Tech bosses could stop mobile phone theft, say MPs

Tech giants together with Apple, Samsung and Google are usually not doing sufficient to cease cell phone thefts, MPs on the Science, Innovation and Know-how Committee have mentioned.

In a letter to the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, committee chair Chi Onwurah accused the businesses of failing to place in place technical measures that may make stolen telephones much less useful.

The letter follows a stormy committee hearing, the place MPs accused tech bosses of making the most of telephone thefts.

Responding to the letter, Google mentioned it had “invested in superior theft safety options” together with the theft detection lock after “listening to victims and partnering intently with regulation enforcement and trade”.

Apple, Samsung and the Residence Workplace have additionally been contacted for remark.

Writing to Mahmood, Onwurah mentioned that through the listening to in June, the committee had sought to “reply the query: Is there a solution to design out telephone theft?”

“The reply, within the view of the committee, is sure.”

The issue of cell phone thefts is especially prevalent in London the place, in 2024, 80,000 smartphones had been reported as stolen – up from 64,000 in 2023.

The Metroplitan Police has estimated 78% of stolen gadgets had been later related to abroad networks.

Stolen gadgets are blocked from getting used within the UK by telephone networks by utilizing the telephone’s distinctive figuring out quantity – referred to as an IMEI – however this isn’t the case globally.

Onwurah argued that “sturdy technical measures” equivalent to blocking stolen telephones taken abroad from accessing cloud companies might make gadgets “far much less useful”.

She additionally pointed to feedback by Cell UK, the commerce affiliation of the UK’s cell community operators, who mentioned blocking IMEI in different international locations was a “mandatory step to dismantle the enterprise mannequin of organised crime”.

Nonetheless, she mentioned when giving proof, Apple, Google and Samsung had averted saying why they’d not implement the know-how.

“Their repeated pivots to answering questions on information safety moderately than gadgets, and insistence that the telephones had been damaged down and bought for elements, with none proof to help this assertion, was telling,” she mentioned.

“Know-how to discourage telephone theft is out there, and now we have but to listen to a convincing cause why, with co-operation on all sides, the obtainable options should not be used to disincentivise telephone theft and disrupt the market in stolen gadgets.”

Onwurah requested the house secretary if she would push the tech giants to implement cloud-based blocking and in addition pressed the minister to offer a knowledge for the following telephone theft summit.

A summit occurred in February 2025 however a follow-up assembly deliberate for Might didn’t happen.

In June, Commander James Conway, the Met Police’s telephone theft lead, informed MPs: “The substitute worth of these telephones – members of the general public and insurance coverage firms having to pay out to switch them – we estimate at round £50 million final 12 months.”

Addressing Apple consultant Gary Davis later in the identical committee listening to, Conservative MP Package Malthouse mentioned: “The priority is that, really, it feels to lots of people like you’re dragging your ft and that sitting behind it is a very sturdy business incentive.

“The truth that £50m-worth of telephones are stolen in London yearly implies that, if that stopped, £50m of gross sales could be depressed.”

“You’ll be able to detect all types of intelligent issues about my behaviour, my face and my fingerprint; but, for what appears to most individuals like a comparatively easy resolution to an endemic and vital drawback of crime in London and different capital cities, you’re saying that you’ve been at it for 12 years and made no progress.”

Davis mentioned the accusation was “a bit of unfair” and rejected the declare that “we by some means profit from our customers struggling the traumatic occasion of getting their telephone stolen”.

He added that the corporate had invested in designing protections for telephones together with stolen system safety and a ‘discover my iPhone’ instrument.

In written evidence to the committee, Apple mentioned it had issues concerning the “wider privateness and safety implications” of blocking stolen gadgets from accessing its companies however added that it was “now contemplating how IMEI-blocking could possibly be enacted”.

Google argued its present protections provided a “sturdy resolution” and Samsung said it had “devoted appreciable assets” to the difficulty.