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 may make stolen telephones much less helpful.

The letter follows a stormy committee hearing, the place MPs accused tech bosses of cashing in on 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 carefully with legislation enforcement and trade”.

Apple, Samsung and the Residence 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 solution 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 have been reported as stolen – up from 64,000 in 2023.

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

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

Onwurah argued that “sturdy technical measures” reminiscent of blocking stolen telephones taken abroad from accessing cloud companies may make gadgets “far much less helpful”.

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

Nevertheless, she stated when giving proof, Apple, Google and Samsung had prevented saying why they’d not implement the know-how.

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

“Expertise to discourage cellphone theft is obtainable, and we have now but to listen to a convincing motive why, with co-operation on all sides, the obtainable options should not be used to disincentivise cellphone 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 likewise pressed the minister to supply a knowledge 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, informed MPs: “The alternative 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 stated: “The priority is that, truly, it feels to lots of people like you might be dragging your ft and that sitting behind this can be a very sturdy industrial incentive.

“The truth that £50m-worth of telephones are stolen in London yearly signifies 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 answer to an endemic and important downside 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 system safety and a ‘discover my iPhone’ device.

In written evidence to the committee, Apple stated 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 may very well be enacted”.

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