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One recent Saturday I did something stupid – I left my BlackBerry on top of my car while I ran back into the house to get something. Needless to say, I forgot about the little electronic version of my life and took off for the cleaners, pharmacy, mailbox and grocery store running the weekend errands. It turns out a Blackberry can hang on pretty well. It made it through one stop light and three turns before deciding to disembark in the CVS parking lot.
About three stops later, I realized I was without my electronic brain and panic began to set in. I spent most of the morning retracing every step and talking to clerks in every store asking if someone had found a BlackBerry in their parking lot. I drove up and down Bellaire Blvd. looking for pieces of crushed black plastic and silicon. No luck.
Panic really began to set in after there was no sign of my Crackberry in any store or roadway. My dumb mistake was leaving the BlackBerry on the roof of the car. My really stupid mistake came months earlier when I decided to store sensitive information in my unprotected BlackBerry. I have become dependent on my BlackBerry to help track the elements of my life. Despite 20 years in the IT business advising clients to protect their assets, I had my daughter’s name, birth date and social security number in the address book of my BlackBerry. Can you say identity theft? In another record, I had a list of bank account numbers for my businesses. The bank names were in code but, someone bent on theft, could figure it out. If someone liked to read, they could find my Amazon ID and password on another record. Thanks to one-click buying, they could go to Amazon.com and buy half the store on my credit card.
Now you see why the panic set in. I did not keep passwords on the PDA except for “minor” things like Amazon. I did not keep personal bank account information there but, for some reason, had company bank account information on it. None of this mentions the possibility of the finder making a 24-hour phone call on my nickel before I could shut down the phone.
Our electronic lives are complex. We have thousands of contacts to track. Sometimes we have the personal cell phone or email address of someone that would rather not have it distributed. We have multiple user ids and passwords. We have several bank, credit cards and website account numbers. For some people, the only copy of their calendar is on their PDA. All of this information needs to be managed and a PDA or laptop computer is a convenient way to do so. As of tonight, however, the sensitive information is now in a secure application on my PDA. Without a password, someone can’t hijack my daughter’s identity, tap into the corporate bank account or buy a book on my credit card.
To paraphrase a popular credit card commercial…what’s in your BlackBerry? Or Treo? Or Palm Pilot? Or laptop? User IDs, passwords, credit card numbers, bank account numbers and other sensitive information should be deleted or stored in a secure application. You never know when your “dumb moment” is coming.
I did get lucky. My BlackBerry survived with one scratch and, apparently, nobody tried to access the data. I started calling the phone every 30 minutes or so hoping to get an answer. The elderly man who found it, however, didn’t know how to answer it. He was smart enough to give it to his police officer daughter the next morning. She figured out that the 20 missed calls from the same phone number might be someone who knew the owner. On Sunday morning, she called and we arranged to meet a few hours later. For three more hours, all I could think about was my Blackberry coming home. It was like grandma was coming. I was excited. I couldn’t wait. Now I know why they call it a Crackberry.
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