Lost your phone? 50/50 chance of getting it back

Do you know where your Samsung Galaxy S II is? When did you last see your iPhone 4S? If you've lost your smartphone, you'd better resign yourself to never seeing it again, as new research reveals that barely half of smartphones get returned. For its Smartphone Honey Stick Project, security firm Symantec decided to see what happens to lost phones When you misplace your phone, will you ever see it again? And how safe is your data when it's in the hands of a stranger? Symantec, the folks behind Norton Antivirus, deliberately lost 50 smartphones in lifts, shopping centers, and public transport stops in New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Ottawa. The phones were then tracked to see whether the person finding them tried to have a snoop around.  The phones were filled with fake personal and work data, with no passwords to protect them. 96 per cent of the lost smart phones were accessed by the people who found them. Many of those people were doing the obvious thing and looking through the contacts or social networks for a way to contact the phone's owner, which is fair enough. In fact, they easily found an entry called Me in the Contacts app, which included an email address and contact number for the purported owner of the phone. Yet only half of those who found the phones contacted the owner. And eight out of ten people finding the phones went further, having a dekko at the work information, including a file labelled 'HR Salaries'. And 43 per cent of discoverers tried to log in to the online banking app. The cheeky blighters! Of course, it's worth remembering that Symantec sells security measures, so is likely to offer such warnings with an eye towards making us feel as if we need extra protection. Security is one of the headaches for IT departments as more and more of us want to use our Android phone or iPad for work. It's no wonder the consumerisation of IT has the corporate nerds freaking out.