Nik Rawlinson
Storing all your data on a mobile device isn’t always a good thing.
It’s all too easy to coast through life, doing what you do because everyone else does the same… until it’s all too late. Only then do you consider the consequences. Here’s a cautionary tale.
I was out for a meeting as we put this issue together, in a coffee shop right by the office. Such familiar territory. Anyhow, when you’re out and about somewhere you know well, you let your guard down, and I thought nothing of putting my coat on the back of my chair and chat, chatting away for an hour. When we got up to leave – me and the person I was meeting – I put my hand in my inside pocket, and my iPod touch was gone. Somehow, someone had unzipped the pocket, taken out the touch and left everything in place without either of us noticing. I had my back to whoever it was, but my contact, obviously, did not. He was facing me and my coat, but he saw nothing untowards.
Unfortunate though it was to lose the touch, that’s not really the point. What’s more worrying is what was on it. As I walked back to the office, I started to think. There was my iTunes Store password for starters, the last 50 messages from each of my seven email accounts, which would all be happily updating all the while by logging on to their servers, so who knows what new information they were dishing out to our friendly neighbourhood identity thief. I’d installed the Evernote application, so they could get to all of my notes, and there was also, of course, my contact list, which looking in Address Book right now, runs to 502 people; some personal, some professional. If you’re one of them, and you’ve received a strange email or call from me… it wasn’t me.
Some of this is easy to fix, like changing all of my email passwords. I did that as soon as I got back to the office. I also used the excellent Find my iPhone to send a wipe command to the touch, which it would execute the next time it had any me.com email pushed in its direction, but eight days later I’m still waiting for the notification that anything has happened. It hasn’t, so I can only assume that so far the touch hasn’t yet come in network range. Either that or they’ve wiped it themselves.
Should I buy a new one? Maybe not. I have a nano, which has nothing but music, audio books and podcasts on it, and I rather like the idea that all of my properly important data is safely stored on my MacBook and online at various password protected accounts.
If I do succumb though (because oh, how I want to), this lesson has taught me that where data is concerned, too much of anything can indeed be a bad thing, and the future touch in my life – if there is one – will be a data-lite browsing device, no longer an office in my pocket.
