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Author
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Topic: My iPhone was snatched and stolen the other day
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
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Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-01-2013 04:31 PM
This type of crime is quite common, especially in large cities like New York City. Thieves specifically tend to target people using an Apple iPhone. The crime has been dubbed "apple picking."
A person making a call in a busy setting, like on a city street near a bus stop, isn't going to be paying quite so much attention to his surroundings. Same thing goes if the phone user is tapping away on some app or sending text messages. A thief may calmly walk up, snatch the phone right out of the caller's hands and take off running. Sounds like a good way for a klepto to catch a few bullets in his back here in Oklahoma, but I digress.
The most scary thing about apple picking is identity theft tends to be one of the motives. If you're on your phone when a thief steals it right out of your hands he won't have to get around a lock screen to get at any data on the phone or any "cloud" data accessible by the phone.
One must be careful about what kind of data is put into iCloud, Dropbox, etc. A thief can go on a buying spree if he grabs an Android phone with credit cards keyed into Google Wallet.
Most victims have only one option: calling their mobile phone carrier ASAP and having them turn off the phone ASAP.
With as much customer tracking that already goes on with mobile phones I think the phone carriers and police could do a lot more to bust criminals who steal phones. End user level security software, such as Lookout Mobile for Android phones, can only do so much. A thief can do a factory reset on the phone without fully booting it and anything the security software could do would be circumvented. OTOH, the phone hardware from what I understand is pretty unique. It shouldn't be hard for a phone carrier to tag a specific phone as being stolen and turn it into a digital hot potato shouting "I wanna go to jail" for whoever is holding it.
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