We’ve all been there. You reach to your pocket, expecting to find your smartphone, and are soon overcome by blind panic when, after consulting your remaining pockets, the notion that your device is lost begins to set in.
Fortunately, ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s a false alarm, and the precious device is located safe and sound (often in a place you already thought you’d checked). Every minute of every day, however, others aren’t so lucky, and from restaurants to gas stations, thousands of people are losing their prized devices.
An interesting infographic compiled by BackgroundCheck.org shows the trends of the lost devices worldwide, and specifically among American citizens, based on the research of Lookout Mobile Security. It found the total value of daily lost devices to be in excess of a staggering $7 million, although that number doubled over the new year celebration period.
Special events and festivals – as you might expect – turn up a lot of unrecoverable devices, with 30% more phones lost in Cologne carnival than on a normal day.
The specific locations in which devices are lost certainly makes for interesting reading. In Chicago, for example, coffee shops are the hotspots for losing phones, along with San Francisco. Interestingly, bars and clubs – both places one would presume high cellphone loss – don’t make the charts. It could just be that people don’t lose their devices as much in these areas, but considering even Apple itself has lost prototype devices in San Fran bars, we highly doubt this to be the case.
Those in Seattle are most likely to come away from a fast food joint minus their pocket partner, while those in Philadelphia run a fairly high risk of coming away from Church without their phone. As is the case in Chicago, the place of prayer ranks as the third most common place to lose a phone.
Besides being largely expensive devices to replace, there’s also the implication of private data and information being lost, and privacy invaded by others.
To conclude this sermon, the best thing to do is make sure your device is locked with a secure password / passcode, and make sure you back everything up, covering your back should the unthinkable occur.
(via Mashable)
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