Historic Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city, is famed for producing the likes of comedian Billy Connelly, legendary football manager Sir Alex Ferguson, and, of course, artist Charles Rennie MacKintosh, who, contrary to popular belief, had little or nothing to do with the invention of indigestion tablets or convenient fold-away rain coats. However, according to worrying CPP Phonesafe figures published on the GM.TV website today, Glasgow is now also infamous as the UK’s prime crime hotspot for the fortuitous theft of mobile phones.
While not a claim to be particularly proud of, Glasgow’s positioning at the top of the mobile phone theft performance table is closely followed by Belfast and Liverpool, which ran in a close second and third respectively. Chelmsford sits in fourth position, while London, which you might expect to be higher given its population density, came in at a moderate fifth on the top-ten list. Rounding out the UK rundown of the more perilous phone theft cities are Bristol (6), Manchester (7), Leeds (8), Sheffield (9), and Cambridge (10).
With 1-in-5 UK mobile phone users reportedly having fallen victim to phone theft at least once, the CPP Phonesafe figures outline that light fingered opportunistic thieves are more prone to strike while we’re enjoying a night on the town, with 22 percent of victims being parted from their beloved handsets when surrounded by other revellers in a bar, compared to 9 percent of phone theft that’s committed openly on the street. Users should also be extra vigilant regarding their phones in the early evening, while the first half of May and the latter half of July are largely considered to be times during the year when mobile phone ‘liberation’ is at its highest throughout the UK.
“It’s alarming how common mobile theft is becoming. A recent study from the Metropolitan Police revealed as many as 10,000 mobile phones are stolen every month,” commented John Walkley, Head of Mobile Phone Security at CPP Phonesafe. “The study also showed almost two thirds of people in the UK fail to insure their mobile phone despite the fact that the average handset would cost more than £200 [GBP] to replace and airtime abuse can run into several hundreds of pounds.”
The GM.TV article goes on to recommend a selection of handy safety tips for those mobile phone users wishing to better protect their handsets. Those tips include noting down the handset’s IMEI number, which is located on the inner casing of a phone’s battery housing, which can then be used by a user’s SP to blacklist the phone in the event of theft. Also, remember to set the phone to vibrate only (if applicable) when out and about, thus granting the opportunity to decide whether surroundings are safe before opting to accept any incoming calls. And activate the phone’s security code (if applicable) so that only the onboard SIM card will work with the hardware, thus rendering the phone all but useless if stolen once the SIM card is blocked.
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