Smartphone Data Accessed by Finders

Symantec has recently put together an experiment to simulate what happens to lost smartphones. The Symantec Smartphone Honey Stick Project involves 50 “lost” smartphones that were seeded with simulated corporate and personal data then intentionally lost in public locations in 5 different cities in the US & Canada. Each “lost” phone was then monitored to see what happened to them after they were found.
The results of the project were quite interesting:

• Only half of the people who found one of the phones attempted to return it
• 96% of the lost smartphones were accessed by the finders (the data was viewed, even by those with intentions to return)
• 60% of the finders attempted to view social media information and email
• 80% of the finders attempted to access corporate information 
• 50% of the finders attempted to run the “remote admin” app, which would hypothetically connect to corporate networks
• Nearly half of the finders tried to access the owner’s bank account

Although Symantec chalks up some of these statistics to curiosity, it’s clear that any data you have on your smartphone is at risk… even if you get that smartphone back.