The Metropolitan Police is calling on tech firms to make stolen phones harder to reuse and prevent criminals from profiting.<\/p>\n
Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has asked the home secretary for legislation to make phone companies publish data on stolen devices, and to enforce measures rendering handsets effectively unusable.<\/p>\n
The police force revealed on Thursday that it had started sharing data with Apple to build a “global picture” of what happens to stolen handsets, including whether they are being reconnected to a network.<\/p>\n
“If stolen phones cannot be reactivated, their value collapses, and so does the incentive to steal them,” Sir Mark said.<\/p>\n
In working with Apple to improve security, Sir Mark said only a minority of stolen phones were being reactivated compared to a few months ago, making it “harder for criminals to profit”.<\/p>\n
It follows an ultimatum the Met Police chief gave firms in March to enforce steps which would make stolen phones less desirable for resale and reuse. <\/p>\n
London has some of the highest rates per thousand people of personal robbery and thefts in England and Wales.<\/p>\n
The international trade in stolen phones is worth millions of dollars, with a device stolen in London worth more in countries like China because it has none of the government restrictions put in place by authorities there.<\/p>\n
But according to the Met, the number of thefts where phones were stolen fell by 14,000 between June 2025 and May 2026 – down 18% on the previous year.<\/p>\n
In Westminster, where between 69% and 72% of thefts from the person and personal robberies each week involve phones, there has been a reduction of 45.8% so far this year.<\/p>\n
Kate Adams, senior vice president of government affairs at Apple, said: “Keeping our users, their devices, and their data safe is at the heart of what we do. <\/p>\n
“That includes building industry-leading security features that significantly reduce the motivation for criminals to target people in the first place.”<\/p>\n
The Met said that Samsung and Google were also making security changes to tackle the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Metropolitan Police is calling on tech firms to make stolen phones harder to reuse and prevent criminals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-632456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}