Hundreds of thousands of mobile phones left in the back of Taxis

A Global survey of 2000 taxi drivers from eleven major cities around the world shows thousands of valuable mobile phones, handhelds, laptops and USB Sticks are forgotten in taxis every day.

Mountains of mobiles are left every day by fretful and forgetful travellers at the back of city cabs as passengers rush to leave taxis for their next destination. In the last six months alone, Londoners have forgotten a staggering 54,874 mobile phones* (that’s over 2 per taxi), 4,718 handhelds or Pocket PCs, 3,179 laptops and 923 USB sticks/thumb drives at the back of licensed taxi cabs and that’s just the ones that have been reported as lost!

London is not alone when it comes to forgetful travellers. It would seem the story of lost and forgotten mobiles echoes around the world with the same fate afflicting Sydney, Bombay, Stockholm, San Francisco, Washington, Helsinki, Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich and Oslo.

However, of all the cities London still comes out on top as the capital with the most forgetful population losing more mobile phones than any other city, followed by Bombay travellers who have lost a total of 32,970 and Sydney citizens who come third with 6,440 mobile phones reported as lost.

Interestingly the survey found that when it came to handheld devices such as Pocket PCs London once again came top with 4,718, Washington came out in second place with 2,260 and the Germans were also forgetful with their devices in Munich losing 1,902 and Berlin 1,125.

The numbers of lost laptops was also highest in London (3,179) with Munich in second place with 355 and Bombay in third place with 349.

In light of these staggering figures Pointsec (experts in mobile security) who conducted the survey amongst licensed taxi cabs to gauge the frequency and ease with which small mobile devices are lost in transit, would encourage business and individual users to back-up, encrypt and password protect their device in the event of it falling into the wrong hands and the data then being stolen, compromised or abused.