Short summary
Every day in the UK, thousands of phones are stolen.
Individually, each victim sees only one blurry dot on a map.
Together, those dots reveal routes, patterns, and organised crime.
This project turns isolated victims into collective evidence.
⏱️ Why this matters
The Metropolitan Police crime map is useful — but it has serious limits:
- Delayed data
Crime data is updated monthly, sometimes less frequently. This makes real-time prevention impossible.
- Postcode-only, local view
You can only view one postcode area at a time.
You cannot see cross-city or cross-border risk patterns.
No movement, no routesIt shows where a crime happened but not where stolen phones moved afterwards, or where they last appeared before leaving the UK.
- Too vague to prevent crime
Locations and details are heavily anonymised.
This protects privacy — but also removes the ability to warn others.
⛳️ What we built instead
We started with stolen phones because phones reveal movement.
A stolen phone continues to travel:
between neighbourhoods, between cities and often across borders
By aggregating voluntary reports, we can see:
repeated locations, clustering over time, transit points and final exit patterns
The same approach can later help understand bike theft and vehicle theft.
Project status
This is not a demo, and this map is already live:
- Over 1,837 real reports from the past two years
- Coverage includes:London, Manchester, Portsmouth, Coventry
- Visualised movement paths, not just single points
- Focus on prevention, warning, and pattern recognition
Originally, the map was built in Chinese to support international students from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand groups that are disproportionately targeted.
But phone theft and snatch is no longer limited to students.
Tourists, local residents, athletes, celebrities, and public figures are increasingly becoming victims.
We think It is time to make this tool available to UK residents and the wider public.
What we are raising funds for
We are raising funds to:
- Launch the first fully public UK version
- Add English language support
- Expand coverage to London, Manchester, and other major UK cities
- Maintain the system for at least one year
- Ensure privacy, compliance, and legal safety
️ Why £60,000 is not excessive
£60,000 covers only the minimum sustainable cost.
I am currently a full-time student, the sole developer with no other income.
I am responsible for:
Frontend & backend development, Product and interaction design, Data cleaning and verification, Community moderation, User support, Outreach and communication
To make this project sustainable and compliant, I also need help with:
Privacy & data protection compliance, Legal guidance, Accounting and reporting
This funding allows:
basic personal living support, essential infrastructure and limited professional assistance.
It does not fund a team, profit, or growth at scale.
What this project is NOT
❌ Not a police dispatch system
❌ Not encouraging confrontation
❌ Not identifying suspects
❌ Not publishing exact addresses
❌ Not a vigilante tool
- This project does not ask police to act on individual reports.
- It reveals patterns, not targets. Privacy & compliance (very important)
To protect privacy and comply with UK law:
- Exact door numbers are never shown publicly
- All locations are displayed as approximate points
- Sensitive data is blurred or aggregated
- Users can withdraw or anonymise their submission at any time
- More details are in the FAQ below.
⚽️ Why your support matters
Without public support, this project cannot continue.
With your help, we can:
- help victims feel less alone
- warn others before theft happens and make invisible crime patterns visible
- This is about prevention, recovery, and collective care.
❓ FAQ
- Is this data verified?
Reports are submitted voluntarily.
We do not claim legal certainty.
The value comes from patterns and repetition, not single reports.
- Does this violate privacy or human rights?
No. No personal identities are published No exact addresses are shown. No calls for enforcement or action are made
The map shows approximate locations for public awareness only.
- Can I remove my data?
Yes. Every submission includes a withdrawal mechanism:
Full removal. Further anonymisation Or time-based expiry
- Will police use this?
The map is publicly accessible.
It may help journalists, researchers, communities,
and potentially law enforcement understand trends —
but it is not an operational police tool.
- Why start with phones?
Phones continue to report location after theft.
They reveal movement, transit points and organised patterns
This makes them uniquely useful for understanding crime flows.
Budget Breakdown ( 12 months)
Category Estimated ------------ Cost
Developer living support -------£30,000
Server & infrastructure ----------£6,000
Privacy & legal consultation -----£8,000
Accounting & compliance -------£4,000
Translation & localisation --------£5,000
Contingency ---------------------£7,000
Total -----------------------------£60,000
Donation Milestones
Amount -- What it supports
£5 -------- Keeps the map online for everyone
£10 ------- Supports English translation work
£25 ------- Helps process and clean new reports
£50 ------- Supports privacy and compliance improvements
£100+ ----- Supports long-term maintenance and expansion
Organizer
