End store, We were forever telling customers to zip up their bags and not carry their wallets sticking out of their back pockets. And also as this was peak IRA time, not to put a large bag down somewhere and wander off to look at something the other side of the shop floor.)

That’s actually a lot less than I thought it would be considering there’s probably around a couple of million people out in public at any given point of the day.

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