Losing cell phone comes with 89 pc chance of finders accessing data

Washington, Mar 12 (ANI): If you lose your smartphone, there is a strong likelihood that the person who finds it will snoop through your personal information and apps.

According to a new study commissioned by the privacy software company Symantec Corp, there is a 96 per cent chance that the finder will access the device, and an 89 per cent chance that it will be accessed for personal information.

There is only a 50 per cent chance the finder will try to return the phone to the person who lost it.

Symantec arrived at these conclusions after deliberately "losing" a total of 50 smartphones in five cities: New York City, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Ottawa, Canada, the LA Times reported.

The phones were preloaded with fake apps that would be instantly recognizable to a finder. They were also equipped with a GPS tracking device, as well as the ability to transmit data, such as when an app was opened, to a central database.

Researchers then left the phones in high-traffic areas like shopping malls, food courts and public transit stops and waited to see what happened.

Their results said that six out of 10 finders attempted to view social media information and email on the phones, eight out of 10 finders tried to access phony corporate information that Symantec had loaded on the phone and half of the finders even tried to access a bank account linked to the device.

However, there is a way to safeguard your information, and that is to make the phone password-protected.

"Just giving the phone password-based security would have prevented the casual finder from trolling through the data," Kevin Healey wrote on Symantec's official blog. (ANI)