Travel insurance: Travellers 'leave thousands of phones' at airports

Tuesday, 05 September 2006

Many travellers are failing to look after their mobile phones when they head away, according to recent research.

A survey by Pointsec Mobile Technologies shows that many UK holidaymakers are the worst at looking after their phone when travelling overseas and rely on travel insurance to cover the cost of obtaining a new phone.

It is expected that thousands of phones will be left behind in airports and holiday resorts as Brits concentrate on having a good time rather than remaining in contact with home and work.

However, even when travellers realise their phone is missing they fail to contact the local lost property desk to attempt to recover their belongings, instead they can often rely on their travel insurance cover to compensate for the missing mobile.

Yet, this could mean that many phones and other devices such as laptops and PDAs could fall into the hands of criminals and lead to possible ID fraud or security breaches.

Peter Larsson, chief executive officer for Pointsec, explained: "Often people do not realise how valuable their information can be to others such as hackers, competitors or thieves."

He added: "Most people keep personal and customer details on their mobile devices and in our experience it’s when these contact details go missing that people and their companies really begin to worry."

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