Tech bosses could stop mobile phone theft, say MPs

Tech giants including Apple, Samsung and Google are not doing enough to stop mobile phone thefts, MPs on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee have said.

In a letter to the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, committee chair Chi Onwurah accused the companies of failing to put in place technical measures that would make stolen phones less valuable.

The letter follows a stormy committee hearing, where MPs accused tech bosses of profiting from phone thefts.

Responding to the letter, Google said it had “invested in advanced theft protection features” including the theft detection lock after “listening to victims and partnering closely with law enforcement and industry”.

Apple and Samsung have also been contacted for comment.

Writing to Mahmood, Onwurah said that during the hearing in June, the committee had sought to “answer the question: Is there a way to design out phone theft?”

“The answer, in the view of the committee, is yes.”

The problem of mobile phone thefts is particularly prevalent in London where, in 2024, 80,000 smartphones were reported as stolen – up from 64,000 in 2023.

The Metroplitan Police has estimated 78% of stolen devices were later connected to overseas networks.

Stolen devices are blocked from being used in the UK by phone networks by using the phone’s unique identifying number – known as an IMEI – but this is not the case globally.

Onwurah argued that “robust technical measures” such as blocking stolen phones taken overseas from accessing cloud services could make devices “far less valuable”.

She also pointed to comments by Mobile UK, the trade association of the UK’s mobile network operators, who said blocking IMEI in other countries was a “necessary step to dismantle the business model of organised crime”.

However, she said when giving evidence, Apple, Google and Samsung had avoided saying why they would not implement the technology.

“Their repeated pivots to answering questions about data security rather than devices, and insistence that the phones were broken down and sold for parts, without any evidence to support this assertion, was telling,” she said.

“Technology to deter phone theft is available, and we have yet to hear a convincing reason why, with co-operation on all sides, the available solutions shouldn’t be used to disincentivise phone theft and disrupt the market in stolen devices.”

Onwurah asked the home secretary if she would push the tech giants to implement cloud-based blocking and also pressed the minister to provide a data for the next phone theft summit.

A summit took place in February 2025 but a follow-up meeting planned for May did not take place.

In June, Commander James Conway, the Met Police’s phone theft lead, told MPs: “The replacement value of those phones – members of the public and insurance companies having to pay out to replace them – we estimate at around £50 million last year.”

Addressing Apple representative Gary Davis later in the same committee hearing, Conservative MP Kit Malthouse said: “The concern is that, actually, it feels to a lot of people like you are dragging your feet and that sitting behind this is a very strong commercial incentive.

“The fact that £50m-worth of phones are stolen in London every year means that, if that stopped, £50m of sales would be depressed.”

“You are able to detect all sorts of clever things about my behaviour, my face and my fingerprint; yet, for what seems to most people like a relatively simple solution to an endemic and significant problem of crime in London and other capital cities, you are saying that you have been at it for 12 years and made no progress.”

Davis said the accusation was “a little unfair” and rejected the claim that “we somehow benefit from our users suffering the traumatic event of having their phone stolen”.

He added that the company had invested in designing protections for phones including stolen device protection and a ‘find my iPhone’ tool.

In written evidence to the committee, Apple said it had concerns about the “wider privacy and security implications” of blocking stolen devices from accessing its services but added that it was “now considering how IMEI-blocking could be enacted”.

Google argued its existing protections offered a “robust solution” and Samsung said it had “dedicated considerable resources” to the issue.

Home Office Minister Sarah Jones said: “Mobile phone theft is a disgraceful crime – every stolen device robs someone of their safety and peace of mind.

She said the government was putting more police on the streets and giving them “strong powers” to tackle offenders but added that mobile phone companies had a “crucial role to play in stopping this”.