Phone stolen? What to do in the first 10 minutes and the first 24 hours (UK)

If your phone has been stolen in the UK, lock it remotely, call your bank, and change your email password, in that order, within the first ten minutes. Then report it to the police and to your network so the SIM is cancelled and the handset is blocked. The email step matters most: whoever controls your email can reset the password on almost every other account you own.

What to do in the first 10 minutes

Borrow a phone or get to a laptop. You do not need your own handset for any of this, and speed matters more than tidiness. Thieves who take an unlocked phone, or who watched you type your passcode, tend to move on banking and email apps quickly.

1. 1Lock it remotelyiPhone: sign in at icloud.com/find and mark the phone as lost. Android: use Google's Find Hub (formerly Find My Device) and choose Secure device. Pixel owners can also use Remote Lock with just their phone number.
2. 2Call your bankUse the number on the back of your card, or dial 159, which connects you to most major UK banks. Ask them to freeze card payments and block access through the banking app until you have a new phone.
3. 3Change your email passwordDo this before any other account. Then use the 'sign out of all other sessions' option so the phone in the thief's hand is logged out.
4. 4Call your networkAsk them to cancel the SIM, blacklist the IMEI and send a replacement SIM. Blocking the SIM stops one-time passcodes arriving on the stolen phone.

Why is my email account the master key?

Nearly every service you use, from Amazon to your energy supplier, lets you reset a forgotten password with a link sent to your email. If a thief can read your email on the stolen phone, they can take over those accounts one by one, and change the recovery details so you cannot get them back.

That is why the email password comes before social media, shopping or anything else. Once it is changed and other sessions are signed out, the phone loses its route into everything downstream. If your email has two-step verification by text message, move it to an authenticator app or passkey on your new phone as soon as you can.

Should I erase my stolen phone straight away?

If the phone held banking, work data or anything you would not want read, erase it. Your photos and messages should already be in your cloud backup, so the phone itself is only worth protecting if you have a realistic chance of getting it back.

The trade-off is location. Once a phone is erased you may no longer be able to see where it is, so if it shows up somewhere you can hand to the police within the hour, lock it and wait. Whatever you decide, do not remove the phone from your Apple or Google account. That link keeps activation lock on, which is what makes the handset hard to resell.

How do I report a stolen phone to the police?

Report it online through your local police force's website or by calling 101. Call 999 only if the theft is happening now or someone is in danger. You will get a crime reference number, which your insurer and network will both ask for.

Have your IMEI ready. It is on the original box, in your Apple or Google account's device list, and on any receipt from the shop. If you want to report fraud, such as money taken from your account, report it to Report Fraud (reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040, the service that replaced Action Fraud in December 2025) as well as telling your bank. In Scotland, call Police Scotland on 101.

What to do over the next 24 hours

Once the urgent calls are done, work through the accounts that could cause damage if someone got in. Change passwords on anything saved in the phone's browser or password manager, starting with shopping accounts that hold a card.

• Check bank and card statements for payments you did not make, and keep checking for a few weeks.
• Re-register WhatsApp on your replacement SIM. Registering the number on a new phone signs the old one out.
• Warn close contacts not to act on any message from your accounts asking for money.
• Change passwords for social media, Amazon, PayPal and any app that stores a card.
• Remove saved cards from accounts you rarely use rather than leaving them stored.
• Note the date, time and place of the theft while you remember them, for the insurer.

Will the police get my phone back?

Usually not. According to the Metropolitan Police, 117,211 phone thefts were recorded in London in 2024, and fewer than 1% of phone thefts lead to anyone being charged. London thefts have since fallen, by 29% in the year to August 2026, but the odds of recovery remain low.

The money is the bigger worry. Action Fraud received reports of £641,000 lost to phone-theft-related fraud between December 2024 and February 2025. Which? reported the case of a company director who lost £73,000 through his banking app after his phone was taken; £15,000 was refunded. The handset is the cheap part.

How to make your next phone worthless to a thief

Most of the damage comes from what a thief can open, not from the handset itself. A long passcode, hidden lock-screen notifications, a SIM PIN and the theft features built into iPhone and Android all help. We cover each one in how to stop someone getting into your stolen phone.

Some people want more than that, because their phone holds client data, crypto or simply their whole life. The Privacy Phone is a Google Pixel running GrapheneOS with Optimise Shield, a security setup we configure here in the UK. It can erase itself after a set number of wrong passcodes, if it is kept switched off or offline for too long, or if someone forces you to unlock it with an emergency PIN. A thief ends up holding a blank phone.

It is not for everyone, and the free steps above protect most people well. If you want to see what it does in detail, the Privacy Phone page lists every feature and the price.