I recently had the displeasure of having my iPhone stolen out of my hand and out my car window which happened to be less than half-way open while sitting bumper-to-bumper in traffic in Koeberg Road. Yes, you read all of that correctly.  My phone was snatched from my hand through my partially opened window from my semi-stationary vehicle. No, the thief was not a shadow-seeking ninja working under the cover of darkness. The thief was a female and it was broad daylight. Yes, again you read all of that correctly.  Instinctively I gave chase but after vanishing inbetween alleys and into a slum that would make District 9 look like a Club-Med resort, I was forced to resort to copious amounts of profanity and less running. Needless to say, I managed to make it back to my car, phoneless but alive and in the foulest, most temperamental rage that I had ever been in before.

It wasn’t so much the angst or the shock at having my phone stolen. One quick call and Vodacom’s customer care had my phone sim-locked, blocked, black-listed and all my data-services cancelled. But no amount of swearing, blood or tears can prepare you for the sudden realization that your phone-data, contacts, applications, photos of your dear ones, videos and saved messages are in the hands of a scaly, rotten illegal-alien-hybrid piece of bantha-poodoo that probably wouldn’t have the faintest idea on how to remove the blasted sim-card let alone actually <b>use</b> the damn phone. Of course there are applications available to remote-wipe your iPhone but a certain self-assuring I went with the stupid assumption of it wouldn’t happen to me.  And unfortunately for me, my ‘ass-uming ‘ was my undoing. Again and again my mind dwindled (and dwindles still) on the thief who is now in possession of my photos and personal data. Its as if my whole life has been exposed to the sick voyeuristic world of the criminal underground.

One week without my phone and I’m fidgeting more frequently. Not having easy-access to my Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social apps is a real pain. My wife was kind enough to allow me to tweet from her Blackberry but my bias made me crave my iPhone even more. It’s amazing how dependent we have become on digital devices that we’re actually allowed to have a bias!
Two decades ago and the privacy of our lives would be securely sound behind lock and key. These days we’re quite happy to expose our personal lives, photos and videos of our family, our thoughts and emotions to the digital world, be it a physical piece of silicon-based ‘thievable’ hardware or a ‘hackable’ social network. Twitter recently had the embarrassment of being hacked by group calling themselves The Iranian Cyber Army and Facebook suffered a few click-jacking attempts. Cyberspace, like our crime-ridden country, is never completely safe.

So, if you want my advice: Be safe around this time of the year. Make sure your car windows are closed, don’t use your phone while driving (or use the loudspeaker and keep your hands where it belongs - on the wheel), watch your hand luggage, bags and pockets and like Paris, Britney or Pam, be even more careful about what you store digitally.

Lastly, @the_iThief: If by some glorious miracle in your otherwise low-level genetic constitution you manage to unblock my iPhone, make use of my web-browser and visit my favorite bookmarks, you will undoubtedly be visiting this site and possibly reading this post. So, humbly, I leave you with this parting message: The explosive in my iPhone allows me to detonate it remotely. I will do this. It’s all a matter of when.

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