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back to article 1.3 million phones found down back of the sofa in UK

More than half of mobiles reported stolen in the UK later turn up down the back of the sofa or somewhere similar, according to the UK Home Office. Last week we asked the Home Office what happens to the 1.3 million handsets that they had told us were reported stolen, but don't appear in the official crime figures. Now we know …

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  1. bluesxman

    letters and/or digits

    "It occurs to us that some people might be claiming for phones without reporting them stolen"

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need a crime number to submit an insurance claim for something that claim was stolen?

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    1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      You took the words..

      ..right out of my mouth.

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    2. It'sa Mea... Mario
      Reply Icon

      daft requirements (like titles for forum posts)

      This is also exactly what I was going to comment on.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More than half of mobiles reported stolen in the UK

    Considering More than half of mobiles reported stolen in the uk are done so to claim on the insurance because the user wants a new phone, that's hardly surprising.

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  3. frank ly
    Jobs Horns

    Strange Things Do Happen

    "We weren't at all clear what that entailed, except that no-one was dressing up as an iPhone."

    A quick look at this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqx3R8qmqlo

    and the related videos will show that many people actually do and it's been going on for a few years. (There is no suggestion that the people in these videos had stolen the iPhones or made any fraudulent representation of any kind.)

    Icon: The Devil made them do it.

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  4. Ken Smith 1
    Thumb Down

    You can set most phones

    to ask for a PIN when the SIM card is changed then the phone is powered back on, so why is this something new?

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    1. Andrew Culpeck
      Reply Icon

      No

      I think you will find that it is the sim card that askes for the PIN and the proposal is a PIN for the phone.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Coat

        On my phones...

        ... I have had options for *both* the handset and the SIM.

        I suppose having it *only* doing it when the SIM is changed would mean people wouldn't have to type the PIN in each time they turn it on (not that this should be a great issue for the majority of folks), but then again if someone stole it and were happy using your SIM, it could mean big bills for contract-users.

        Mine's the one with the cost-£30-when-new PAYG phone in the pocket.

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    2. Dale 3
      Reply Icon

      @You can set most phones

      It is something new because almost nobody knows about the existing facility and of those who do, almost nobody uses it.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    The Real Crime

    If you ask me, it seems that the majority of mobile phone crime involves carriers that charge you $700 or more for certain phones and still claim that they are subsidizing you.

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  7. Harry
    Unhappy

    "of those who do, almost nobody uses it."

    Possibly because it does it at the wrong time.

    Mine has an option to display a message when it starts -- so I could put my name and maybe even my landline number, in case its found by somebody honest (a few of which genuinely DO exist) who would be happy to tell me they had my phone.

    It also has an option to require a PIN so that if somebody finds it, they can't make lots of calls to exhaust the credit.

    Unfortunately, it doesn't display my message until AFTER the pin is displayed. So if I use both options, they won't see the message that would tell them whose phone it is.

    Anyway, to perform its intended purpose, the PIN needs to be asked before making a call, and at the moment it only does that if the phone was switched off before being lost. So, I've got to know in advance that I intend to lose my phone, and remember to switch it off before doing so.

    All in all, some good ideas but badly thought through such that they don't really achieve what was intended, let alone what is actually needed.

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  8. John Robson Silver badge

    Surely this is a UK article

    Don't necessarily mind US articles using American selling, but really...

    "a tag which bleeps if your handset is more than a few meters away,"

    How do you measure how many measuring devices there are between you and a handset I wonder?

    Does a multimeter count for several?

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  9. jason 7
    Happy

    Phones are the new Ray-Bans

    Back in the day when I was a motor claims handler (1990s) every car theft or car that was broken into had a pair of Ray-Bans in the glovebox. You knew before you read the claim form what was going to be listed as stolen.

    I suspect Ray-Bans biggest customers were the insurance companies.

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  10. TWB

    Lost mine for a month

    I once lost my work mobile at home for a month - everyone said phone it up - I pointed out that I had switched it off so that my wife would not get woken+grumpy at night. It eventually turned up in her knicker drawer......

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  11. David Beck

    Samsung Mobile Tracker

    My old Samsung z720 (lovely phone) had the option to send SMS messages to designated numbers if the SIM was changed. Unfortunately the option was protected by the phone password, so it would only catch the culprit that changed the SIM before breaking the password.

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