The unstoppable rise of phone theft | Hacker News Reader

The unstoppable rise of phone theft

theguardian.com

They are organised gangs of career criminals.

The law needs to be far, far tougher on repeat offenders - we shouldn't be releasing criminals who have already demonstrated they will reoffend.

It's a power-law distribution - there's a lot of crime, but only a few criminals responsible for it. That small group of hardcore criminals commits 80-90% of the offences.

I’m an American living in South Korea and am always shocked to see how locals will just leave their phones unattended — on the table in the restaurant or cafe while they order or use the washroom.

Remarkably, theft seems to be non-existent.

Here’s hoping it stays that way.

It’s nice to live in a world with no crime, right?

There are plenty of countries like this.

It can be like that anywhere. The trick is to have more empathy for victims than for criminals.

point to note about country/cultures that are generaly safe and free from theft is this: those cultures have elements that sit much higher in there value measurements than mere material possesions,and they demonstrate that casualy and without consious thought all the time interestingly there are similar behaviors here in Nova Scotia,where people (some) do not lock there doors,a point of honor bieng actualy unsble to do so for lack of a key,very common to see a truck running,while the owner has left it to go do some small task I left my house in Halifax once to travel to the US for a few weeks,and got back to see that I had left the front door OPEN,just the screen door and my les paul black beuty framed perfectly for all to see, leaning up at the end of the hall,1028 Robie st Halifax,NS,sold on a few years ago To rieterate,its our rampant materialism and endless advertising operating as the our "cultural"(ha!) center not bad people

I live in London and recently visited Japan. I can’t remember the last time I felt so relaxed - not having to worry about anything being stolen, or my safety when out late at night.

I’ve had enough of this city and want to move. Japan doesn’t have this problem - the question we should be asking ourselves is why.

Searching for explanation, I wouldn't focus on recent trends. Continentals have been remarking on the high crime rate in urban England for centuries. As for Japan, the Tokugawa regime (1603-1868) was a draconian police state and the tradition of heavy social control has continued in various forms. It would be more interesting to examine urban societies that have a low crime rate along with more relaxed social control.

So what makes a phone more valuable than a pebble to the end destination? Recycling?

We tracked my daughter's phone, stolen from her purse, to a home, and sent the address, with street map photos of the home and front stairs to the police.

Crickets.

Unlike say a Rolex it's easier to jack a phone.

Edit and yeah everything is on my phone I'm not even carrying a wallet so I'd be fucked.

I figured things like Find My and activation locks put an end to a lot of phone theft. I guess thieves found a way.

Something like Watch is harder to get, but can’t be tracked.

I would argue that a watch can also be tracked but not in the sense that a phone can.

Assuming a Rolex gets stolen and reported as stolen, it can never be serviced by any reputable watch repair shop because it will be confiscated once that happens. In the case of Rolex, they will get serviced BY Rolex. Mechanical watches do need servicing otherwise they wont function properly. So even though watches cannot be tracked to the same level of fidelity as say, a phone with an antenna, it will likely still pop up eventually.

You can also make the argument that "Find My" and "activation locks" type stuff just means that the parts are going to get scrapped and sold. That could likely happen in the watch case too, so those features were never a silver bullet.

There are thousands of watch shops that are not "official rolex" repair shops, but are very high quality and will never do a background check lol. And a rolex really only NEEDS a service every 10 years or so.

> There are thousands of watch shops that are not "official rolex" repair shops, but are very high quality and will never do a background check

How do they get official parts that need to be replaced on the watch? Rolex is super tight supply chain wise about their parts for this very reason that they want you to keep everything in house. So I suppose they are replacing parts on the watch with aftermarket?

How often do you need to replace parts on an automatic watch? After you get into a car accident with one? Seems unheard of to me unless rolexes in particular are made of paper gears.

>they will get serviced BY Rolex.

Gray market sales exist and Rolex will not service anything bought through the gray market, rather than directly from an AD. This leads to a lot of non-Rolex watchmakers who can work on Rolex. If they also do some check to see if they happened to be registered or stolen, I’m not sure.

I think it would be a bigger issue for less popular watches with more complicated movements, where the local watchmaker would be in over their head.

> Rolex will not service anything bought through the gray market, rather than directly from an AD.

Do you have a source for this? I was not under the impression that this was the case. I know they won't service any watch that's been altered or modified from factory specs.

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