Outsmarting Smartphone Thieves
By MALIA WOLLAN
May 8, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO - In the month since two men violently shoved him to the ground and stole his iPhone 5, Dalton Huckaby has almost completely stopped calling his mother. It usually takes him a full day to text his friends back. Nothing personal, but Mr. Huckaby is just too frightened to take his replacement iPhone out in public.
"I never thought this would happen to me," said Mr. Huckaby, 39, a personal trainer, who since the robbery, which he called an iCrime, has become the kind of person who patrols his neighborhood streets in San Francisco warning strangers about the dangers of using their smartphones out in the open.
Phone theft, especially of Apple's coveted iPhones, has increased sharply in recent years. Last year, nearly half of all robberies in San Francisco involved a smartphone.
So, how do people like Mr. Huckaby deal with the stress after a phone theft? How do you dodge robbers in the first place? And what should you do if your phone is stolen?
Here are some suggestions:
..
Here are some other suggestions:
- Don't do business with any cellular carrier that doesn't maintain and enforce a do-not-allow list of stolen phones.
- Shun anyone who brags about the great deal they got on a "used" iBrick. If they're willing to buy stolen goods, they're willing to steal from and lie to /you/.
- Don't assume that having an electronic leash tied to your hand means you're in charge of your work or your life. You'll get better results by /looking/ /around/ /you/ than by gluing your eyes to an iBlob.
Bill Horne Moderator