Over the past few weeks I've been hearing stories of stolen laptops and iPhones. And extremely worried victims were asking what to do. Some people entrust virtually all their personal data to their portable devices, and a theft can be very traumatic. The list of emergency measures is often huge, and can require taking a day or two off work to get done.
One person had his iPhone stolen out from under him. He'd grabbed an armful of things from his car, taken them to the house, then returned for the last couple of things. In that minute or two, someone stole his iPhone from the car. What was on it? Pretty much every important detail of his life, both personal and work.
You better pray that you can access your data from somewhere within minutes of a theft. Log in to your email accounts, save everything, and close the accounts before thieves delete it or send spam... turn off Facebook and Twitter updates... tell banks and credit card companies (and possibly cancel cards & close accounts)... tell all your friends, family, work associates, clients... tell your ISP... tell your workplace network admin... cancel your iTunes account... and so on. This post isn't about the endless number of things you may need to do in case of theft. Just stop and ask yourself - What kind of nightmare would it be if your device was lost or stolen?
The problems start with how people use portable devices:
1) Usernames & passwords stored on the device. Do you have usernames and passwords stored so you can access email, bank accounts, Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, or other sites quickly? Within minutes, thieves can delete your accounts (or keep them and change the passwords), message your friends, and rack up charges like you wouldn't believe. You are much safer using passwords you can remember, typing them in each time.
2) Phone numbers, including friends, family, work. If you use one-touch dialing, or use a contact list/application, thieves just got a list of everyone important in your life. For indentity theft, prank calls, or to keep for later.
3) Email stored on the device. For the record, I've never in my life used a "storage" type of email service on any computer, like Outlook or Mac Mail. Web-based email, like Hotmail or Gmail, doesn't need to store anything on any device. If someone stole any of my computers, they wouldn't have a single email or piece of data about any of my contacts. In fact they wouldn't even know what email services I use. Plus if one of my computers caught fire 2 minutes from now, I could access my email using another one and nothing would be any different. I suggest either a password-protected email program on your device, or using a web-based email service that stores nothing on your device.
These are just some of the bigger security problems with portable devices, all caused by how people use them. The list of issues and solutions is really endless, but your headaches will be in direct proportion to how much data you store on your device in the first place. Portable devices can be handy tools, but they can also be lost or stolen in the blink of an eye. And keep in mind that some of the best security tips are equally useful in cases of a device freezing or crashing.
