We Need New Legislation to Dismantle Phone Theft

If you lost your cell phone purchased from a portion of your monthly salary, or by taking out a salary loan, you would be very angry. Every day, many people in Mongolia experience that anger, because cell phone theft is a rising problem, especially in crowded places where people are hanging out, such as bus stops, schools, stores, hospitals, and nightclubs.

Once you've had your phone stolen, you realize how much of your personal information and valuable data a thief has obtained, because everyone uses their phones for everything work, school, and data. Unfortunately, the valuable information on your stolen phone is not valued, only the phone itself is valued as a thing of worth.

Many people are very careful to avoid pickpockets, especially cell phone thieves, while walking around in crowded places, but they still have their phones stolen. Cell phone thieves use a lot of tricks, and sometimes theives work with partners to steal a phone.

Thieves take advantage of moments to take phones when people are walking up the steps of a bus, or distracting a mark by kicking their leg, pretending to accidentally fall into them, or asking them a question to draw their attention elsewhere.There are a lot of security cameras in stores, schools, and other crowded places, but most of them are not operational, and the footage they capture can be extremely pixelated, making it difficult to recognize faces.

Some thieves even know which security cameras are functional or not, and how to hide from the cameras that do work.Some people install applications on their mobiles that claim to be able to help them catch a cell phone thief and recover their phone, but in Mongolia, when thieves are caught, it is very rarely a result of using applications.

Many people cannot fully take advantage of how these applications work with limited internet access, and some thieves know how to disable...