While it was once all the rage in London to steal a moped to cruise the streets for a phone to take from a pedestrian, now criminals in Bali are in on the act making brazen daylight thefts of mobile phones, causing serious injuries to tourists. The cost of being medically evacuated from Bali is around $50,000 so a simple theft can result in multiple broken bones and life threatening injuries. After the thefts, phone users are contacted by people pretending to be Apple support to try and scam access to the devices even though they are IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) locked and the accounts have been locked out. In theory, IMEI locking should be sufficient to reduce or prevent this type of crime -- the phone is effectively rendered worthless -- but instead of decreasing, this type of crime is now on the rise.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Username on Monday December 09 2019, @08:06AM (5 children)
It should just be a chip on the phone that is preventing it from working. I would assume you would just need to gain access to a suppy of these chips, then replace them. Even without the chips, you can sell off the parts to repair places.
Eh, in the end, not much sympathy for someone who waves around a $1,000 phone in a place where people make $1/day.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @11:31AM (4 children)
Ignorance. *Minimum wage* locally is $140/mo.
https://alittleadrift.com/should-you-move-to-bali/ [alittleadrift.com]
Food costs everywhere more or less the same. No one would work $1/day without subsidized food (which is the only reason to have subsidized food - government subsidized slavery). Most people will not work for less than about $5/day in places like Bali.
And if you sneeze at $5/day, maybe it's just your lavish lifestyle is to blame. You can feed yourself with this amount. $20/day is considered a good job. But Internet and trade is bringing in higher wage possibilities and is really lifting the wages. And I know people that make $10/day and save so they can buy that $300 or $500 phone too.
These are on the radio. No one would make these as a discrete components. But you can probably reprogram the numbers in some models.
Maybe, but you'll be surprised how difficult it is to actually get someone to fix your screen in places like Bali. They don't have the know-how. It's much cheaper and simpler if you are in China or especially Shenzhen.
Anyway, actually reading TFA, this is crime of opportunity. Where you are on the street, in traffic, in precarious position using a phone. It's much easier for the thieves to get away. If you need to use your phone, at least stand next to the street (sidewalk? if exists) and watch yourself. As a tourist, you are always a magnet for criminals, especially for poor places. But you are not immune from this in rich places either, like London.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @12:52PM (2 children)
>> Food costs everywhere more or less the same.
You have clearly never been to a restaurant in London.
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Monday December 09 2019, @02:52PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday December 09 2019, @04:43PM
Still, food doesn't cost the same everywhere. That's an insane assumption. Whether it's increased cost due to delivery method, subsidized cost by the government, etc. The price of food varies widely. Perhaps, it's different staples, different costs, but the cost of food being similar throughout the world is a huge assumption.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @08:46PM
> Maybe, but you'll be surprised how difficult it is to actually get someone to fix your screen in places like Bali. They don't have the know-how.
In Ubud (city on island of Bali), there is a street that has nothing on it but cell phone shops-- including repair facilities.
I didn't spend much time in Despensar (largest city on island of Bali), but it is a much bigger city, so guessing they will have same or greater facilities.
It might not be as hard as you think.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @08:12AM (5 children)
Imperialist left-over fuctards? Why can they not drive in a foreign country? Why do they think that "white privilege" will amount for shit in majority, .. . oh, I have to be careful here, cannot call them Muslims, although that is true; cannot call them "Brown", although that is also true. Cannot call them "non-Dutch/English/German/French", or any of the other mother-bungers who tried to colonize southeast Asia, except for Siam, of courses. So, if you are a European tourist in Bali, or anywhere else, keep a low profile. Wear a scarf if you are female or gay. Do not "flash your tech" or you may be taken down. Try to be the really poor people you are slumming with, so you gain some empathy, and piss off khallow.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @09:02AM
Bali in particular is an island city with a Hindi majority. Nonetheless it's sound, if crude, advice.
I love traveling and living in the developing world, but I think many people don't realize 'they ain't like us'. Do whatever you want in your hotel or home, but otherwise when as Rome - as the Romans do. Running around with women in sleeveless shirts, short shorts, and a phone worth what's about half a year's salary to many people is going to attract the sort of attention you don't want to attract. Dress modestly - don't "demonstrate" wealth (want to use flaunt but obviously I would not call looking at maps flaunting), and act respectfully of local culture.
Obviously none of these folks deserved anything like this, but based on the limited photos available they made it much more likely for themselves to end up as victims.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Username on Monday December 09 2019, @09:14AM (3 children)
First contact with a nonwestern culture is always a shock to the university types. Especial women. Raised with chivalrous men who never hit them, feminist dogma teaching that they can equal any male, they usually end up lying in a pool of their own blood in whatever third world shithole that was meant to prove their leftist ideology. With such devout beliefs, they don't even test the waters, just dive right into the arms of their rapists. The sad part is no one will learn from their mistake. If they come back alive they will just be ostracized by their friends for proving a "racist" talking point. They will have to lie and cover it up to prevent others from recognizing their own cognitive dissonance to stay in the church of woke.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @09:32AM
Moreso men, of the particular provincial American type. They never understand why they are hit over the head, dragged into an alley, and repeatedly sodomized. Alway comes as a shock to them, it seems. Oh, and their phone gets stolen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @01:17PM (1 child)
This is very true.
There is a blog of a young woman who had a great time travelling around the middle east, and yes through Syria dressed as a man. No issues. Welcomed in many places.
There's a lot of news articles on the net about this. If people really want to know what happens then read this: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/amanda-lindhout-tells-of-her-captivity-torture-in-somalia-1.1334787 [www.cbc.ca]
The truth hurts. Like being raped repeatedly for months hurts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @03:24PM
Somalia is a war zone with no effective central government. A lolbertarian-run America would have similar capture and rape problems.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @10:32AM
Otherwise your own success turns out to be your failure.
Hint: don't be a jew rat.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @12:49PM (4 children)
>> The cost of being medically evacuated from Bali is around $50,000 so a simple theft can result in multiple broken bones and life threatening injuries.
I'm trying to reconstruct the cause and effect here...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @01:20PM (1 child)
RTFA
What happens is that they drive by on mopeds or motorbikes, reach out, and rip the phone from their hands. In the process the person can be critically damaged. Several people have sustained such serious injuries that they need to be medically evacuated from Bali. This costs $50K upwards.
The cause is the locals seeing an opportunity to make a quick buck by violent theft, the effect is bodily damage to tourists resulting in medical evacuation.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @06:06PM
The sentence reads: The cost of being medically evacuated from Bali is around $50,000 (cause) so a simple theft can result in multiple broken bones and life threatening injuries (effect). Are you an illiterate twat or just a millennial who doesn't grasp the concept of thinking clearly?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @02:34PM (1 child)
>being medically evacuated from Bali is around $50,000
Seriously, people are now going places like Thailand , Philippines, anyplace with an expat population, to get CHEAP MEDICAL CARE.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:53AM
Sure, unless it's life threatening or something goes wrong. Then you need proper medical care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @01:22PM (1 child)
What then is so similar between London and Bali that this type of problem is so prevalent in both places?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Monday December 09 2019, @08:26PM
> What then is so similar between London and Bali that this type of problem is so prevalent in both places?
High income inequality? Mixing poor people with rich people is a recipe for an explosion in crime.
London is in the top 5 most expensive cities, and is in the top 5 world cities with the most billionaires living there. With that in mind, it would also have a very large number of (multi)millionaires there as well.
You put people who earn £16,000 a year, next to people who earn £16,000 an hour(*), what else do you think would happen? Either out of opportunity, out of Envy, out of jealousy , out of a desire to achieve the same, or a combination, it will happen.
Bali is in the opposite ball park, people there are so poor that the middle/upper classes in the west are regarded as the rich would be in their places of origin.
(*) I originally put this in as an extreme for effect, but I worked out (assuming the standard 8 hour working day and 240 working days a year), that £16k an hour would be approx £31 million a year, a lot for normal people, but roughly what the CEO of one my old companies would earn. It is amazing to think how much some people earn, I can't even imagine that much money.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 09 2019, @02:17PM (3 children)
When these stories emerge, it translates to me as, "Journalist had her iPhone Stolen in Bali, and is Really Mad about it."
Meanwhile there are hundreds of murders in Chicago, but there are crickets from the press on that one.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday December 09 2019, @11:35PM (2 children)
Absolutely agree with you. This isn't an explanation of the core problem, but sadly people somewhat expect murders in Chicago, maybe partly because that's what we hear constantly in the news. But Bali is imagined / expected to be paradise, no crime, no worries; problems are abnormal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @10:02AM (1 child)
It's like the Christchurch shootings and Sri Lankan Easter bombings. Look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Sri_Lanka_Easter_bombings [wikipedia.org] "259 people were killed, including at least 45 foreign nationals[14] and three police officers, and at least 500 were injured."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings [wikipedia.org] "The attacks killed 51 people and injured 49.["
The Christchurch deaths were all over the news. A mural was erected in Melbourne. It was everyone. In the papers. All over the place.
The Sri Lnka bombings wre five times the people were killed, and ten times the number injured? Almost nothing."
Think about that for a moment. There are no shrines to the people who died in Sri Lanka. No public mournings. Almost nothing.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday December 10 2019, @03:11PM
I agree with you, but I'm quite cynical regarding news media in general- for this and many other obvious reasons.
Here in USA we heard about both events, but more so the NZ story. It's almost like the Sri Lankans were disposable. Or maybe more that when you think of NZ, you think of very civilized people. But Sri Lanka sort of seems wilder, so violence is less surprising. Again, what most of us "know" about NZ and Sri Lanka comes from, you guessed it, news media.
I think the core problem is that news media is money driven, but how would you fix it?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @03:51PM (3 children)
I've been to Bali a few times and drove scooters all over the island.
Everybody is on a scooter. The locals and tons of foreigners, mostly from Australia, often leaving shocking amounts of (tattooed) skin unprotected. I remember this one guy with a "Roebourne Regional Prison" t-shirt, and I was thinking "guard or inmate"? Girlfriend rides pillion, I guess she would be the one manning the iphone X to live chat on facebook. In Kuta, you are in a sea of scooters, cars and pedestrians, so it's going to be next to impossible for the driver to hold the phone. Also impossible for the thief to make a getaway, until you get to less denser areas.
I travelled loaded with technology, SLR around my neck, camera bag hanging down my side, GPS in the scooter's compartment, but phones were in my pocket. Iphones were still a rarity in Bali at the time, and the desk person in the hotel told me that I could still get ~$100 for my 2 generations old Iphone. I felt Bali was a rather safe place, but people come there from all over.
I suppose there is medical evacuation insurance, but I figured, especially for something as common as a fracture, to just seek treatment locally. The most annoying thing that happened to me was a flat 60km from home, but I found a tire shop that replaced my tube. Charged me $4. I guess they say you shouldn't spoil prices, but I was so grateful I gave him a $5 tip.
Bali was one of the best places I ever visited. Indonesia is a huge country with widely different levels of development through the archipelago, but I would compare Bali to a medium sized city in interior China in terms of development.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @08:08PM (1 child)
>> I would compare Bali to a medium sized city in interior China in terms of development.
Could you express that in football fields, for our U.S. readers?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @02:35AM
Conformability error, but: Pretty much any service is available, people may not have tons of money but are generally not destitute and can do activities for fun, public transit is sorely lacking, rain floods the streets, quality of the concrete seems low, not much effort is spent in cleaning things of dirt, dust and mildew; public space is abused for private activity, religious artifacts abound.
One of the most strange things I heard of Bali was that there are hardly any bridges, not for pedestrians nor for cars, unless the road crosses a fast little stream. I heard it explained that in their religion they didn't care for people being on top of each other (unless the caste constellation was right).
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday December 09 2019, @11:53PM
What do you do with all of the phones you stole? (kidding!)