Smartphones Driving Violent Crime Across US 204
alphadogg writes "Incidents of cellphone theft have been rising for several years and are fast becoming an epidemic. IDG News Service collected data on serious crimes in San Francisco from November to April and recorded 579 thefts of cellphones or tablets, accounting for 41 percent of all serious crime. In just over half the incidents, victims were punched, kicked or otherwise physically intimidated for their phones, and in a quarter of robberies, users were threatened with guns or knives. This isn't just happening in tech-loving San Francisco, either. The picture is similar across the United States. A big reason for such thefts, until recently, is that there had been little to stop someone using a stolen cellphone. Reacting to pressure from law enforcement and regulators, the U.S.'s largest cellphone carriers agreed early last year to establish a database of stolen cellphones."
Re:But what can you do to prevent this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Typical criminal scum... (Score:4, Informative)
I witnessed one iPhone theft, a snatch and run from a bus. The owner set off after the thief but quickly returned to ask the bus driver (me!) to call the cops as the thief had a machete, and the phone owner very sensibly valued his skin more than the phone.
However, instead of just walking into the night before Security and the cops arrived, the thief went to the nearby train station. The security guards there, having been warned by my radio call, promptly apprehended the idiot and he's now doing time for assault with a deadly weapon. Oh, and for theft of an iPhone...
Think about the value of the stuff you carry around with you. If you're a man, maybe a nice watch, maybe some cash in your wallet (but less and less these days) and... your expensive smartphone. A woman might add some jewellery to that list, but probably not much day to day. So what else is a thief going to steal? Especially because there's less point in breaking and entering these days, since the old standbys of VCRs or DVD players are now worth almost nothing, and big-screen TVs are hernia producers!
Re:Serious crime? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Stupid situation (Score:5, Informative)
If the carriers had a service for the owner to remotely brick and unbrick the phone as well as transfer ownership (with the ability to brick) to another person this would be a non-issue.
Brick or brick not. There is no unbrick.
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I live in an unbrick house.
Re:Stupid situation (Score:5, Informative)
The word the OP is looking for is "oligopoly". That's a monopolistic hold on a market by a small number of companies, but more than 1.
Linky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly [wikipedia.org]