12,000 Laptops Lost Weekly At Airports

kthejoker writes "Apparently companies are even worse about losing our data than we suspected. From the article: 'According to a study of 106 major US airports and 800 business travelers published by the Ponemon Institute and Dell Computer, about 12,000 laptops are lost in airports each week. Only 30 percent of travelers ever recover the lost devices. Nearly half of the travelers say their laptops contain customer data or confidential business information.' Kinda scary..."

Comments

Insurance

[Renraku]

Perhaps they should have purchased insurance? .

After all, the workers know not to steal the ones with the insurance stickers.

Re:Insurance

[Nos.]

It's not about the hardware. Most companies don't care about the $2000-$3000 replacement cost. Its the data, or worse yet, having to disclose that you have potentially exposed customer data that they really want to avoid.

Re:Insurance

[TommydCat]

You've obviously never lost a company laptop... They definitely care and can show it by giving you an "off the shelf replacement" which turns out to actually be a Kaypro luggable ;)

I've observed a similar thing with replacement Blackberrys...

Re:Insurance

[lena_10326]

They definitely care and can show it by giving you an "off the shelf replacement" which turns out to actually be a Kaypro luggable

I've observed a similar thing with replacement Blackberrys...

I think some of that depends on your importance within the team. One of my teammates lost his Treo 650 and they replaced it within days despite having a hard time getting one through Sprint. There were shortages at the time, so they bought one off Ebay--paying extra. They did it because this guy was a key member of the team. Had he been a junior n00b developer, probably not. He'd have had to wait a while.

Re:Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

Lost crackberry, got a new one on eBay... hmmmm....

Re:Insurance

[kilodelta]

I've had business issued laptops, cell phones, etc. but never ever lost one.

Re:Insurance

[initialE]

Why don't they steal the ones with insurance stickers? What am I missing here?

Re:Insurance

[drew30319]

"Our insurance is so good that you'll never need it!"

Re:Insurance

[The Snowman]

Its the data, or worse yet, having to disclose that you have potentially exposed customer data that they really want to avoid.

My company-owned laptop has around 50% of its hard drive taken up by a TrueCrypt volume containing all proprietary information pertaining to the company and its customers. I chose a cryptographically-strong password and algorithm to encrypt this volume. With the way I store data (I prefer simple text files) I can guarantee that without the password for that TrueCrypt volume, 99% or more of the potentially sensitive data will be locked away. I have seen laptops lost or stolen at airports, from someone's car while he was in a restaurant, or even swiped off their desk at work by the cleaning staff at night. For this reason I lock my laptop in my desk in accordance with company policies, and if I remove it from the building (telecommuting or traveling on business) the damn thing is in my hands, or the carrying case is over my shoulder. I maintain physical and logical control over that data at all times. This protects my company and its customers from loss of sensitive data, and it protects my mortgage from a sudden loss in biweekly bank deposits :-)

Re:Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

And what about swap (paging) files? Tmp files? There are way too many potential information leaks with just one encrypted "data" partition...full-disk encryption is way better in that sense

Re:Insurance

[Atti K.]

If you have a decent amount of RAM (and a decent OS), you can disable swap for maximum safety. Disable hibernation and standby also, if data security is more important than convenience.

Re:Insurance

[binaryspiral]

Ditto... how the eff do you forget your laptop? Phone, maybe I can buy - the holster broke, it slipped out my pocket in the cab...

But a freakin' laptop? Me thinks someone just wants a new one and doesn't want to wait until the lease is up.

Re:Insurance

[kaiidth]

Ditto... how the eff do you forget your laptop? Phone, maybe I can buy - the holster broke, it slipped out my pocket in the cab...

One place I worked at for a while, in France, was in an industrial estate. They'd carefully secured everything with magic keycard entry and security, and were very careful about letting laptops out of the building. I eventually got permission to travel with my laptop on the basis that I was spending weeks at a time off at the R&D centre several hundred miles away, and got a habit of taking it home in the evenings as well. I mention this because I walked in with my laptop one Tuesday morning and discovered that over the previous night, somebody had walked in and stolen every single laptop from the building. For a while I was the only person with a laptop...

So yeah. Laptops are tempting targets and do tend to 'disappear', so some of these 'forgetfulness' issues may actually be assisted by larceny. I find it a little inexplicable that so many people actually lose them in the literal sense, but I suppose it's not all that difficult. If for example you've been from say Austin to say Milwaukee via Memphis and Chicago, and upon exiting the airport you're lugging around a small suitcase, a cabin bag, two plastic bags containing duty-free and a bottle of water to replace the one confiscated at the airport respectively, and a laptop bag, then it seems not beyond the realms of plausibility that you might inadvertently leave something behind in the taxi. This only gets worse with really long-haul flights, which often leave you disgustingly overtired and dehydrated and generally incapable of counting your own shoes, assuming you remembered to retrieve them from the X-ray machine on your way through, let alone the number of items of luggage you have on you and whether you packed your laptop in the briefcase or just carried it around the airport in its metrosexual little neoprene sock.

I have no explanation for the number of idiots who lose laptops on trains in the UK, other than to say that if you make it through a trip from Penzance to Glasgow with your soul intact, let alone your luggage, you are already doing pretty well.

Re:Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've observed a similar thing with replacement Blackberrys..."

Ah. I always wondered why there's still a market for these phones.

Re:Insurance

[kilodelta]

Ah yes, phones. I've lost them in peoples cars but they've always returned them to me.

One day I was walking into the office and spotted a cell phone on the sidewalk. Now the first thing you do is go into the directory and look for an entry that says "home". When I got into the office I called that number and explained to the person that answered that I'd found the phone and where I was located in the building.

The woman who came and claimed it was grateful. She had all her contact info in that phone.

Re:Insurance

[Von Helmet]

The joke, it seems.

Re:Insurance

[tehcyder]

I have no explanation for the number of idiots who lose laptops on trains in the UK, other than to say that if you make it through a trip from Penzance to Glasgow with your soul intact, let alone your luggage, you are already doing pretty well.

You'd have to be insane to do that journey by train instead of flying, the way train fares are now in the UK.

Re:Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that would cost the airport money, and then the airport would come down on the theft. Since said airport doesn't have to pay for things over a certain value that are lost and don't have insurance...

Re:Insurance

[kaiidth]

I agree. Unfortunately my employers have suddenly become worried about our carbon footprint to the extent that apparently they are happier with the idea of spending a lot to have an employee sit on a train for an entire day, than spending far less to have an employee hanging around at an airport for three hours.

One might think that this policy is nothing short of inhumane... but I couldn't possibly comment.

Re:Insurance

[ShadowsHawk]

I flew out to see family and checked my bags. In one, I had a 6 pack of home brew beer securely wrapped. When I finally got around to opening my bags after I arrived, I noticed that everything was a jumbled mess. No search ticket by the moronic TSA, but the beer was missing. They will steal anything that isn't tied down.

Always use protection

[Nos.]

Truecrypt or similar commercial offerings are available and reliable. Protect your data and ours.

Re:Always use protection

[Colin Smith]

Someone has to be sued first. No excuse these days.

 

Re:Always use protection

[Henry V .009]

The basic Debian and Fedora installs both offer full hard drive encryption as an option. It's a really good idea on any (backed-up) system with data that you don't want falling into the wrong hands.

Re:Always use protection

[Vancorps]

Truecrypt along with Debian, Fedora, by extension Ubuntu are not solutions an enterprise can deploy reliably.

Truecrypt is mighty close but portability is a killer for any enterprise to manage.

Picture the scenario where a user changed the keys and then gets fired. With Truecrypt hopefully you have a copy of the master key so you should be fine. With encrypted LVM solutions things can get all kinds of hairy though.

I wish Truecrypt supported fingerprint authentication. Right now it looks like Computrace's LoJack for Laptops is still the best option for enterprise deployment.

Re:Always use protection

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easier to keep quiet than to wear gloves all the time. Hell, I could just lift one off the reader if I wanted the data that badly.

Re:Always use protection

[Qzukk]

With encrypted LVM solutions things can get all kinds of hairy though.

LUKS (cryptsetup) actually has a mechanism for adding multiple keys, though if you let the user log in as root, they'd just change those keys too. Or hell, dd /dev/urandom over the whole thing.

But if they really wanted to screw the company over, why bother with all that when they can just "lose" the laptop on a business trip?

Re:Always use protection

[v1]

and filevault is free, bundled, and only a button click away.

Re:Always use protection

[Vancorps]

Good luck, modern fingerprint readers won't work that way as they don't have a contact point for the whole finger.

Re:Always use protection

[Vancorps]

Thanks for the link, I've been trying to find a deployment strategy for enterprise wide encryption. Most of the systems seem rather clunky and not well thought out.

One of my test laptops suddenly started saying that the TPM chip cannot be contacted so the encrypted laptop is now useless and needs to be wiped to start all over. Fortunately it's just a test laptop so there's nothing on it to worry about but it definitely makes me nervous about deploying it for the whole company.

Re:Always use protection

[wkk2]

It is not just the users. I believe the airports and their security theater is at least somewhat culpable for the $20M in losses a week. I usually carry a lot of special cords and I always have problems. The last troublesome item was two back-to-back modular jacks wire as a T1 crossover. Security handled it like it was a tarantula. After scattering everything all over the place, a supervisor finally let me pass. It is a wonder more stuff isn't lost.

Encrypt everything. I just wish TrueCrypt had a feature that allowed the secret to be split between the user and a company web server.

Re:Always use protection

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont see where your basis for LoJack still being the best for enterprise deployment, that is, unless you work for Computrace.

Some companies have compliance issues, such as the Australian Government, and are locked into vendor software that has been evaulated. So Checkpoint PointSec might be the best solution for them.

One other thing to note, is that a lot of the time you don't really want the end all of encryption HGDSV type software. If some chump or crim picks up one of your users laptops and cant get into it, and they dont know if it has valuable information in it, they will more then likely just kill the hdd and sell it off.

Re:Always use protection

[Deagol]

FreeBSD's geli (GEOM ELI) can have 2 different master keys, along with key files, if desired ("man geli" then search for "girlfriend"). The keys are easily backed up, as well (via the geli command or copying the last sector of the device -- which is what the command does anyways.) So even if you didn't have a 2nd key, you'd back up the key when you deployed the device to the end-user, and then, short of intentional device corruption (which, I assume, any HD crypto scheme is susceptible to), then the admin can recover the data.

For grins, I've started using full-HD encryption with geli on my workstation. It's really nice. I boot from a USB stick, which has just enough of the kernel and a fstab to mount the encrypted root device, then after passwords (1 for each of my 2 drives) are entered, everything just works. Speed, of course, is taken down a notch, but using gjournal with -o async,noatime helps a little.

I encourage folks to check it out.

Re:Always use protection

[MadnessASAP]

Why are you carrying lots of fancy connectors and wires on board a plane? I mean obviously we know what they are and that they're not harmful but guess what, not everyone's a nerd and I'm pretty glad that security is taking an extra long look at anybody carrying a bunch of electronic gizmos onto a plane. Just throw it into your stowed baggage and be done with it, I'm pretty sure there wont be much call for a T1 crossover at 20000' in the air.

Re:Always use protection

[papna]

I don't know exactly why he's taking such things on the plane, but I know personally I fly with no checked baggage as often as I can.

Re:Always use protection

[Anonymous Coward]

I use dm-crypt and cryptsetup at work for medical record stuff, and I have this to say: It hasn't fucked up yet (yes, I still take regular backups). The filesystem (ext3fs) is now on about a year, the system has survived at least one "whoops, that was the wrong power plug", and every time it comes up ready for me to enter the passphrase and go. It's not going to encrypt your boot partition, but a 50MB /boot (or a usb stick) with the appropriate devicemapper+dm-crypt kernel, bootloader and initramfs, and you'll be ready to mount the rest of the drives.

It also has handy flags for automatically mkfs'ing swap and temp partitions with random keys every boot.

My beef with it is that the cryptsetup "reference implementation" seems to have "become good enough" (last update in 2007) and nobody has done any work integrating it with TPM, fingerprint readers, and so on. On the enduser laptop side, someone should probably write an idle-detecting daemon to unmount and unmap the partition. It does look like suspend can work.

Unrelated to cryptsetup itself, there is a performance issue you'd need to be aware of in dm-crypt. The dm-crypt driver will spawn [kcryptd] process(es) at a nice level of -5 (default kernel level), putting its priority over most other user processes. When I first started testing this, I attempted to move a copy of our code tree into the partition and X stopped responding after a few minutes, then exited with a message to the effect that the X server was killing itself because it had decided it had locked up. You can renice the kcryptd process, but I suggest that you benchmark your expected load before setting anyone loose with it. (renice it to 0 while installing/setting up, then setting it back to negative niceness and test your applications) More positive niceness levels will improve interactivity but slow down filesystem access. I've found that on the core2duo test box, "normal desktop user" (web browsing, opening and closing one document-sized file at a time, etc) that default -5 does not cause any noticable glitches.

Re:Always use protection

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant other than when using the reader. Seriously, 'biometric' security isn't security.

Re:Always use protection

[SanityInAnarchy]

Truecrypt is mighty close but portability is a killer for any enterprise to manage.

This is WTF #1.

Under what circumstances would the encrypted volume need to be accessed from an OS other than the primary one for the laptop? For that matter, under what circumstances would an "enterprise" not standardize on an OS?

If you're going to say "recovery", that implies the laptop isn't being backed up, which is a WTF on its own.

With Truecrypt hopefully you have a copy of the master key so you should be fine. With encrypted LVM solutions things can get all kinds of hairy though.

With LuKS, you can use a fair number of keys with an encrypted volume -- either keyfiles or passphrases. So if you need a master key, that's easily possible.

I wish Truecrypt supported fingerprint authentication.

This is WTF #2.

A fingerprint is completely useless here. Remember that a copy of your fingerprint must be stored somewhere in the laptop to compare against, and that a fingerprint can never scan twice. It can therefore not be used as a key -- the best you could do is a boolean check.

As in: if (fingerprints_match) { unlock_stuff(); }

As in, all an attacker needs to do is use their non-keyprinted version of Truecrypt.

Right now it looks like Computrace's LoJack for Laptops is still the best option for enterprise deployment.

This is WTF #3.

LoJack is, what, a 10-line cron job? And from a quick Google, I see nothing about crypto, only about erasing after the fact.

In other words, all an attacker needs to do if they want to sell the laptop is wipe the drive. All they need to do if they want to get the data is image the drive, and work without a network connection. Crypto will at least protect against the latter attack.

Re:Always use protection

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Remember that a copy of your fingerprint must be stored somewhere in the laptop to compare against, and that a fingerprint can never scan twice.

Is that true? I was under the impression that fingerprint readers break down the relative uniqueness of your fingerprint into a key as opposed to doing an image-comparison. Can anybody clarify that?

Re:Always use protection

[Dan541]

It should be a jailable offence security is taken way to lightly.

I don't care how many qualification and/or years worth of business experience they have if they are not competent with encryption then they are unqualified for any job involving data.

Re:Always use protection

[wkk2]

I was installing a router in an airport and returning home without ever leaving the airport. If I had checked the crossover, I would have needed to take it back through security anyway. I have also fixed stuff while waiting for a layover. Two trips for the price of one.

Re:Always use protection

[hacker]

What algorithms does FileVault allow me to choose from for my striping?

I'd will be using Whirlpool for the hash algorithm and Serpent-Twofish-AES for the encryption algorithm. Can you show me how to choose those from the FileVault preferences?

Oh, and I need my encryption key to reside on a USB thumbdrive (which is biometrically protected of course). How do I export my key from FileVault to my USB thumbdrive?

Can FileVault do this?

Re:Always use protection

[Anonymous Coward]

Can FileVault do this?

Of course not. He's just an Apple fanboy who needs to promote Apple's weak-ass encryption tool whenever someone suggests a non-Apple solution.

As the GGP suggested, OS X users would be better off with the free OS X version of TrueCrypt.

Re:Always use protection

[v1]

A lot of what you're looking for is in there but you do have to turn it on. That's for government level security.

I used to have a copy of the official steps taken to harden a mac for government use (over 200 page PDF!) but I'm having problems finding it. It wasn't something I found by looking, it was something I stumbled on, so I'm not so sure they are making it easy to find.

"Security Configuration Guide" is the magic passphrase. And a breathtaking 240 pages at that for Leopard. So if you're serious about hardening, there you go, have at it. I'd bet after reading even a quarter of that, your home folder encryption is going to be really low on your list of things to do. But that guide covers it ALL.

I have yet to encounter a more thorough or comprehensive guide on system hardening for any of the "general public" operating systems.

Re:Always use protection

[hacker]

Thanks for the links, but this doesn't get me a single micron closer to the goal... being able to choose the hash and encryption method used to encrypt my data in FileVault or the OS itself.

I searched, scanned and read large relevant sections in that 240-page pdf, and not a single mention of anything related to the encryption algorithms was to be found.

They do mention AES-256 twice, and SHA1 once... but that's just barely scratching the surface of what true encryption can do, and should be used for.

Thanks again, I'll keep scouring the web for solutions. FileVault is great for the general "home" user, but for someone who has important, secure data to transport or maintain (i.e. client data), FileVault falls vastly short of something as comprehensive as say... loop-aes, dm-crypt or TrueCrypt.

Re:Always use protection

[hacker]

Absolutely they do. The earlier revisions of fingerprint readers (like the "Fingerchip"), used to take a fingerprint and aggregate 57 separate, unique points on it, and used that as the seed. When you scan again, there is a percentage of those 57 points that has to match in order to be considered genuine.

At no point does a key have to "exist" on the machine, and having a list of 57 separate datapoints does not let you extrapolate the fingerprint from that data in any way.

The order of security from Most-Secure to Least-Secure goes like this, for biometric:

1. Fingerprint
2. Iris scan
3. Voiceprint
4. Facial recognition

Combining any of the above with two additional, non-biometric authenticator is one way to dramatically increase the security, as well as reduce the changes of having someone breach it.

1. Something you are (biometric)
2. Something you have (card key, key fob)
3. Something you know (password, passphrase, key code)

This raises important questions

[merreborn]

...Why do they keep giving these 800 people laptops if they're each losing over 12 per week?

Re:This raises important questions

[whiplashx]

Reminds me of the statistic: Every 2 seconds an American woman is raped.

That poor woman...

Re:This raises important questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are some speedy rapists...

Re:This raises important questions

[greenguy]

Unless they're flying almost constantly, that means they're actually losing several per flight.

"I can't believe it. I lost another three laptops today!"

Re:This raises important questions

[plasmacutter]

Reminds me of the statistic: Every 2 seconds an American woman is raped.
That poor woman...

Those are some speedy rapists...

but they're kind too! i mean they bring her food, change her bedpan, and don't comment on the horrific odor she's got after being on her back for so many years!

Re:This raises important questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of the statistic: Every 2 seconds an American woman is raped. That poor woman...

Those are some speedy rapists...

but they're kind too! i mean they bring her food, change her bedpan, and don't comment on the horrific odor she's got after being on her back for so many years!

This thread has taken an unsettling turn...

Re:This raises important questions

[Anonymous Coward]

What a reaper perfomance!

Re:This raises important questions

[heneon]

I heard for every driver that got killed in a car accident, 1 out of 5 was drunk. So I better drink before getting behind the steering wheel, if sober drivers are more likely to get killed!

Re:This raises important questions

[One Childish N00b]

"Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped." - Sam Levenson.

Ponemon

[Anonymous Coward]

Ponemon! Gotta Catch e'm All!

Re:Ponemon

[Kinky Bass Junk]

All the laptops?

Math

[HunterZ]

Where the hell are the 40,000 unrecovered laptops a year going? Is there really that much of a market for used (stolen) laptops?

Re:Math

[whiplashx]

You mean 400,000. (12,000 * 52 * .7)

I call bullshit...

Re:Math

[Anonymous Coward]

For foreign security services, some of who double as corporate espionage agents, laptops with data on critical contracts, possibly classified material, logins and VPN software to connect to corporate and government networks, hell, even blackmail material, they're a gold mine!

The guys picking up the laptops might be run of the mill local criminals, but you'd be a fool if you were an intelligence agent and didn't have line on an easy source of info like this.

Re:Math

[XorNand]

Hrm? (12,000 laptops per week) * (30% recovery rate) = 436,000 laptops per year that vanish into the void. Sounds like someone got the decimal point wrong.

Re:Math

[deepgrey]

Well, according to the article, sounds like some of them are being destroyed (destroyed?) by the airports...

Re:Math

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes... Math. Unfortunately, you are off by a factor of 10.

Re:Math

[toby34a]

It's called Unclaimed Baggage, and it's wonderful. I need to make another trip out there (only 40 minutes from Huntsville, AL. http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/

Re:Math

[sumdumass]

Where did the 7 come from? 1200 per week would be 1200*52.

Well, actually, since 30% are recovered, it would be more like 30% of 1200 (840), times 52 weeks (43680 or so) roughly 40,000 laptops missing.

Re:Math

[story645]

Scrap?

The lcd's alone are worth a ton and some of the other parts can be melted down.

Re:Math

[sumdumass]

I guess that should be 12,000 not 1200 resulting in 400,000 (436,800)

Re:Math

[p0tat03]

Go to a college sometime - stolen laptops are a thriving economy. Sadly, most people I've run into will have no qualms about buying laptops they know to be stolen (or suspect to be so).

Re:Math

[pimpimpim]

Your result is correct, but really, how did you get there again? Please now. Take pen, paper, and a calculator and write everything down. How many laptops are lost per week? Which percentage of them are recovered? Which percentage of them remain lost? How many laptops are that? At the end, multiply by the amount of weeks in a year.

Or maybe you were just trying to prove that your nickname is even more appropriate than that of BadAnalogyGuy

Re:Math

[Macman408]

I guess that's where we'll be getting all our rare earth metals soon...

Re:Math

[sumdumass]

Lol.. I explained how I got there in the post before this. The post you replied to is the one where I corrected my error in the amount.

I'm sorry that you can't follow along there. It really isn't a difficult concept. You see, all you have to do is take what I have already posted and put 12,000 in place of 1200. And no, you can't barrow my nickname.

I'll return ALL of the Laptops: +1, Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

in return for the single payment of Euro 100 Billion.

Please, no U.S. Dollars.

Cordially,
Dr. Evil

P.S.: John McCain For Minister of Torture

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

I have lost many items over the years from my luggage, i now carry as much as possible in my hand luggage. This leads me to believe baggage handlers are generally 'tea leaves'.

www.ebay.com

[EmbeddedJanitor]

.... and the answer is yes.

Miniscule

[mrroot]

That is nothing compared to the amount of passenger's luggage that is lost daily by the airlines.

But still, what kind of moron loses their laptop while traveling? I can't imagine letting it out of my sight or even out of my reach.

Re:Miniscule

[lena_10326]

That is nothing compared to the amount of passenger's luggage that is lost daily by the airlines

They once lost my checked in bag on a direct flight from Chicago to KC. Direct flight--no hops! And worse, I checked the bag early. There was plenty of time to get it on my plane. Fortunately, it was recovered a couple days later.

Re:Miniscule

[mrroot]

I have done some software development work for the Airlines, and one thing I learned is your bags do not necessarily follow the same path you do (yes even on a direct flight). The fact that you checked them early actually was probably your mistake because you gave them a chance to put them on a different flight.

And from my own personal experience it is frustrating trying to communicate with the baggage complaint desk person (could there be a worse job?) because the airline doesn't consider them lost, only delayed, and they are sure to remind you of that throughout the conversation.

Re:Miniscule

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, you put your stuff on the belt, walk through the detector, and they ask you to step aside for special screening without giving you a chance to collect your stuff. Or the detector beeps, and they need to ask you to step aside so they can check you with a wand. And all the while this is happening there is a crowd of people between you and your stuff. You can't see it. You can't tell the TSA agent to let you go so you can keep an eye on your stuff.

It is a miracle I have never lost anything at during security check.

Re:Miniscule

[shmlco]

"The fact that you checked them early..."

So get there early, and you're screwed. Get there too late, and you're screwed. And no matter when you get there, the airline is going to charge you $15 for each bag, which means you're screwed anyway.

And with all of the budget cuts, they're not even going to buy you a drink first...

Re:Miniscule

[mmkkbb]

There are definitely clueless kids that lose their backpacks in the airport, and they can get stolen if you so much as look away in a crowded airport and you're not touching the bag.

Re:Miniscule

[KurdtX]

what kind of moron loses their laptop while traveling? I can't imagine letting it out of my sight or even out of my reach.

I take it you haven't been to an airport in the last decade, if ever.

The study does point out about half are lost at security, where everyone (moron or not) has to put their laptop out of sight and out of reach.

Re:Miniscule

[Anonymous Coward]

I COMPLETELY AGREE! I am always SO worried that I am going to have my laptop stolen. It is a bit nerve wracking. Is the TSA responsible for your stolen property or would there be enough video to capture whomever stole your laptop?

Re:Miniscule

[jandrese]

That's actually a little surprising, because I've been on flights before where someone checks a bag and then doesn't show up for the departure (there's always at least one), and they have to open the cargo hold up and search for his bag to remove it.

Re:Miniscule

[jandrese]

The TSA doesn't give a crap about your stuff unless it has a bomb/gun/knife/water bottle in it. They're certainly not going to pull a surveillance tape for Joe Schmoe unless you get a court order. Even if they did your chances of catching someone from camera footage is very small, even if you see the guy take it the best you're going to get is a grainy picture of his face.

Re:Miniscule

[DotNM]

At least your airport security is run by the government in the USA. In Canada (at least at YYZ [Toronto Lester B. Pearson International Airport]), the security is outsourced to a third-party security company. Basically, the people responsible for security at our airports are rent-a-cops and NOT government employees.

Re:Miniscule

[syousef]

But still, what kind of moron loses their laptop while traveling? I can't imagine letting it out of my sight or even out of my reach.

It doesn't take a moron. It takes someone who's momentarily distracted, tired, or asleep.

I could say it takes an uncompassionate git to make such a sweeping statement with no regard for the wide variety of circumstances under which people that travel.

Re:Miniscule

[ColdWetDog]

You know, you put your stuff on the belt, walk through the detector, and they ask you to step aside for special screening without giving you a chance to collect your stuff. Or the detector beeps, and they need to ask you to step aside so they can check you with a wand. And all the while this is happening there is a crowd of people between you and your stuff. You can't see it. You can't tell the TSA agent to let you go so you can keep an eye on your stuff.

I don't know about which airports you fly, Mr. AC, but I get the "special check" on every flight (courtesy of some additional metal in my side) and on every flight, the screener makes me point to my luggage and picks it up and puts it away from me and everyone else, goes the the magic wand procedure and then, and only then, allows me to touch my belongings.

I have had the misfortune of flying in the USA quite a bit this year and everybody does it the same way. Don't know where you are flying from, but it's not anywhere I've been.

Re:Miniscule

[ArsenneLupin]

and one thing I learned is your bags do not necessarily follow the same path you do (yes even on a direct flight).

There obviously haven't been enough suitcase bombs. Terrorist, you did a poor job!

Re:Miniscule

[blackchiney]

I think it really depends on the policy of the airline. Like if they are going to need the extra space for cargo or something. I've only seen this on smaller regional flights where the flights are frequent. Most likely if your bags aren't on board with you it's because they left on the flight after, but rarely on the flight before.

Re:Miniscule

[mgblst]

So get there early, and you're screwed. Get there too late, and you're screwed.

yes, just like most things in life. You can apply this to a job interview, a job, a date, your mums dinner upstairs.

Re:Miniscule

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't tell the TSA agent to let you go so you can keep an eye on your stuff.

Bull. I never let my stuff out of my sight and the few times I've been pulled aside the TSA agent has assisted me in getting my stuff. Don't don't be a fool and go through the detector until your stuff enters the x-ray machine.

Re:Miniscule

[lena_10326]

The fact that you checked them early actually was probably your mistake because you gave them a chance to put them on a different flight

I had to wait 3 days to get my bag. OK. It leaves earlier than I do; then it should show up earlier than me. OK. It takes a different longer route; then it should get to me within hours after I arrive. Not 3 days.

Re:Miniscule

[lena_10326]

Oh.. and one more thing. That would violate the rule of not transporting the checked bags if the passenger isn't on the plane. If what you say is true, that's an ENORMOUS loop hole in security. A terrist could check in 3 hours early for flight B at 10am, the bag gets put on flight A at 8am. Flight A gets destroyed; terrist lives to strike another day.

Lost? Insurance scam more likely

[waynemcdougall]

My experience working in a hotel...

Business person (men and women) leave laptop in hotel room. Contact said person to return it.

"Oh, no, don't send it back - it's a year old - I claim on insurance and get a new, faster, better laptop. You can have it."

I can't help thinking an airport is a better place to "upgrade" your laptop - none of those pesky hotel staff trying to return it to you.

Re:Lost? Insurance scam more likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Very likely.

As an example, when one of my cow-orkers gets tired of his cellphone, he starts throwing it around to break it.

At the wall, floor, parking lot.

"I have insurance" he says. Then he gets the latest model.

--
BMO

Re:Lost? Insurance scam more likely

[goofyspouse]

It also could be done to avoid the costs associated with recycling outdated hardware.

But, in this day and age, isn't every abandoned piece of luggage treated like a WMD? I would expect a lot more bomb squad activity at airports based on these (surely inflated) numbers.

Re:Lost? Insurance scam more likely

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great idea! My company laptop is a piece of junk. I'm going to work hard to get it "stolen"!

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

This story is bunk. It does not pass the sniff test.

600,000 laptops a year just floating around in thieves hands.. I don't buy it..

Bad science.. bad study.

The story doesn't say how many are recovered before the laptop loser leaves the building. it is probably 90%. I can live with 60,000 a year stolen.. but 600k.. blah.

Re:huh?

[Exp315]

I tend to agree with you on this one Anonymous Coward. Maybe people are bit to ready to believe sensational stories. I clicked through the several links to get as close to the original study as possible, and the words "estimate by airport officials" start to appear with no further details.

Re:huh?

[Dare nMc]

the wording (didn't RTFA) may add some belief. I have lost a laptop in the airport and never recovered it. IE, the screen broke (usefulness gone = lost) It was never recovered (all data was backed up+cost more to repair than a new one) so I never recovered any thing.
More dead from use than lost/stolen seams likely to me.
If 600,000 laptops were stolen by travelers from travelers, it is clear most laptops used by travelers must already be stolen once. Therefore I can only conclude that only a few hundred laptops are stolen from their legit owners per year, the rest is just thief on thief crime.

Pokemon Institute

[andrewd18]

published by the Pokemon Institute ... about 12,000 laptops are lost in airports each week

They're missing because I caught them all!

208000 laptops per year...

[denzacar]

You know... that comes out to about 1004000 laptops every five years.

If we could only get airport personnel to increase their "output" we could scrap that pointless One Laptop Per Child project.
Those things cost money.
These would be like... for free.

Re:208000 laptops per year...

[fizzup]

I get it 12,000 laptops per week times 17 1/3 weeks per year means 208,000 laptops per year.

208,000 laptops per year times 4.8269231 years means 1,004,000 laptops in five years.

What are you on? Glue?

Re:208000 laptops per year...

[drinkypoo]

You still wouldn't be able to use these in the dust with no power outlet somewhere. The XO has that yoyo charger. Very important for many of the places they need to go. These would be more useful in schools right here in the first world.

Re:208000 laptops per year...

[Anonymous Coward]

I get it 12,000 laptops per week times 17 1/3 weeks per year means 208,000 laptops per year.

208,000 laptops per year times 4.8269231 years means 1,004,000 laptops in five years.

What are you on? Glue?

I assume you got 17 1/3 weeks as an approximation of 30% of 52, but 30% were recovered per the summary, so for the unrecovered 70% of laptops you should have multiplied by 34 2/3 weeks per year, yielding a number closer to being correct. It looks like denzacar used your flawed 17 1/3 approximation, but transposed two digits for the 5-year figure (1,004,000 instead of 1,040,000).

Laptops lost/week = 12000 * 70% = 8400
Laptops lost/year = 8400 * 52 weeks/year = 436800
Laptops lost per 5 years = 436800 * 5 = 2184000

Correctly applying your approximation would have yielded 2,080,000 laptops lost per 5 years, and denzacar's transposition should have been obvious once you calculated the same (incorrect) approximation he did.

Got Glue?

- T

Re:208000 laptops per year...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just have one question, T. Are you fucking retarded? Maybe you didn't notice that fizzup's post was modded +5 funny? LOL

Re:208000 laptops per year...

[Fissure_FS2]

What are you on? Glue?

He's probably just using a Pentium...

Re:208000 laptops per year...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it wasn't +5 Funny at the time, and for me the humor wasn't apparent (no, "17 1/3" wasn't enough of a clue). I've seen any number of similar posts here which are entirely serious. Upon re-reading it, I can see where it might be considered mildly humorous.

Apologies to fizzup.

- T

In unrelated news...

[Mike1024]

According to a study [...] published by the Ponemon Institute and Dell Computer, about 12,000 laptops are lost in airports each week. Only 30 percent of travelers ever recover the lost devices. Nearly half of the travelers say their laptops contain customer data or confidential business information.

In what I'm sure is completely unrelated news, the release of this report coincides with Dell releasing a new service - Dell Mobility Services Aim To Protect Notebook Data, and New Dell Services Help Users Hunt Down Missing Laptops.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Another PR firm gets a story through the awesome Slashdot editorial tripwire... somehow.

Relieved upon reading the article...

[lena_10326]

I thought this was going to be another story about TSA outright stealing laptops. Glad to read it's about people misplacing them instead. Whew.

When I travel with a laptop, I make sure it's my only carry-on. I store extras in the front and inner pockets of the laptop bag. You're less likley to lose something if you've only got 1 thing to remember.

Re:Relieved upon reading the article...

[v1]

I can't imagine anyone checking a laptop. Carry on definitely the way to go. Watch a movie while you're at it.

Re:Relieved upon reading the article...

[Metathran0]

I second that. I travel quite a bit, and I always have at least one of my laptops with me. I travel pretty light, but considering that you're only allowed two carry ons, there really doesn't seem to be a way to be so overwhelmed with luggage that you lose a laptop. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how these laptops are misplaced; the article didn't mention anything about how it happens. Is it really that difficult to put a laptop in a carry on bag and just bring it on the plane?

Re:Relieved upon reading the article...

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Can you actually watch anything when the 1,000lbs whale in front of you decides to lean ALL the way back in cattle class :|

Re:Relieved upon reading the article...

[v1]

if you pick a seat next to an emergency exit, the seat in front of you will not recline.

Re:Relieved upon reading the article...

[lena_10326]

I would assume at the gate security. The guard takes it out of the bag and you don't see him doing it.. you pick up your bag on the other end and off you go.. not realizing your laptop was taken out and still riding through the x-ray.

Re:Relieved upon reading the article...

[Metathran0]

Whenever you pass through the checkpoint (at least in American airports), you're required to take your laptop out of your bag and place it in a seperate basket. I could understand not noticing a missing item from your bag, but an empty basket would be pretty obvious.

Just for clarification...

[Wandering Wombat]

... the laptops have not been "lost". The owners simply don't know where they are.

I recommend checking eBay.

Re:Just for clarification...

[antdude]

But how does one know that it is thiers? Sellers are not going to post serial numbers. If there are decorations (e.g., stickers), then probably remove them or use company's photographs.

Hard To Believe

[Alcoholist]

This number of lost laptops in airports is pretty hard to believe. Worldwide laptop production is like what, 60 million units? This article seems to be telling us that one percent of all the laptops made every year in the whole entire world are lost in U.S. airports.

It's a pretty big number given all the other ways a laptop can meet its end. Where are they all going? Is there some kind of giant warehouse somewhere?

No wonder mobile sector of the computer industry is booming.

Re:Hard To Believe

[RockoTDF]

Everyone has about 3 or 4 odd socks. Ergo, 3.5 * 300 Million = 1.05 Billion odd socks in the US.

Where do they all go?

Re:Hard To Believe

[Your Pal Dave]

The weird part is, it's always the left sock that goes missing, never the right!

Re:Hard To Believe

[oljanx]

I've eliminated this problem, after years of training I now have ambidextrous feet.

Re:Hard To Believe

[oljanx]

It's pretty clear where they're all going. Have you not seen the lines of laptop toting airport janitors outside the pawnshops? Does it not seem strange to you that 9 out of 10 airport janitors drive BMWs?

Re:Hard To Believe

[mgblst]

The world is a big place.

Re:Hard To Believe

[Odin's Raven]

Where are they all going?

The same place all of the calculators go - Silicon Heaven

Re:Hard To Believe

[this great guy]

Where are they all going? Is there some kind of giant warehouse somewhere?

ebay ?

Really lost?

[mrroot]

A lot of salesmen I know would be the type to "lose" their laptop, cell phone, etc when what they really want is a new one. Losing it is the easiest way to get what they want.

Re:Really lost?

[The_Mr_Flibble]

Not at our place.
People that "lose" things do not get the newest shiney toys.
In fact I have a pile of old toshibas in a store room waiting for the next idiot that thinks loosing things is a good way to get an upgrade.
They don't half winge.
Then their managers come down and winge.
Then I show them the weblogs.

Whiney bitches

Seems a little high

[visible.frylock]

12,000 / 106 = avg 113 laptops / airport / week.

Seems a little high. The pdf doesn't mention what was counted in "lost/stolen" laptops. Do they count every time someone couldn't find their baggage on the belt and reported it (and it just so happened they had a laptop)?

Only thing the pdf says about it is this:

Laptop loss frequencies were collected from a confidential field survey as either a direct weekly estimate or as a range variable as reported by airport officials. Exact loss frequencies were typically not calculated or available for review.

The article does say though that the study was sponsored by Dell supporting its ProSupport Mobility whatever. It claims that Ponemon conducted it independently.

Either way, encrypt your laptops, and try to setup RDC or somesuch, so you can prevent sensitive data from being cached. But encryption should stop casual thieves 99% of the time. I assume Dell's stuff they're selling is meant to wait until someone accesses the internet with a stolen laptop and try to track it that way. But shouldn't the top priority be to prevent data from being accessed in the first place?

What's more important? The data or the hardware cost?

Re:Seems a little high

[Zadaz]

What's more important? The data or the hardware cost?

To the owner of the laptop? The hardware cost.

Go and smash someone's laptop, but not so badly the hard drive is compromised.

Are they going to say "Ah, my data is safe. Thank goodness!"?
Or are they going to come after you for the replacement cost of the laptop?

Yeah, the former. While the data on many people's laptops is where they value is, most people don't think that way yet. Obviously.

Re:Seems a little high

[GeckoAddict]

12,000 / 106 = avg 113 laptops / airport / week.

Without reading the article (this is slashdot after all), the study measured "106 airports and 800 business travelers". I'm sure these numbers were then extrapolated to include additional airports and business travelers.

Re:Seems a little high

[visible.frylock]

You're right for non-business or small-business laptop owners. But I'd think that for large companies whose laptops are lost, the CYA factor (we're cool legally) is much more valuable than the ~$1000 hardware cost.

Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[spoco2]

Really, let's look at who sponsored this study... Dell, and what do they have to gain from having businesses think that their laptops are all going to be lost?

Why, insurance from them obviously. They do have very good lost/accidental insurance cover (which I got on my current laptop because work paid for it)... but it costs money, and obviously makes them money overall.

So, take these results with a monstrous rock of salt.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[OldSoldier]

Really, let's look at who sponsored this study... Dell, and what do they have to gain from having businesses think that their laptops are all going to be lost?

So, take these results with a monstrous rock of salt.

Really? While I understand the nature of conflict of interest, on the spectrum of things that are open to interpretation, this one seems closer to "fact" than "opinion". You walk into an airport with a laptop, you walk out without one, boom... you're one of the 12,000.

Sometimes facts are facts regardless of who's spouting them. If I told you the next new Moon was August 1, would you "take that with a monstrous rock of salt" because I was in the outdoor evening lighting business?

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[B30-7A]

I agree. I've flown out of Orange County a lot in the last three years and I swear every time I'm there for the 6:45 am mad rush I hear the base ball announcer dude come on the PA asking someone to return to security to claim a forgotten laptop. I'm thinking 12,000 is a reasonable number.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you demonstrate that you don't understand. Facts might be facts, but were you get your facts from is important.

Yes, if you were in the outdoor evening lighting business, I would take anything you had to say about nighttime lighting with a grain of salt. I'd look for independent confirmation of the facts. You would be a biased source and therefore not credible.

Go actually read the study. Look at how the questions are phrased.

"Have you ever lost a laptop?" That's 1% of people who carry a laptop on business while flying, carry confidential information on their laptop, and have lost a laptop. Nowhere does it confirm these folks lost their laptop at the airport.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[spydabyte]

But there's a definite difference between "study" and "fact", which is what I think OldSoldier is not-so-clearly pointing out.
Even though you considered interpretation, you didn't consider the problem of data collection. This is assuming that we're trusting the 12,000 people that say their laptops were stolen. Probably an insignificant percentage in this case, but still a consideration for standard deviation.

My opinion is that interpretation even plays a role here. It's apparent that Dell sponsored this study, due to the fact that they averaged the number that were stolen. A more neutral number to report would be 8400, or the averaged amount lost and never returned.
My assumption is that the week time frame played a role in the numbers as well. Did the multiply a single-day's sample by 7? Hopefully not, as that would not provide any real scientific evidence. Did the sample all 365 days of a year and divide? Probably not since that would take too much time.

But "12,000 lost a week" sure does have a nice ring to it. Too bad I don't think "ooo! buy insurance!", but rather "stupid idiots!"

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[jmv]

Very often, these numbers are obtained through wild estimations that can be "adjusted" to give pretty much anything you want. Through poor methodology and tiny sample sizes, you could probably end up with either 100/wk or 12,000/wk depending how what you prefer.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[RobertM1968]

Yes, I would... considering it is August 5th - not the 1st.

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.php

;-)

But seriously, if this study was really either accurate and/or relevant, I can guarantee you that Dell would NOT be selling insurance covering loss... they would lose too much money - which does make one wonder about the motives behind the study.

Though honestly, I am not sure how one would leave a laptop on a plane... I for one know after lugging my carryon stuff onto a plane and remembering the headache and hassle of doing so (and finding a place to stow it), that I feel rather naked if I try to leave without being so burdened... but that's just me.

On a more relevant note, that's 624,000 laptops a year lost... yeah... I can believe that. Well, no, actually I cant... 1,200 tons of laptops a year? Really? If they say so... after all, it's on Slashdot - it must be true... ;-)

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[KurdtX]

Really? While I understand the nature of conflict of interest, on the spectrum of things that are open to interpretation, this one seems closer to "fact" than "opinion". You walk into an airport with a laptop, you walk out without one, boom... you're one of the 12,000.

Sometimes facts are facts regardless of who's spouting them. If I told you the next new Moon was August 1, would you "take that with a monstrous rock of salt" because I was in the outdoor evening lighting business?

I believe the conflict of interest was spelled out pretty clearly in TFA: "Dell used the report to support its launch of Dell ProSupport Mobility Services"

Your analogy is pretty bad, you're talking about a binary event that we not only know to the day, but to the second. The study was done by sampling, and oh btw, if you read the study it does not say "about 12,000", it says "up to 12,000". A proper analogy there would be: Human beings grow to up to 8ft 11in in height. I'm sure you can see how a company presenting that as typical needs to be taken with a monstrous rock of salt.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[ktappe]

You walk into an airport with a laptop, you walk out without one, boom... you're one of the 12,000.

Riiiight. And how exactly does that happen? It magically vaporizes from your carryon? When exactly is that? My carryon never leaves my person, and thus my laptop never leaves my person...except for when it's going thru the metal detector. If my laptop disappeared in that machine, they'd have to pry me away from that machine with a crowbar. And I can't even come close to fathoming that happening 12,000 times per week. Thus, I call serious shenanigans on this 12,000/week claim. And as a result of that, I likewise call shenanigans on your simple "boom" acceptance that this is actually occurring.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[arth1]

Indeed. It's like a car insurance company that tells you that you can save UP TO 15% by switching to them. That doesn't imply you'll save anything.

10 laptops satisfies the "up to 12,000" figure.

Also, keep in mind that the figure is rather useless unless you compare it to the number of laptops taken successfully through airports. 12,000 might sound high if you think of 12,000 travellers, but is rather low if it tuns out to equate to a 0.01% risk.

All in all, this is slashvertising at its best. Don't give this D*** company any more publicity than what they actually deserve. This ain't it.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[nospam007]

> You walk into an airport with a laptop, you walk out without one, boom... you're one of the 12,000.

You walk into an airport withOUT a laptop, you walk out without one, boom... you're one with a gift for John-Boy.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[Anonymous Coward]

"Riiiight. And how exactly does that happen? ... my laptop never leaves my person...except for when it's going thru the metal detector."

Two guys decide they want your laptop. So:
1. They both get in front of you.
2. Person A (in the lead) moves through security a little slower than normal.
3. Person B takes extra time moving through security (change, belt buckle, keys on person) after you drop your case on the belt.
4. Person A grabs your case, hits the bathroom, dumps everything but the machine and leaves.

Is this likely? Not really these days but still possible.

"If my laptop disappeared in that machine, they'd have to pry me away from that machine with a crowbar."

Picture this: "I WANT MY LAPTOP BACK RI ... ZAP! CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK ..." Not a crowbar but requires less arm movement.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[syrinje]

Correction:
Two guys decide they want your laptop. So:
1. They both get in front of you.
2. Person A (in the lead) moves through security a little slower than normal.
3. Person B takes extra time moving through security (change, belt buckle, keys on person) after you drop your case on the belt.
4. Person A grabs your laptop that is conveniently outside your case in a separate plastic tray, and leaves.
There - fixed that for you for every one of the 19 airports I have been through in the last year.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[easyTree]

They should have named the companies where the employees aren't up to the task of "ensuring they don't accidentally leave a £1000 piece of electronics with likely far more valuable data on, lying around". Would you want to do business with them? I mean, come on.. how difficult is it? Are these same people who lose shoes? You must have seen shoes in the street and wondered how someone would not notice. I know I have. Anyway..

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[Serpentegena]

And these estimates are not taking into account the amount of laptops retained for security purposes. Like here and here.
That's one thing that hasn't been thoroughly investigated yet.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell Complete Care doesn't cover theft. It's practically the only thing it doesn't cover. I'm not aware of any manufacturer offering theft insurance.

Re:Look at who sponsered the 'study'

[vuffi_raa]

Thus, I call serious shenanigans on this 12,000/week claim.

I disagree- one of my co-workers has a friend that is a pilot and once things go unclaimed in the L&F for a period (I believe it is 3 weeks) it is open season for the employees- he gets laptops, blackberries, psp's, ds's and any number of other things- a while back he got an xbox 360- we will trek to his house every now and again as he resells all of the stuff - so we get cheap tech.

I rent a laptop when I get there

[crovira]

and VPN into my network here. (In defense, I keep NICE toys up here. Stuff the client doesn't need to know about.)

The client picks up the cost and I don't carry anything when I travel.

The safest place to keep my data is right at home.

When the job is over I wipe the drive anyway, hand it back to the rental place and catch a flight back.

Re:I rent a laptop when I get there

[citylivin]

I assume you install a new OS on those rented laptops too, open up the case to look for hardware keyloggers.. etc

Something you bought and secured yourself is way more trustworthy than some random laptop from a rental place.

Re:I rent a laptop when I get there

[element-o.p.]

Is it just me, or did the above post sound like it was written by a hit man? ;)

Re:I rent a laptop when I get there

[Anonymous Coward]

I rent a laptop when I get there ... When the job is over I wipe the drive anyway, hand it back to the rental place and catch a flight back.

That works, as long as there is no hardware keylogger in the laptop.
What is so horrible about carrying a laptop on the plane? You can still keep all your data at home and VPN in if you want.

Re:I rent a laptop when I get there

[dontmakemethink]

I was about to comment on how ridiculous it would be that a shop would install keyloggers, but what's to stop a rental client from installing them unbeknownst to the shop? They could easily be rigged to send private data out upon connecting to the web.

Re:I rent a laptop when I get there

[Anonymous Coward]

if not a hitman, at least someone that wears sunglasses at night so I can so I can.

Re:I rent a laptop when I get there

[tehcyder]

Is it just me, or did the above post sound like it was written by a hit man? ;)

This is /. so it's perhaps more likely to be a drooling fantasist.

Re:I rent a laptop when I get there

[toddestan]

Where can you rent a laptop for a days? I've never seen this anywhere, the closest thing would be those rent-to-own places who really aren't interested in short term loans as they make all their money from small monthly payments that go on for years.

Even if such a place existed, I can't see them liking it when you wipe the drive. The time spent restoring the computer for the next customer would quickly cut into their margins.

Re:I rent a laptop when I get there

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I definitely agree. I wonder if he's done any movies/games recently.

Seems to me...

[clang_jangle]

...we've got all the security personnel in airports watching the wrong group of people!

oddly

[nx6310]

unlike the laptops that can usually be retrieved, private information once made non-private, is sometimes considered priceless...how much loss does this result in for Persons and Establishments alike?

Am I the only one...

[xcham]

Who read that as "the Pokémon Institute" the first time through?

How were they recovered?

[antdude]

How were they recovered? Is it from phone software? Lost & Found? eBay?

Re:f1rst p0st

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay away from drugs, kids.

Next year...

[kialara]

"Due to last years study being posted on the popular nerd site 'Slashdot.org', the number of laptops 'lost' weekly at airports went from 12,000 to 20,000 per week..."

I wonder how much the TSA has to do with this.

[Anonymous Coward]

My company has a policy to not let your laptop out of your sight when traveling. That meant put it through the xray machine and wait for it to come out.

The TSA decided to do a random screening on me and take me away from the X-Ray machine one day. I said "Wait, where's my laptop?"

The TSA guy said "don't worry about your laptop, calm down." In the meantime, I turn around and it it pops out of the xray machine, unattended, laying on the conveyor belt, about 10 meters away from me.

I respond "I will not 'calm down.' It has confidential information on it and my company has a policy that it is not to leave my presence when traveling."

So he calls the police on me for being "irrational."

No, I'm not kidding.

Re:I wonder how much the TSA has to do with this.

[One Childish N00b]

You can be arrested for being irrational now? Seems like the police should all arrest themselves. Do it right and you could have an unending line of cops all arresting each other behind you.

lost or stolen

[codename.matrix]

Now are they really lost as in "don't know where I put it" or lost as in "somebody took it". I guess the title would say "stolen" and not "lost" if that were the case but how do you lose that many laptops ?

I have them ..

[wildem]

I found most of them, and No ! You can't have them back.

You know you live in a decadent country when...

[owlstead]

"Los Angeles's LAX reported more laptop losses than any other airport, about 1,200 per week. Most of the airports said they generally keep the laptops for some period of times, then destroy them if they are unclaimed."

Destroy perfectly good computers??? Why??? Just destroy the drive, at most. Come on, how stupid can you get? Put them in schools, give them out to students, sell them to another country, but for Pete's sake don't throw them on landfills.

Re:You know you live in a decadent country when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they "destroy" them. If you were an employee for a airline would you let your supervisor just outright destroy a laptop that was found and never claimed. If you were the supervisor would you destroy a perfectly good working laptop? The airlines simply have to SAY they are "destroying" them.

Re:You know you live in a decadent country when...

[syousef]

They're destroyed to remove the conflict of interest/incentive for empoyees in charge of returning them. Whether that's perceived or actual...who knows. I'll bet they're not all destroyed though. I bet there's some corruption somewhere and someone who sees the waste and decides "I'll have that then".

Re:You know you live in a decadent country when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm sure there thoroughly destroyed... by low payed employees that could use the money from selling these...

Re:You know you live in a decadent country when...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Los Angeles's LAX reported more laptop losses than any other airport, about 1,200 per week."

Well, it's not called "LAX" for nothing ...

Re:You know you live in a decadent country when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in LA, perhaps most laptops found are Macs.

Lost or stolen

[Haxx]

    I think "Lost" should be replaced with stolen. The numbers are absurdly high, if 624,000 laptops are going missing at airports each year then that is a threat to national security and the goverment should do something. This article is a troll.

They're not stealing the laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think they're stealing the laptops? The data on the laptops is probably much more valuable than the laptops themselves. Free, saleable hardware is just a bonus.

Alladins Cave

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone who isn't me, should install a tracking device on their laptop then purposely lose it only to find the mother load of lost airport goodies location! Imagine all the free goodies allready covered by insurance claims that obviously won't be making their way back to owners and straight to the nearest landfill.

How to recover a stolen laptop/notebook?

[antdude]

I know the chances of recovering is very low without phoning home method, but there ways to increase the chances even if it is very tiny. Check eBay, Craig's List, Google (e.g., with serial #), etc. (including international ones if stolen outside of USA). Report it to police, where it was stolen (e.g., airport), etc. Anything else else I missed?

Re:How to recover a stolen laptop/notebook?

[shermo]

Carry it as carry-on luggage. Don't let it out of your sight. Prevention is better than a cure

WTF is wrong with people?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't fly much, but when I do I am fiercely protective of my laptop. It's only out of my sight when I walk through the metal detector, and even then I keep an eye out to make sure nobody's going to try the 'guy in front of you holds up the security line while another dude makes off with your laptop that has already gone through' scam. And I don't even have anything of material or sentimental value on my laptop-- no customer data, no family photos-- it's just my property that I paid good money for, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna get careless with it.

How much of a dumbass do you have to be to either put something expensive in your checked luggage, walk away from security without collecting your laptop, or otherwise be so lax as to let someone make off with it?

May be...

[denzacar]

Don't know...
Bus I rode today did smell funny. But buses always do smell funny.

Information wants to be free...

[shmlco]

"Truecrypt or similar commercial offerings are available and reliable. Protect your data and ours."

Whatever happened to "Information wants to be free?" Or does that only apply to bootleg copies of Iron Man?

I'm confused.

Re:Information wants to be free...

[Spy der Mann]

"Truecrypt or similar commercial offerings are available and reliable. Protect your data and ours."

Whatever happened to "Information wants to be free?"

I'm confused.

And that information that wants to be free, includes, of course, the names and employers of the bastards who stole the f**ing luggage.

Re:Information wants to be free...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Whatever happened to "Information wants to be free?" Or does that only apply to bootleg copies of Iron Man?"

I'd like to sell you my can-opener, but I've rigged it so that you're only allowed to use it 10 times. If it breaks, you're not allowed to open it up and fix it, you must buy a new one. I haven't felt compelled to print all of my sensitive information and jam it into the can-opener before selling it to you for reasons that are too blindingly obvious for you to be confused about.

Install encrypted

[Britz]

I just got myself my first laptop in 5 years. I need to compute on the rode again. Since I am a longtime Debian user the choice was easy. I got the current beta installer for Lenny:
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

And lo and behold: encrypting every partition was very easy to set up using it.

I imagine every current distro should have that feature build into the installer. Just look for it next time you install a laptop.

And if you have to use Windows there is always Truecrypt. So I don't see any reason why the data should not be encrypted.

Doing the maths

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

A figure of 350 is quoted for San Francisco (small print "Laptop loss frequencies were collected from a confidential field survey as either a direct weekly estimate or as a range variable as reported by airport officials. Exact loss frequencies were typically not calculated or available for review."; which I read as "we guessed").

That's 100 per week per terminal at SFO (ish). That's around 14 a day or 1 an hour. 40% were of these were at security - about 1 every 2.5 hours.

At airports that broadcast it, I'd guess that you get "can XXX please go back to security and collect their YYY" every 30 minutes or so. YYY is usually "bag"; although I've heard "laptop" (and on at least one occasion "shoes") as well.

So if the "loss incidents" includes people going back to security to collect stuff that they've left there it seems not unreasonable (although maybe a little high). If it's supposed to be some tealeaf legging it out of security the wrong way with someone's laptop I don't believe it - if that happened every 2.5 hours you'd notice it.

Re:Doing the maths

[HunterZ]

If it's supposed to be some tealeaf legging it out of security the wrong way with someone's laptop I don't believe it - if that happened every 2.5 hours you'd notice it.

They said only 30% of laptops were recovered, so...

Common sense

[jrothwell97]

I never let my laptop out of my sight anywhere - as has been said, prevention is better than a cure. Do not check it in, take it on as hand luggage. If security wants to check your machine to prove it's not a cleverly disguised stick of dynamite, watch them. Keep an eye on your luggage, and if you see someone opening up a bag and helping themselves to its contents, take a picture with your mobile phone or equivalent: otherwise, it'll be your word against the baggage handler's.

Another thing that tends to stop the machine getting lost/stolen is to take it around in a bag that is not specifically a 'laptop' bag. I stick my Eee PC into my bag, a fabric satchel, and while it does mean that cables get a bit tangled up, everything is safe and it's less likely to draw thieves' attention to it. It also has the added advantage of being able to wrap it around your ankle, so if someone tries to pinch it, you'll feel it tugging against your leg.

Re:Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking pictures in a security area is *very* much frowned upon by people with semi-automatic rifles and no sense of humour.

Sure you could!

[denzacar]

Send them pre-charged.

When kids use up the battery, they can mail the laptops back to the first world where they will be recharged and returned to the kids - for a small fee naturally.
Its not our fault they are godless, electricityless lazy savages.
We are trying to HELP here, hello! They could get off their asses and help us help them.

You know... like... put those sockets on the walls of their huts so they could recharge the laptops themselves.
I mean... how hard can it be. You like.. need a screwdriver and thats about it...

BTW and FYI - All my posts in this thread were meant as sarcastic jokes. Since someone already branded me insightful, I find I might need to mention that.

Fingerprint

[Anonymous Coward]

If a user gets fired, does the company chop off his finger then? I think giving your keys and paswords to your boss is a bit easier...

Re:Fingerprint

[Nullav]

You don't need a finger for a fingerprint reader. Unless the employee took care to wipe the whole machine before handing it in, you don't even have to ask the employee.

I'm going to blatantly pimp my site (again).

[rixster_uk]

I'd like to hear more about any of your disasters at airports. I've no idea where I'm going with this but I thought it was a good idea at the time (oh and I wanted to learn django as well). Tell me here

By the Numbers

[perlith]

I find it interesting 14% of those who responded to the survey classified themselves as a job role in "information technology". This is the third highest behind sales (24%) and management (20%). Not necessarily a result of job role, but rather, of company culture towards such losses.

Not me...

[denzacar]

http://www.xkcd.com/178/

The numbers just don't add up

[Anonymous Coward]

The numbers just don't sound right to me. I almost shut down an airport terminal once, because I forgot to tell the TSA agent that inside my laptop bag was also a Targus Chill Mat, which looks like an aluminum two-burner silver grill with wires sticking out of the sides. One of my children is severely handicapped and hooked up to complicated medical devices, so we have to go through the secondary intensive screening EVERY time we fly. Since we always have to go through the secondary screening process, our carry-on bags are opened by the TSA agents, and they're the ones who take the laptop out of the bag and put it on the conveyor belt.

The Targus chill mat sent everyone around us scrambling into panic mode, and the rent a cops with guns were circling it, staring at it and trying to figure out what the hell it was. Luckily they were in my husband's line of sight and he was able to explain what it was before they cuffed us and hauled us off to Guantanamo. My point is that if one Targus Chill Mat packed inside a laptop computer carry-on bag can cause this kind of commotion, I absolutely do not believe that there are 12,000 abandoned or lost laptops found inside of airports every week.

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

This piece of data is very, very unlikely.

B.S. Meter Pinging Wildly!

[Brandybuck]

My B.S. meter is pinging wildy. This story is fishy. I do a lot of flying and I've never heard any airlineannounce that someone left their laptop. I've heard it for jewelry, cameras, purses and even shoes (wtf?). But never laptops. What's the first thing a business traveller does when getting past the TSA goons? Find an outlet and hotspot and start sending emails. They need a laptop to do that, so they're going to notice if they left it behind.

Of course, this story could be true. After all, the TSA makes you remove your laptop from its case or bag and place it all alone in its own plastik bukkit. So someone in a hurry could certainly forget their laptop. But 12,000 a week stretches my credulity to the limit.

OK, so I'm looking at the actual report now...

[spoco2]

It's here

First up:
"Laptop loss frequencies were collected from a confidential field survey as either a direct weekly estimate or as a range variable as reported by airport officials. Exact loss frequencies were typically not calculated or available for review."

It's all just averages using methods that are vague.

Then... 22% of these lost in the major airports are recovered before the flight... (15% in the minor) but they include all of these laptops that were lost for a number of minutes.

Then there are 9% (Major) and 20% (Minor) that are recovered after the flight.

Come on, we're talking most likely badly taken figures in the first place, and then including laptops that aren't really lost at all.

Re:OK, so I'm looking at the actual report now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you recover something doesn't mean it wasn't lost. they didn't say "lost forever"

Re:OK, so I'm looking at the actual report now...

[OldSoldier]

Ok... there may be reasons to be skeptical of the information, but you should be skeptical regardless of who gave out that info. That's my main beef. There are people who would believe Obama if he said something and disbelieve McCain if he said the exact same thing. Those people are idiots.

It's too easy to be doubting of everything just as it's too easy to be trusting of everything. Problem is both stand in the way of progress. Be reasonable with your doubts and with your "trusts".

In this case, I quickly read through TFA and they also mentioned several other ways to guard against having your laptop stolen. Not only buying a replacement, but backing up the drive, having the drive encrypted and locked, as well as not feeling harried when you go to the airport. Hell... they even pointed out that 60+% (IIRC) of the laptops found by airport personnel are never claimed. Maybe Dell is losing it's shirt on replacement policies it's selling and wants this particular statistic to get out, but I doubt that. I kinda believe this number at face value.

I would be more skeptical if the entity sponsoring the study was one of those credit report watching companies and if they then extrapolated to conjecture that if someone else's laptop is stolen then MY credit info might have been on that laptop, so I should check my credit even more frequently than what's currently recommended. That'd be a huge stretch and would be aimed not only at the folks who had their laptop stolen, but at anyone.

The report isn't saying that only Dell's product can save you. My sense is the report could have been sponsored as part of trying to see if there's a market for a service in this area and that Dell released it to be a good guy.

Re:Treat like WMD, Right....

[arthurpaliden]

No bomb squad required. They would just put it in the garbage bin with all the suspected liquid explosives at the secuity gate.

Are people that stupid?

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

Are that many people that stupid that they won't bring their laptops as carry-on luggage?? I could hardly part with my laptop, let alone, trust it to baggage handlers.

imagine a ...

[agendi]

sounds like in each airport lounge there is a cluster waiting to be discovered! :)

Re:Sponsor laptop theft study=laptop vendor? wow!

[lpq]

So Dell's primary business is selling laptop insurance?

I don't think so...

OTOH -- if that stolen laptop is from Dell -- better make sure you never call up for support on it.
Dunno about other laptop vendors, but Dell's been getting keeping close track of machines purchased by companies -- what company owns them, who is calling on their behalf...etc.

If all laptop vendors did that, it seems it might drop the worth of stolen laptops, since they are not notoriously reliable and long-lived.

I Call BS

[roxiC27]

this study is BS.... this is how Dell Justifies putting RFID chips in their laptops. "Laptop Get Stolen? Enhanced security Dell Laptops only $4500! and we can track your laptop wherever it goes!! Fu*k You Frank! jeesh sheeple

Ask the TSA

[tom's a-cold]

Lots of laptops disappear when they get their hands on them.

Re:Ask the TSA

[joocemann]

Lots of laptops disappear when they get their hands on them.

I know what you mean. I kept wondering why they keep calling it "lost" when they are never found. The event is more akin to STOLEN than it is to LOST.

I don't see the airlines having a huge storage or auctions of unclaimed laptops (among loads of other things). If it is lost while in control of the airline, and it is not ever 'found', where is it? If there is no huge bin filling up with the 'we can't find the owner of this' stuff, then IT WAS PROBABLY STOLEN!

I'm just using logic here. I'm sure the airlines have some kind of explanation that breaks certain scientific laws of energy/matter. "The devil took your laptop! It magically left your checked bag, went through the walls of the airplane, and was lost into the center of the earth."

wtf, over.

Re:Ask the TSA

[DragonTHC]

remember these are still the same minimum wage workers that used to do security screenings before the TSA existed. now they just have to watch a government video to wear the shirt.

I would have no doubts that some unsavory TSA workers are stealing and fencing laptops they 'screen'.

I install a copy of an OS off of an ISO.

[crovira]

I'm not running a damn thing off the PC except for loading a CD-ROM.

Since I use the laptop as a dumb terminal, it's relatively secure and fast enough for what I need.

And if I sound like a hit man, make that Musical Hits and you're closer than you think. :-)

Re:I install a copy of an OS off of an ISO.

[Phroggy]

And if the laptop already has a keylogger installed when you get it?

Re:I install a copy of an OS off of an ISO.

[ksheff]

He's probably running knoppix or something similar.

Re:I install a copy of an OS off of an ISO.

[Phroggy]

Oh, right, I failed to read the subject line. Never mind. :-)

Shill Institute.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google News = "Ponemon Institute"

Result = Only two studies, seemingly by Ponemon Institute, this one and one in conjunction with StrongMail.

StrongMail Survey Unearths Shocking Data Privacy Abuse by UK Businesses

Shill Company is Shill

Not too unbelievable

[Registered Coward v2]

While I find the number rather high, and odd that it hasn't been discussed before, my anecdotal evidence with cell phones makes it at least plausible.

I lost a car charger at a small airport (MEM) and went to the car rental place. They pulled out a big bin of cell phones and accessories, and said take your pick. They also said take a phone if you want. When I asked, they said it was a week or two's haul.

I felt a bit cheap trying to track down my $5 charger, and unfortunately they didn't have one that worked with my phone.

How many are examined by customs?

[mi]

Slashdot had some truly nasty things to say recently about US customs poking through data on travelers' laptops.

I wonder, how often does that happen, and whether people just losing their hardware (and the data) to complete strangers is not a far scarier problem...

12,000/?

[Anonymous Coward]

twelve thousand laptops a week, out of how many? a million? 10 million?

You, sir, are a twit!

[Anonymous Coward]

I say this mostly because you spectacularly misunderstood your parent post (mostly, but more on that momentarily). The parent post accurately pointed out that to a large corporation the thousand or three dollars to replace a laptop is nothing next to losing large amounts of sensitive client data. Let's face it: if I'm Boeing and one of my engineers loses a laptop full of unencrypted design schematics for the F-22, I'm going to fire their ass spectacularly and it isn't because they lost a piece of hardware worth less than a week of their salary.

As for your second "point" (ah, how I do love the scare quotes...), I continue to disagree. If you smash my laptop then yes, you may safely assume that I'll come after you for the replacement cost of my laptop. If, however, you destroy the data on it as well, odds are that I'll put you in the hospital as well. I know where the value of my laptop is. I also know what the replacement cost is. My data is value added. Certainly, I'll be pissed if you destroy the hardware, but not half as pissed as if you destroyed my precious data. And yet, in spite of all of this, you still missed the point.

Companies don't care about replacing the data. Any decently run IT department will have all of the sensitive company data backed up systematically, so replacing it is a non-issue. The concern is that the data isn't destroyed, but lost. That means that they don't know who has it. Depending on their industry, this could mean that the company is open to a massive customer backlash or heavy fines from the government (or, quite possibly, both), even if potentially useful information doesn't ever wend its way back to competitors.

Why not carry them on?

[damn_registrars]

It sounds like at least some portion of these laptops are being lost as luggage. Which leaves me to ask, why not take the matter into your own hands and take your laptop with as carry-on?

After all, aren't you bringing it with you so you can work on the road / in the airport / on the plane / in the cab ? I bring my laptop as carry-on every time I fly. Its been on two international flights with me this year. I've never had a problem finding it by the time I get back to my home airport.

One letter off...

[kenh]

Anyone else notice that the head of the institute's name is one letter off from being "Pokemon"? Coincidence?

Also, the numbers, according to the article are guesses/ranges estimated by airport workers - as someone else said that means they made up the numbers and extrapolated. According to this article, nearly a half-million laptops (436800 by my math) *disapear*? Really?

I call bullshit on this number.

436800 laptops at an average cost of $1,100 per (these are Corp. laptops) takes you to nearly a half-billion dollars worth of hardware "lost" each year. No one noticed that? Insurance companies aren't mentioning that when they pay out on the claims?

It simply makes no sense. Period.

Ken

You know you want it

[RockoTDF]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those. No, seriously.

His slide rule batteries are flat

[flyingfsck]

I had a calculator like that once - it didn't last long.

How do you forget a laptop?

[GodfatherofSoul]

How pampered does one have to be to forget a laptop? I paid a lot for mine, and I'm not leaving it ANYWHERE.

numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

600,000 laptops/year seems like a lot to me. It's about $300,000,000 worth of technology lost every year.

Free Laptops for Human Engineering?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no desire to steal anyone's data, but i could use a few new (year old) laptops... I bet some human engineering techniques could work, maybe once a month or so. free netbook today, a free gaming notebook tomorrow, a notebook for mp3 streaming next Tuesday... any experimenters? someone please write a how-to. Also, is "claiming something that isnt yours" illegal? it would suck to go to the airport to try and get a free laptop and endup in handcuffs...

Jokers

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats because the jokers put their laptops in their checked in luggage - and how many baggage handlers check baggage to see whats interesting?

and LAX having lost more than anywhere else, well, they're americans aren't they :D

Re:Sponsor laptop theft study=laptop vendor? wow!

[jimicus]

So Dell's primary business is selling laptop insurance?

I don't think so...

Then you've never priced up Dell equipment.

Dell's primary business is not PCs, it's not servers and it's not laptops. It is "optional extras".

Optional extras being things like CPUs, RAID cards and more than one hard disk in a server (even when the server is a 4U model which exists purely so you can fill it with CPU and disks), 3 year onsite 24x7 support, upgraded monitor and, of course, laptop insurance.

+5 Quite Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

With this Comment, thine Power Level approaches 9000.

laptops vs. mobile devices

[girlieight]

Yet another example of why handhelds will replace laptops.

http://everylaptopleftbehind.com/

Safeboot

[Anonymous Coward]

is great for corporate laptops/desktops. not an advertiser, just a user.

OLPC round 2 !!

[The MESMERIC]

Alert Negroponte!

Tell him of the good news - most laptops now come with Windows.

Are the CHECKING it rather then CARRY ON?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these people checking the laptops in with their luggage rather than bringing it onboard as a carry-on item?? Even with the extra security hassle related to bringing it onboard I know to *never* check a laptop! I mean I can see the baggage handlers just turning to their buddies saying "Dude, I got a Dell".

I've bought 4! (maybe... most likely... yeah)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, well, I don't "know" that they were stolen... although I was slightly concerned because for some reason there was a *companyname* Corporate Login screen at boot. He told me he found them in the dumpster.

2 secondhand tablets and 2 secondhand Core2 laptops for the price of one midrange laptop retail. One of the core2's spends most of it's time docked to the tv, acting as a media center, and one of the tablets became the coffee table machine - it's 12" formfactor made it a really awesome touchscreen remote control for the media center, in addition to the normal computergoodness. Got to love the low power consumption of laptops too - definitely a savings over using an old tower as a media center.

Doesn't pass the smell test

[GoingLikeSixty]

C'mon... think people! 12,000 laptops a week? Where would they store all these laptops? Do the math, isn't that like 20,000 cubic feet of laptops? http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/03/2143254# Get More Comments Every. Friggin. Week? Dell just wants to sell more security devices.