by Ted Legg
In the Case of a Lost or Stolen Cellphone:
CBC’s The National recently ran a segment highlighting an experiment run by Symantec (a software security company) whereby over 60 cellphones were purposely left in the open for others to find. This experiment was conducted in six Canadian cities. In this experiment, 45% of all the cellphones were never returned and of those that were, nearly all had their data accessed because the cellphones were not locked and password protected. In one specific case, the ‘finder’ of the cellphone was actually tracked through a GPS App accessing bank accounts, passwords and other sensitive data over a period of several days.
Over 440,000 cellphones are lost every year and an additional 550,000 are stolen.
If your cellphone is indeed lost or stolen, there are apps and software out there that can remotely lock your phone and even wipe the memory clean. Something to seriously consider – for your own privacy protection.