You are at the bar having a few beers quietly with your friends, you leave your mobile on the table and lose track of time. When you go to get hold of your device it is not there, and you will probably never see it again. Unfortunately this is more and more common, and it is that these devices that accompany us in our day to day are the object of choice for careless thieves in Spain. According to statistics a mobile device is stolen every two minutes in Spain.
In fact, The Civil Guard has just dismantled in Alicante a gang in charge of stealing more than 400 mobiles. We cannot avoid being left without our device, but perhaps if we can put measures so that the damage is as little as possible.
The Community of Madrid and Catalonia have led the way since the last study by the Secretary of State on the theft of mobile phones in 2015, placing the capital of the country as the most representative with around 33% of thefts, followed by Catalonia with approximately 19% of them. In this case, due to the value of the devices, in most cases it is considered theft, as it does not exceed the amount of € 400. In addition, as it is usually due to theft caused by carelessness, the situation is not protected by most home insurance, which covers robberies with force and intimidation.
In general terms, theft and theft of mobile devices is increasing exponentially in Spain, in direct proportion to the growth of mobile telephony in a country that already has more than 56 million devices distributed throughout the national territory, far more than inhabitants.
Security measures are not enough
Mobile device manufacturers as well as operating system developers are committed to integrating various methods to secure devices. Many of these make their use by other people's hands impossibleHowever, a new market has been born with this type of measure, the market for spare parts and pieces. The telephones are generally transported out of the country, where they undergo hardware modifications and even disassembly, where they will serve as spare parts.
The second-hand market is no longer the preferred place for stolen devices, since users are increasingly reluctant to acquire this type of mobile phones, due to the possible problems at the software level that can cause the fact of using other people's property. The business of buying and selling this type of device makes the State security services quickly lose track of them, so recovering a lost device is extremely difficult.
How can we ensure against theft of a mobile device?
Installing security measures on our devices is key, in the case of Apple iPhones, only by linking it to our Apple ID we will have an activation lock that will prevent its use by the owners of other people's things after trying to restore it, in addition, It has the Find My iPhone application that will allow us to track the device as long as you have an internet connection.
In the case of Android, some companies also have protection measures at the software level, although generally the ideal is to install applications for this purpose such as Cerberus.
However, we cannot pretend that robbers take into account the damage they do by stealing our mobile device, so the most effective measure is to contact the company that provides our mobile service to block the IMEI linked to our mobile device and thus prevent its general use, meanwhile, the hiring of anti-theft insurance like the one from miseguromovil.com designed to protect this type of situation is the most effective, It will not prevent us from the annoyance of being left without our mobile, but it will help us to carry it infinitely better, since will be responsible for restocking the device and save us an important economic value.