This article comes to us courtesy of SF Weekly's The Snitch.
You might think San Franciscans are most likely to lose their cellphones on Muni, considering the city buses have become hotbeds for cellphone theft. But a new, random, and somewhat useful study actually shows that city-dwellers tend to lose their phones at coffeeshops more than any other place in San Francisco.
Whether it's lost or stolen, San Franciscans can't seem to keep track of their phones while busy sipping on double lattes at coffeehouses across the city, according to Lookout, a mobile security company, which conducted the recent study. Researchers couldn't come up with any good reason for why coffeeshops hold the no. 1 spot for cellphone loss, including theft, other than San Franciscans must love their java more than their cellphone. A lot of people spend a lot of time in coffeeshops, especially in San Francisco," explains Alicia DiVittorio, consumer safety advocate at Lookout.
That's not surprising to us, but what did throw us for a loop was this: Over in Chicago, cellphone users tend to lose their phone -- of all places -- at church?! Obviously, there are a lot of Christians playing Angry Birds.
The study also gave San Franciscans another excuse to not leave the city. According to researchers, San Francisco falls at No. 16 on the list of cities where you are most likely to lose your cellphone, while, not surprisingly, your chances of losing your phone increased dramatically when you crossed the Bay Bridge over to Oakland, which came in at No. 3. And in faraway Philidelphia, cell phone users don't have a chance -- it's the nation's No. 1 city when it comes to lost and stolen phones.
"Interestingly, many of the cities with the highest rates of lost and stolen phones also were in the top ranks for the FBI's most recent crime statistics," DiVittorio told us.
That includes Detroit, Baltimore, New York, and Newark.
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