Why is it seemingly impossible to stop phone thieves?
The huge market for stolen smartphones means that thieves will continue to snatch them, but is there anything we can do to put a stop to this crime wave?
By Matthew Sparkes
23 June 2025
London is a phone-theft hotspot
Jeff Blackler/Shutterstock
Even if you have never had your smartphone stolen, you probably know someone who has. In London, 80,000 phones were stolen last year alone. And as victims of phone theft know, while the loss of a pricey gadget can sting, the dreary administrative slog in replacing a device that runs your entire life can, in some ways, be worse. So why can’t we stop phone thieves – and is there a better way to protect your personal data?
The answer is partly down to the numerous ways that criminals profit from stolen phones, but it is also about technology firms prioritising usability over security and international governments failing to arrive at a global solution. In short, it’s complicated.
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Some victims place the blame with the police for failing to catch phone thieves. When Nav Dugmore from Wolverhampton, UK, travelled to London for the first time, she had her iPhone snatched seconds after leaving Euston train station, a major transport hub. “It traumatised me, if I’m honest,” she says. “There needs to be something else put in place to stop them being able to use your phone, and I think the police need to be doing more.”
London’s Metropolitan Police told her that several other thefts had happened at the same spot in the previous hour and admitted there was “no chance” of recovery. Dugmore had the phone’s face-recognition security setting turned on, but the device was unlocked when it was grabbed and the thief quickly spent £300 in various shops around London. By far the biggest blow was the loss of photos of her three children growing up, she says, which weren’t backed up.
When a phone like Dugmore’s is stolen, it enters a conveyor belt of crime, with multiple possible destinations. The simplest route is the thief simply selling the handset on, often to be resold in another country. Phones can be sold for parts to unscrupulous repair shops, too. Daniel Green, an inspector at the City of London Police, says phone snatchers have links to gangs that export the devices, essentially smuggling them out the same way as drugs are smuggled in. “What we’ve found suggests boxes and boxes of phones going out [of the country],” he says.
