Study finds lost smartphones are likely to be accessed for information
Posted Mar 25, 2014 7:17 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
You may want to think about how much personal information you have on your smartphone.
A new study says if you lose your phone the chances of getting it back aren’t great and your information is at risk.
Software company Symantec dropped ten phones each in Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver and waited to see if they would be returned.
Each phone was preloaded with icons for fake apps to see if anyone would take a peek into the owner’s personal information.
A file titled ‘HR Salaries’ was accessed on 42 per cent of the phones.
In Calgary, only one of the ten phones was accessed just for contacts.
Symantec’s Lynn Hargrove said the results are frightening.
“In many ways, people have more information on their phone than on their laptop or their home computing device,” she said.
Hargrove noted within 30 minutes of a phone being dropped in Calgary, information was accessed, and even after they got in contact with the owner, they continued to access the information.
She said the best protection is to set a password.
