I learnt a valuable lesson last night.
After spending an hour or so in a bar with a friend, I was waiting for my bus home when it dawned on me that my mobile was not in my bag. Cold panic set in and I ran back to the office to check I hadn’t left it on my desk, then I then retraced my steps back to the bar to search around and to ask the staff if a phone had been handed in.
I felt frightened, sick and I was also angry with myself. My phone is a Blackberry and I have never bothered to ‘password protect’ it, so whoever found it would have access to my recent emails. I don’t have a landline and going into a Bank Holiday weekend I would have no way of contacting people.
Luckily the story has a happy ending and my phone was found but it did leave me wondering how I would have coped if I had lost it when I am travelling. I have copied out all my contact numbers and the text and voicemail messages and I have emailed them to myself so that I can access them via my Hotmail account at an internet cafe or hotel. I will also include details of the phone itself so that I would be able to report it lost or stolen and block access to the information held within it.
My phone may be lost or stolen in the future, but at least I have taken steps to limit the damage if that happens.
