What to Do If Your Phone Is Stolen.
You're out at a bar with your friends. Everyone's having a good time. You get a text, and check to see if it's anything important. It's not. You put your phone back down, and think nothing of it until 5 minutes later when you reach for it — and the phone is gone.
With any luck, you just dropped the phone, or the bartender put it behind the bar for safekeeping. But the sad truth is that, although smartphone theft is not nearly as popular as it used to be, it's still quite common. Smartphones may seem quotidian by now, but they're actually sophisticated, pocket-size supercomputers, and lots of people are more than willing to pay a quick buck for a shiny handset without asking where it came from.
Credit: Ellica / Shutterstock.comIf your phone did indeed get stolen and was not simply lost, your chances of getting it back are, frankly, not very good. However, they're not negligible, either. With some quick, decisive and intelligent action, you may be able to recover your phone or help the police find it. You may not get your device back, but trying sure beats sitting back, doing nothing and breaking out another few hundred bucks from your wallet without a fight.
Before you panic over a stolen phone, the first thing you should do is check to see whether it has actually been stolen or is just missing. How many times have you looked everywhere for your mobile device, only to find it stuck under a couch cushion, in a different bag, or, for whatever reason, in the fridge? (Or in your hand. Seriously, check your hand; it may be there right now.)
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