> Is "snatching a phone and running off" a common enough problem in some regions that this is worth having?

Yes absolutely

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/phone-london-snatch-9.7204104

Waterluvian 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thanks! Given this was CBC, my jaw hit the floor when I saw London. I live 20 mins from London, Ontario and 70k thefts in a year would be _insane_. Then I realized it was about London, U.K. and my jaw only hit the table. 70k is still insane, though.

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clort 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Is it really insane? That is less than 200 per day, in a city of 15 million people.. a single gang of 20 thieves could likely manage that! The real question is, how does this compare to other cities of this size and demographics?

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iamnothere an hour ago | parent [-]

Why compare demographics?

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pavel_lishin 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

I would expect a city that's mostly retirement communities to have less snatch-and-run thefts than a city where tourists make up a large part of the population at any given time.

	▲	iamnothere 16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Interestingly, Tokyo has a much larger population than London with a very low crime rate. I can’t find specific numbers on stolen phones (only lost phone statistics are published) but robberies/muggings are 0.04 per 1,000 yearly versus London’s 2.83 per 1,000. Seoul has a similar rate to Tokyo, 0.4 to 0.5.
	▲	aliclark 18 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Retired people a probably quite easy targets in this scenario.

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frereubu an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The number is too high, but dropping: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdx4762znr6o

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skobes 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Even the CBC thinks of London, England before London, Ontario.

	▲	Waterluvian 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Poor London. (Ontario.) (Canada.)

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throwaway27448 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why bother stealing iPhones? Is it just for the scrap/recycle->repair value?

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mapmeld 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's also a scam where they contact the owner from abroad, offering to return it, claiming they're an innocent trying to activate a used phone they spent their last dollar on, or threatening the original user into unlocking it. They will say that they're hackers, connected to criminals in your home city, using your name and recent photos to say that they're going to expose your text messages. Anything to get an unlock.

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hparadiz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They send them to countries where they aren't locked or break it down for parts.

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throwaway27448 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> They send them to countries where they aren't locked

iphones will remain locked regardless of what country they're in. I presume you're talking about states who are seemingly unwilling to pursue/prosecute claims of theft?

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kotaKat 2 hours ago | parent [-]

there's still a fairly lucrative parts stripping market and there are extreme efforts that are used to "unlock" locked devices - it has been known in the Chinese marketplace that you could get paired chips to do SMD rework with a "clean" set of identifiers. they'll swap the SOC, the flash, and the wireless all for a few bucks.

older iOS devices as well are also vulnerable to having their syscfg rewritten via exploits, so you can "clean" a locked device that way as well with a good set of serials. Apple Watches are a hot one for this.

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hparadiz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

On top of that a sizable percentage of theft victims don't even bother to report it stolen.

	▲	throwaway27448 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You can't activate the hardware with a different ID regardless. It requires the owner to relinquish ownership. I'm sure this is different with different components of course depending on how granularly apple tracks their hardware—but the whole package certainly can't be activated.

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bigyabai 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can send them to Chinese chop-shops and still turn a decent buck.