Be Careful When Checking Your Phone in Public

For many, the only thing protecting all their personal and financial info is the four-digit PIN on their phone. While this might be enough to stop a nosy friend from snooping on your private life, phone snatchers have figured out a way around it.

Spy Game

Phone snatching has become an increasingly large problem, and not just in big cities. The reward for thieves is increasingly not from selling devices themselves, but the data stored on them.

While phones and tablets can be difficult and time-consuming to sell or break up for parts (especially if they’re locked to your Apple or Google account), if a thief can unlock your device, they can get immediate access to your bank accounts, payment apps, and private messages. They can then transfer themselves money, or try to use your secrets against you for blackmail and other scams.

So, how do thieves unlock your device? When it’s convenient, they’ll just snatch your phone after you’ve unlocked it and keep it unlocked until they’ve done their criminal deeds. The other methods being deployed are sneakier: they might watch you for a while until you unlock your phone and memorize your PIN (would you notice someone peering over your shoulder at the bus stop?) and then steal your phone later, unlocked or not. The second approach has become so common it even has a nickname: shoulder surfing.

Try to be careful when you enter your PIN so that no one can see what you enter, or use biometric logins.

Just Asking Nicely

Another popular method is to simply ask you nicely to unlock your phone, and it works surprisingly well. If someone comes up to you asking for directions, or for you to look up some information for them, your first thought probably isn’t that they’ll swipe your phone.

Unfortunately, this is sometimes the case, so you need to be wary that a seemingly innocent lost tourist may have plans to pinch your phone once they’ve got you to unlock it.

How to Protect Yourself from Phone Snatchers

There are a few easy habits to get into to protect yourself from phone snatchers, and make your device useless to them if they do get a hold of it:

• Get a phone ring or wristband to keep your device from being dropped or snatched.
• Politely decline requests to unlock your phone, or make sure you hold on to your phone tightly (and out of reach) if you’re helping someone.
• Use a strong PIN (even the lowest criminal can remember a four-digit PIN for a few minutes, but even six digits is more difficult).
• Turn off any phone features that can be accessed when your device is locked. For example, disable access to the Control Center on iOS devices.
• Enable biometric authentication (face scan or fingerprint) for both unlocking your device, and accessing apps with private or financial information.
• If you’ve got a spare device, keep your banking apps on that device, and keep that device safely at home.
• Disable notification previews when your device is unlocked to stop others from being able to read two-factor authentication codes and other sensitive messages.
• Consider a privacy or “anti-spy” screen protector, which makes it difficult to read your screen unless you’re looking at it straight on.

If your device does go missing, make sure you remotely lock and wipe it. The thief may try to contact you to unlock the device so that they can resell it—under no circumstances should you follow their instructions.

Even if they claim to have sensitive information to extort you, the reality is that they most likely have nothing. Unlocking your device for them will all but guarantee they have access to that information, as well as being able to pawn your device for a few extra bucks.