By Yoon Ja-young





Office worker Kim Mi-young left her smartphone in a taxi. She called the phone to ask the taxi driver, or anyone who had the handset, to return it with the plan to offer compensation, but it was turned off.



"The last time I left my cell phone in a taxi, I immediately called and the driver agreed to get it back to me for 20,000 won. I expected the same luck this time but it wasn't so," she said.



Most of cell phone owners have lost their phones at least once. Previously, they often got them back but it seems that smartphones, once lost are gone for good.



The police recently caught a man who was a fence for smartphones in Busan. He was caught handing out leaflets to taxi drivers, soliciting them to sell smartphones that passengers left behind. The drivers are paid around 100,000 won per phone. The police also caught a ring of lost smartphone smugglers, who made hundreds of millions of won by exporting around 4,000 lost and stolen smartphones to China.



Currently, phones registered as lost or stolen can't use mobile services here. However, the smartphones are sent to China and other Asian countries where they can freely use them simply by changing the USIM card.



There seem to be many rings involved in this business. Typing "buying lost phones" on portals like Naver results in Internet postings by people looking to buy smartphones. The buyers say that they need the phones to recycle the components but many of them are thought to be exporting them to other countries.



What makes the loss more serious is that smartphones these days include much more private information than conventional feature phones did. They include not only contacts and photos but also banking transactions and other sensitive information.



When the government introduces the "black list" system, it might be more difficult to get back a lost phone. Currently, the country has adopted a "white list" system for mobile phones, which requires all cell phones owners to register their international mobile electronics identifications, which are like resident registration numbers, with the mobile carriers to receive service. Under the black list system, meanwhile, which the government plans to introduce in May, only problematic phones such as the ones involved in theft or loss are obliged to be registered. All other handsets are allowed access to mobile services without registering.



"Under the white list system, it is impossible for people to use smartphones that they stole or picked up on the street. Under the black list system, however, people don't have to register their phone with us. If they lose their phone without registering it, it will be even more difficult to get it back as anyone can freely use it," said a spokeswoman for KT.



Mobile carriers advise customers immediately report to the carrier when they lose a phone. "We can track the place where the phone sent the last signal. This might help," the KT spokeswoman said.



She also advised users download applications that track the phone before they lose it. These applications can track the location of the phone in more detail than the method using base stations. Subscribing to insurance beforehand is also a must.



Users should also prepare against the unhappy incident by downloading applications that enable them to delete their personal information in the smartphone from a remote computer to lessen the risk of their private information being leaked.

