Assuming the thief want both the phone and the data (because data / your identity is very valuable these days).
Anything worth protecting uses 2FA and they wouldn’t have my Yubikey so … yeah, I’d be fine. Annoyed, but fine.
100% fucked.
Annoyed as all hell, but not fucked at all. The phone locks itself if snatched away. A phone call, and a brief access to android lock later and now the thief has a worthless paperweight. This can happen in a matter of seconds if theft protection works, or a couple of minutes while I find someone who would lend me their phone, faster if I have my smartwatch with me. Carriers on my country also disable IMEIs across all carriers and on the whole territory when phones are reported stolen. Everything on my phone is backed up elsewhere, so I won’t actually lose much, and my data would be fairly protected. They could disassemble it and try to decrypt the storage, but good luck with that if they are not law enforcement or doesn’t have the fancy forensic toys.
Not a data target, but my wife was pick pocketed in Paris a few months ago. We were boarding a train to the airport and somebody yanked it from her pocket as she boarded with her hands full.
We both have iPhones. Within five minutes while sitting on the train I remotely locked her phone then wiped it. Never saw any fallout that could be attributed to somebody having access to it.
I’ve wiped my phone more than a few times. Hurts bad.
Not a data target
Someone managed to obtained a fradulent copy of my mother’s ID. We’re practically just “normies”. People think “I’m not important enough to be targeted” then identity theft happens.
This was not even from a stolen phone, it was probably from some data breach. But imagine the damage that can be done from a stolen phone.
So, the identity thief convinced the banks to add their phone number (probably a burner), but somehow they failed to do any money transfers. Then they did a sim swap by just walking into a store, but the other lines got notified and within an hour, my mother got a new sim and removed her name from the authorized account holders leaving only my dad’s name in there.
I have no idea how they didn’t manage to steal any money, I guess they didn’t think their victims would react this quickly?
Edit: And also the law enforcement is fucking useless. They said they’ll “investigate”, but haven’t heard a word back in a year. The only reason to ever file a repprt is for the police report, don’t expect the perpetrators to ever get caught.
If they somehow managed to get it to not auto lock after 60 sec then I’d have to change passwords on 3 different emails.
Worst thing they would have is my browser history.
They can’t transfer any money without my fingerprint or password to the app.
Real phone in my bag hotspotting for a burner I pull out in public is how I did things when I was paranoid.
Is this a thing, like are most thiefs not interested in selling the hardware?
To answer the question: Id be pretty fckd i guess. Passwords are gated behind a password manager but my E-Mail would be exposed.
May be overthinking it a bit, the typical opportunistic thief that would try to snatch a phone and run is just looking to see what bank apps you have installed. Usually they are looking to see if you have something like Venmo installed so they can go into your app and send themselves your money. Venmo of course will say that money was transferred from your phone so it was clearly you and there’s nothing to dispute, hence you’re fucked.
These type of thieves already know to try to keep the screen unlocked long enough to do that, afterwards they usually just toss the phone somewhere. The phone hardware itself isn’t that useful while it’s still locked down and tied to someone’s Google/Apple account, most phones are firmware locked in that fashion. Sure they could wait it out until you finally remove the phone from your Google/Apple account but every time they check it’ll keep giving out their location, not really worth it.
Nowadays current Android phones do have theft protection to prevent loss in a snatch attempt e.g. my Android has settings to auto lock it if it detects fast movement while unlocked, and it also auto locks if the entire phone itself has been set offline/airplane mode for a while.
Hardware is good, but why not have both?
Imei Blacklisting makes them not very valuable anyways. Data worth a lot more.
Btw someone got a fradulent copy of my mother’s ID somehow. Like not a “fake id”, an actual real government issued ID, but fraudulently obtained mailed to some random address. They started trying to access money in banks, then tried sim swapping [edit: The sim swapping actually worked. Calls from my mother’s phone stopped working and other lines in the same family plan got a notification, so my parents went to the phone company and removed my mother’s name from the account and replaced the sim. As for the bank accounts, they closed and reopened the accounts with new account numbers and they had a note in there to double check the picture (which is still of my mother’s) and address on there (which the fradulent ID had a different address). They never managed to take any money. But it wasted a lot of time.]
So like, its a thing that happens. People think “identity theft won’t happen to me, I’m not important enough”, then someone steals your identity. These things never gets investigated. They said “we’ll investigate” but like a year later, not a word from those “investigators”.Only if you steal from the rich do any investigation gets done. They don’t care about the average person.
TLDR: Protect your data. Identity theft is actually common.
I don’t have a smartphone. I don’t often go out with my phone. Nobody want to steal my phone. But it has no security features, it’s a really bad phone. It’s not linked to an account, there are just some messages and numbers and that’s all. That’s not good but not that bad, and I’m ok 3 months without phone.
It auto-locks in 15 seconds.
They would have to turn on airplane mode quick while they were running because as soon as it has data, I’d have their location and my phone would’ve already been marked lost / stolen by my watch and queued for factory reset.
While in airplane mode there really wouldn’t be much they could do. Anything useful is locked by Face ID. They could see my calendar and my most boring emails. They would have no passwords.
The phone itself would be useless as a phone as it couldn’t be used in another carrier.
I mean, that’s kinda the point of this question: How quickly can you issue a wipe command to your phone?
If you only have one phone no backup phones, now quickly can you access a internet device to issue a wipe command? And will you even remember the google/apple account password quickly enough in such a stressful moment?
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Nice try Mr. Thief !
I use Private Lock. It uses gyro to detect sudden movements and lock the phone based on that.
My phone/Android is supposed to have theft protection, meaning it will lock itself if it detects a fast movement like it being snatched out of my hand. If that doesn’t work, I’d have to get home to lock it I guess.
My phone has GraphineOS so if somebody snaches it than itll just lock and once it locks then the chance of somebody breaking in is extremely slim.
Set a tasty duress PIN on it
I did :3
