How valuable is your smartphone? For the average person, their personal mobile is the gateway to their social life, their financial matters or even their home. Losing your phone is actually a big deal.
That is why it is so concerning that phone theft looks like it may be on the rise.
In London, for example, it has reached problem levels, with an average of 192 phones a day reported as snatched in England’s capital city last year. That doesn’t include the device thefts that haven’t been reported because people don’t bother telling the police.
It has become an underworld industry worth £50 million (€58 million) a year.
The City of London recently began spray painting fake blue plaques on to pavements in spots where phones have been stolen, in a bid to raise awareness of the risk.
Last month, Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne found that out the hard way when he was mugged in London. He was in the city to celebrate St Patrick’s Day and had his phone out looking at Google Maps when he was mugged for the device. The TD suffered a fractured shoulder in the incident
Illegal escooters and ebikes – the favoured method of transport for the thieves – have been seized in an attempt to stem the tide.
Could the same thing begin happening here? Between January 2023 and July 2024, more than 6,100 mobile phones were reported stolen, according to published Garda figures. Not quite at the London level, but phone security experts think it is only a matter of time.
It is not just a matter of the value of the device that is at stake here. The data that is on your phone is probably more valuable, particularly if you use the phone for online banking or other financial transactions, and protect all the data with the same passcode.
It was personal experience that prompted James O’Sullivan to set up mobile security app Nuke From Orbit, which offers a way to cut off access to bank cards and financial apps and create new passwords for critical services in the event that your phone is stolen.
On a night out in Dublin, O’Sullivan realised his phone was missing shortly after paying for a drink at a bar. But he wasn’t overly concerned initially; although it was a pain to have the phone go missing, he thought all his data was protected with his passcode and facial scan.
It was only later that he realised his phone had been compromised, probably through someone “shoulder surfing” to spot his code as he used it throughout the night. By that stage, important access codes and passwords had been changed and he had lost access to his device to perform a remote wipe, leaving the thieves free to poke around his financial apps. There were some unauthorised transactions, and although O’Sullivan eventually recovered money, it took time and effort and caused a considerable amount of inconvenience.
“Most of the value in a phone theft isn’t the phone, it’s data on it,” he explains. “An average phone will go for maybe €300 in product value, whereas the average value of the theft and the data is about €8,000.”
Rather than removing data from the device, the next best thing was to contact the services directly. That includes financial apps, card providers, your mobile provider and other services, and speed is of the essence.
The phone companies have taken some action. You can remotely wipe the phone through an online portal. But these measures last only as long as your passwords are not changed.
For example, IOS now has Stolen Device Protection built in, an optional feature that stops your PIN from being used to make major changes to the device’s settings – such as changing access codes – when you are out of familiar locations for an hour. That gives you 60 minutes to secure your account yourself. But it is a race against time.
Nuke From Orbit is hoping to buy people that time. The service will with one click secure your email and social media accounts, alert your card provider that your account may be compromised, secure other accounts that may be logged in on your phone, and block your sim to stop the phone communicating with the network. It securely stores minimal data.
“The two problems I faced was when my phone was stolen in the venue in real time. I couldn’t do anything there and then, even though I knew it had gone. The second thing was when I could react, it took me ages to talk to all individual services,” says O’Sullivan. “We centralise that and make it into one click. The other key thing is that a lot of people think, well, if my phone gets stolen, I’m not at risk. I can use the remote erase tool. Great in principle, and it works really well for lost phones. But if your phone’s been stolen, that’s a deliberate act. They’re going to know what they’re doing; so it’s going to be in aeroplane mode, and they’re going to change the password.”
Nuke From Orbit allows you to log into your account through another device to nuke all the accounts you have authorised it to contact on your behalf. If you don’t have another device, you can use contacts that you have added to your network to do it for you – once you can supply the unique pin you have used to secure access, of course.
Currently operating a waiting list, Nuke From Orbit is planning to open more widely later this year. The first year is free, with the company promising a small annual fee to protect your accounts from then on. The eventual goal is to partner with payments companies and banks to protect their customers, moving the cost from the consumer to the corporate.
The service is relying on building partnerships with providers. That’s a slow process, but O’Sullivan is confident he can do it. In the meantime, the service is slowly building, and access to Nuke From Orbit requires a referral code.
Until it is more widely available, there are some simple steps you can take to protect yourself.
Securing your device’s passcode is the first step, as is using different logins for different security functions on your phone. “Our research says 72 per cent of people use the same or similar pins,” O’Sullivan explains.
He suggests using two different PINs, and keeping one solely for unlocking your phone.
“People can’t remember 10, but you can remember two. That mitigates most issues,” he says.
[ Five security steps you need to take now on your phoneOpens in new window ]
Five tips for protecting your phone and the data on it
Keep your phone out of sight
We are all so used to using our phones in public that this one requires a behaviour change. But keeping your phone out of sight is the best defence against an opportunistic snatching on the street.
Use a lanyard
Because people do sometimes need to use their phones while out in public, some are turning to old-school lanyards to make it more difficult to grab from their hands.
Protect your pin and passwords
Treat your phone like your bank card; it often has just as much financial data on it. Be careful who is around you when you enter your phone’s passcode.
Use at least two passcodes
If your phone supports the use of different passcodes for unlocking your phone and accessing apps, make sure they are unique.
Report it
If your phone is lost or stolen, don’t wait to report it. Alert your phone provider, report the device as lost using the device finders on both IOS and Apple, and report it to An Garda Síochána. You may not recover the phone, but the quicker you get on it, the better chance you have of not losing your data.
