If you’ve made it through a year without losing your phone, you’re beating the odds. That’s according to statistics from the mobile security experts at Lookout, who say their phone-finding app locates a lost or stolen phone every 3.5 seconds. Lookout surveyed its 15 million customers to find out where most phones are lost, and learned that coffee shops, offices, bars and restaurants top the list. In the United States, the average person loses a smartphone once a year, but of course many of those phones are recovered. In fact, Lookout says the worldwide value of recovered phones was $2.5 billion last year. (Photo: landairsea.com)
U.S. law enforcement officials say that smartphone theft is a growing urban problem that often leads to violence, and they have asked the Federal Communications Commission to take action. A group of 17 city police chiefs has written to the FCC asking the agency to require mobile operators to use IMEI numbers to shut down a phone if a user requests it. In the UK, operators cooperate so that a person who loses a phone can deactivate it with one phone call, making it impossible for a thief to activate the phone with a new SIM card on a different network in the UK. US police chiefs believe a similar system in this country would drastically reduce phone theft over time.
Not surprisingly, US cities with high crime rates also top the list of cities where phones most often turn up missing. Detroit and Oakland are among the top 20 most dangerous US cities, and are both in the top 10 cities for phone loss, according to Lookout.
Want your news faster? Follow me on Twitter.
