If the phone is logged onto an email account, you have a gateway to taking over all their other on-line accounts.

1) Change the email password so the owner won’t meddle with your crime

2) Search for email from banks (or just try every major bank’s web site), go to those bank’s web sites and click on “I forgot my password – email me a new password”

3) Log on and transfer the money wherever you like

Information

Chilling, if you even have pictures stored on your phone.

If I was a horrible person and stole your cellphone and you didn’t have a pin number set on it I would swipe all your data (pictures/contacts/browser/etc) then I would call one of your friends and say I found your phone and want to return it.

But I would actually (depending on your email provider) forward all your email to a account I own. You would think a nice guy returned your phone promptly and probably give me a reward if I asked. You would never notice that I was reading your email for months and then I would get a new TV that you paid for.

You don’t even have to lose the phone. The highly contentious Stingray that the police use can perform “man on the middle” hacking attacks (or just a wiretap on voice calls). They can (and do!) use that technology without warrants, often without even letting the courts know they used it; the way it works is a grey area that would cause the EFF and ACLU to get many cases dismissed/overturned if the police admitted to it, though they are more likely to withdraw evidence to protect themselves. But I digress.

For purposes of this question, it really doesn’t matter so much about the legality of what the police are doing so much as the mere fact that the technology already exists to hack your phone remotely. Of course, there is no guarantee that law enforcement are the only ones using that technology.

Now that we have that established, think of how people use their phones these days. As computers, right? Doing anything online (checking email, online banking…) within range of a Stingray (or similar device) is another way you can get your stuff ganked.

Depends on how you use your phone and what information you store on it. The more you store, the easier it is to obtain other information. And don’t think there aren’t people out there that put in the time and effort to get it.