Laptops are valuable to a thief, not only because they are a useful commodity that can be sold on but also because of the value of the data contained on them.
We are constantly being warned to protect our own personal identity but the truth is, in some cases there may be nothing much we can do about it.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that as you don’t have a laptop you are not at risk, or that you are only going to be affected by the theft of your own personal laptop, no, we are all at risk each and every day from becoming a victim of laptop theft and therefore identify theft, whether we have a laptop or not.
First of all though, the loss of our own laptop can be devastating. Most of us store personal details, names and addresses of friends and family, precious photographs, emails, and perhaps even our life’s work.
Take the plight of Professor Bruce Clarkson who is head of Waikato University Centre for Biodiversity and Ecology Research.
He had his laptop stolen from his home and his loss was seven years worth of botany research which is not only irreplaceable but of no value to anyone who isn’t interested in botany.
Included were pictures, measurements, diagrams and research papers all painstakingly put together by Professor Clarkson.
“It’d be absolutely useless to anybody else,” Clarkson said.
He is so upset by the loss of his laptop and external hard drive he has offered a $1000 reward for its safe return.
Yes we have some control when it’s our own personal laptop as we can increase security on the laptop and take steps to protect our data, and we certainly know when it’s gone missing, hey we can even offer a reward for its return if it ever does get lost or stolen.
Now what about government laptops being stolen? What’s worse about that is there is nothing you can do to protect your identity. Also, you might not even know you are at risk until it’s too late.
The Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) in Belfast are currently being heavily criticised for their response to the theft of a government laptop containing personal data of thousands of employees because they didn’t inform some of those involved for over a month.
Of course this isn’t an isolated incident, only the latest in a long line of worldwide government and corporate laptop thefts and security breaches.
The annoying thing is there is nothing we can do about it, in the case of official laptops where we’re just one name amongst many, we’re all utterly powerless.
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