What do you do if you find a flash drive in an airline seat-back pocket?
Apropos to my posting a couple of weeks ago about the dangers of lost flash drives, New York Times columnist Randy Cohen tackles that issue in today”s paper.
At the end of a long flight, I gathered my children’s scattered belongings and scooped up someone’s lost flash drive, planning to mail it to its owner. A quick check showed that the drive contains a company’s proprietary information.
This is a significant issue. As flash drives become larger and more pervasive, we’re going to see more and more data lost because of them.
How many of us take some simple steps to improve the odds that lost flash drives would be returned? Do you have a file called “owner.txt” with your name, address or e-mail address? Do you have an address sticker? Frankly, I don’t do a good job with this, not on my flash drives.
Perhaps I should, because such things work: Many years ago, I dropped my Day-Timer notebook at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Because my business card was stapled inside, the airport’s Lost & Found department returned it to me just a few days later.
After having thought I lost my flash drive and found it back, and because
Bruce Schneier keeps advocating encryption for mobile devices, I decided to use its embedded encryption mechanism.
The encryption software works on Windows only, which is a real pain to me, but I think it is worth it: I do not need to worry anymore if I lose it.