Bob Arno, a security expert who has instructed NATO counterintelligence agencies and SEAL teams on what he calls “distraction theft,” suggests a few reasons for the crime’s persistence. First, although banks’ anti-theft algorithms have made stolen credit cards less lucrative than they once were, debit cards can still yield a tidy profit if a thief plans ahead. Arno says most decent pickpockets know how to “shoulder surf” (peek over a mark’s shoulder at an ATM) or use binoculars to identify a PIN from a distance. Second, people carry more cash than you might think—it remains the most common method of payment in the U.S.

Read: ‘You’re not aware that my finger is in your pocket’

Finally, theft may be getting easier. Smartphones may have overtaken wallets as the most pickpocketed item, and even a disabled iPhone can fetch $200 on the black market (new screens are a particularly desirable part). Arno says that snagging a phone out of a pair of slacks is “a piece of cake.” Phones not in pockets may also be making life easier for thieves, by leaving victims less attentive to both their wallets and their surroundings. “The world provides a multitude of distractions to a brain that evolved to be single-minded,” says Earl Miller, a neuroscience professor at MIT. “Even talking on the phone can use up all of our cognitive capacity, leaving little or no awareness of anything else.”

Multitaskers, in other words, are easy marks. “We have a brain that craves information,” yet we’re immersed in an environment “that provides too much of it,” Miller says. “It’s a pickpocket’s world.”

This article appears in the May 2019 print edition with the headline “Watch Your Wallet.”

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