Tech bosses could stop mobile phone theft, say MPs

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

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 might make stolen telephones much less helpful.

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

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

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

Writing to Mahmood, Onwurah stated that through the listening to in June, the committee had sought to “reply the query: Is there a strategy to design out cellphone 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 units had been later related to abroad networks.

Stolen units are blocked from getting used within the UK by cellphone networks through the use of the cellphone’s distinctive figuring out quantity – often called an IMEI – however this isn’t the case globally.

Onwurah argued that “sturdy technical measures” resembling blocking stolen telephones taken abroad from accessing cloud providers might make units “far much less helpful”.

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

Nevertheless, she stated when giving proof, Apple, Google and Samsung had averted saying why they might not implement the expertise.

“Their repeated pivots to answering questions on information safety fairly than units, and insistence that the telephones had been damaged down and bought for components, with none proof to assist this assertion, was telling,” she stated.

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

Onwurah requested the house secretary if she would push the tech giants to implement cloud-based blocking and in addition pressed the minister to supply an information for the following cellphone theft summit.

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

In June, Commander James Conway, the Met Police’s cellphone theft lead, instructed MPs: “The alternative worth of these telephones – members of the general public and insurance coverage firms having to pay out to interchange 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 stated: “The priority is that, really, it feels to lots of people like you might be dragging your toes and that sitting behind this can be a very robust 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 kinds 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 might be saying that you’ve got been at it for 12 years and made no progress.”

Davis stated the accusation was “slightly unfair” and rejected the declare that “we someway profit from our customers struggling the traumatic occasion of getting their cellphone stolen”.

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

In written evidence to the committee, Apple stated it had considerations in regards to the “wider privateness and safety implications” of blocking stolen units from accessing its providers however added that it was “now contemplating how IMEI-blocking may very well be enacted”.

Google argued its current protections supplied a “sturdy resolution” and Samsung said it had “devoted appreciable assets” to the problem.