Keeping your smartphone safe without loosing it to criminals can be seen a miracle nowadays. Phone theft happens to be the most popular crime on Kampala streets. Kampala has many known dark spots that many people keep complaining about.
In awkward hours, it would advisable to be more vigilant or avoid places such as Ben Kiwanuka Street, Clock Tower, Kibuye stretch, Namirembe Road, Yusuf Lule Road, Nakivubo Mews and Mackay Road, among others, are among those reported to be dark spots. According to the Daily Monitor, Police records recently revealed that at least 38 people report mobile phone thefts in Kampala, Wakiso and Mukono districts each day.
For those who drive while widows are down can also be dangerous as it is seemingly regular for a phone or phones to be snatched in traffic jam or at public events.
In fact its during traffic jam, that smartphones are snatched through car windows and are usually snatched by people on motorcycles and ride away swiftly.
Once you loose a phone in Kampala you rather concentrate on replacing your SIM cards, as trying to track your phone is ‘mission impossible’. So where do all these stolen smartphones go?
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Where stolen smartphones are taken
Most smartphone owners always have their phones protected from external intruders with either a password or some form bio-metric security authentication like fingerprint or face recognition. Even if this stops thieves from reusing them, it cannot stop them from taking them either and this doesn’t spare iPhones as well.
Lets say, your smartphone gets a problem and you take it to a mechanic for repair, its 99% most likely that the spare parts or accessories used will be harvested from other stolen high-end original smartphone– which means that some how mechanics who deal with city phone snatchers, according to sources. Even iPhones can be jail broken i.e they can change the firmware just to be reused for as low as UGX 150 k. Most phone dealer shops offer illegal services that range from changing International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI), memory and factory resetting, among others.
When your smartphone is stolen, you will most likely find it in in most buildings around Kampala that include Mutaasa Kafeero, Cooper Complex, Galiraaya Plaza, Hanifah Towers and Kizito Towers. Most phones, especially Android phone which are safer to re-sale unlike iPhones are sold in known big shops, or downtown at a relatively cheaper price.
It is no surprise that most of the smartphone accessories found on streets of Kampala are from high-end phones and they include iPhone covers, headsets and chargers. As many stolen mobile phones end up in Kampala downtown shops, it should be noted that traders also have used phones that they import from other countries.
Unfortunately, even when a smartphone is stolen, police cannot do much apart from giving you a police case number but phone tracking is in the hands of private individuals since victims believe that the police process is so formal and lengthy. It’s believed that private companies are fast and that there are high chances of getting the phone back.
Sources indicate that Uganda police phone tracking team was disbanded in April 2018, together with the Flying Squad Unit.
