Tool Kit: Outsmarting Smartphone Thieves

“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:

BE LIKE A DOLPHIN Dolphins sleep with one eye open, to stay semi-alert to lurking predators and unexpected danger. If you need to use your phone in the wilds of the subway or sidewalk, do so discreetly, reserving at least a portion of your cognitive capacity for minding what is happening around you. Avoid leaving your phone on the table at restaurants, bars and coffee shops where it can easily be snatched. Thieves have perfected robbery tactics based on patterns of typical nonchalant public smartphone behavior, the police say. Consider the sidewalk texter, casually holding the phone in front while walking, or more likely weaving, down the street. “A popular move is to slap the victim in the back of the head,” said Edward Santos Jr., a San Francisco police lieutenant. “The phone goes flying up in the air and many of these guys have gotten so good they’ll catch the phone in midair.” So long, phone.

LOCK IT UP Most thieves erase all identifying information from a phone within hours, sometimes minutes, after stealing it. Still, passwords on your phone’s home screen can help protect your personal information in case it isn’t wiped clean. A San Francisco woman whose iPhone was stolen from a San Francisco bar in January got a call a week later from Peru from a man threatening to publicly post nude photos he found on her password-free phone if she did not pay him, the police said. Avoid such unpleasantries by using a simple password, which can easily be enabled on both iPhone and Android devices.

KNOW YOUR NUMERALS Write down your phone’s model number, serial number and unique device identification number. If your phone is stolen you’ll want to report these numbers to the police and to your carrier. There are several ways to find your phone’s International Mobile Equipment Identifier or IMEI number. On most phones, you can dial *#06# and the number will pop up on your screen. Alternatively, turn the phone off, take the battery out and find the IMEI and serial number on the label under the battery. On an iPhone, go into Settings, click General and then click About and you will find a page listing your phone’s model and serial number and IMEI code. Save these numbers where you can retrieve them easily.

USE LOCATION TRACKING APPS When a phone is stolen, one of the first questions the police will ask is whether you have a tracking app. The police have recovered stolen phones by tracking the GPS signal trail straight to a robber’s pocket or backpack. But for the apps to work, the phone has to stay on. Increasingly, the police say, practiced thieves know to turn the phone off and wrap it in aluminum foil before turning it back on, which thwarts the tracking technology. Still, it is worth installing an application to monitor your phone’s whereabouts. Apple makes a free app, Find My iPhone, which can be turned on in Apple’s iCloud or downloaded from iTunes. Android users have several options for free third-party tracking apps including Where’s My Droid and Lookout. In addition to broadcasting a phone’s location, many antitheft apps allow you to remotely lock your phone, wipe it clean of sensitive information and even remotely set off a screaming phone alarm.

BRICK IT If your phone is stolen, immediately report the theft to the police and your carrier. Start with the police. Give them your IMEI and serial number and the password to remotely log in to your tracking app. Once you’ve finished dealing with the police, call your carrier. Tell your carrier to disable, or brick, your device, which will lock it and prohibit anyone else from activating it, even with a new SIM card. The carrier should add your IMEI number to a national database of blacklisted phones. The database keeps track of the phone’s IMEI number to prevent it from being activated. But the police say the database is largely ineffective because many stolen phones end up overseas, out of the carrier’s reach, and because thieves are able to modify the IMEI number. Still, it’s better to have the phone entered in the database than not.

The Federal Communications Commission’s guide to stolen and lost phones recommends that you ask your carrier for written confirmation that your phone has been reported stolen and that they have disabled it. If you are an A.T.&T. customer, call 1-800-331-0500; Verizon, call 1-800-922-0204; Sprint, call 1-888-211-4727; and T-Mobile, call 1-800-937-8997. The F.C.C. maintains a full list of carrier contacts for reporting stolen phones.

CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS Even if your carrier bricks your stolen phone, you should change your passwords for any social networking sites, e-mail, banks and health care sites you may have visited from your phone.

BECOME A LATE ADOPTER Less than a week after the iPhone 5 was released on Sept. 21, 2012, barely used phones turned up for sale at makeshift kiosks at flea markets in Oakland, Calif., known hot spots for peddling stolen merchandise, according to the police.

Last month a woman was held up for her iPhone by two men, one with a gun, in El Cerrito, Calif., just east of San Francisco. After she handed it over, the robbers took one look at her older model iPhone and gave it back to her, the police said. Just like the Apple fanatics camping out in front of Apple stores before a new iPhone is released, thieves want the latest model, too. Having one can make you a target.

City Room: Crime Is Up, and Bloomberg Blames iPhone Thieves

Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

Updated, 11:50 a.m. | Hold onto your iPhones!

Major crime in New York City inched up this year, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Friday fingered the culprit: too many iPhones and iPads were being swiped.

A rise in thefts of shiny Apple products accounted for the slight increase in the city’s annual crime index, a statistic that covers a number of felonies, including murder, grand larceny and robbery, Mr. Bloomberg said on Friday morning during his weekly radio show.

As of Monday, the Police Department recorded 3,484 more major crimes in 2012 than for the same period last year. The increase in Apple product thefts: 3,890.

In a more serious vein, Mr. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly also announced that as of Friday morning, New York City had recorded 414 homicides, putting it on pace to record the lowest annual number since the city started tracking comparable homicide figures in 1963. The current low, 471 homicides, was set in 2009.

Still, city officials said the overall crime figure was skewed by the Apple figure.

“If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,” said Marc La Vorgna, the mayor’s press secretary.

On the radio, Mr. Bloomberg said that Apple products appeared to be the preference for many thieves, noting that he was not including thefts of competing devices, like the Samsung Galaxy, in his count.

And he offered some practical advice for listeners, urging them to keep their devices in an interior, hard-to-reach pocket.

“Put it in a pocket in sort of a more body-fitting, tighter clothes, that you can feel if it was — if somebody put their hand in your pocket, not just an outside coat pocket,” the mayor said.

IPhones have long proved irresistible to city thieves, particularly on the subway, where crime rates shot up in 2011 after police investigators discovered that robbers were targeting the expensive, high-tech gadgets. The Police Department has used dozens of decoy officers and unusual methods to try to stanch the thefts, which usually occurred as trains entered and left stations, allowing for a quick getaway.

“The proliferation of people carrying expensive devices around is so great,” Mr. La Vorgna said. “It’s something that’s never had to be dealt with before.”

Through Monday, the city had recorded 108,432 major crimes for the year, up from 104,948 over the same period in 2011, a rise of 3.3 percent.