So you’re shopping, or going ice skating, or heading to some place where hot mulled wine makes the holiday cheer flow.
You take a cab — the parking! — and when grappling with scarf, gloves, maybe a kid or two and some packages, leave your iPhone or iPod on the taxi seat. This is the grim scenario taxi drivers in London paint of the holidays — your favorite device left to the seasonal altruism of the driver or next passenger.
Some 10,000 mobile phones are left behind by customers every single month in London alone, plus another 1,000 iPods and memory sticks. December is the worst month — or best if you’re of the finders-keepers mentality — for expensive gadgets left behind, according to a survey by Credant Technologies.
Steve McMenara, from TAXI magazine, said: “This is the worst time of year for forgetting property at the back of cabs, especially mobile phones and laptops. More people travel into London to buy their Christmas presents during this period who are not regular cab users, they hop a cab to get back to their train stations – and it’s always about an hour later we get a panicked call on their mobile phones asking for them to be returned.”
London taxi drivers say they manage to return 80% of devices left behind; in New York just 66% of cabbies handed lost devices over.
“Back in the good old days when a Window was something you looked out of, and a Mac was something you wore in the rain, it used to be small items like brollies and briefcases stuffed full of boring office papers. Now it’s laptops, smartphones and thumb drives, all chock-full of valuable information to an identity thief,” said Sean Glynn, vice president of Credant Technologies.
Ever leave your iDevice in a cab and get it back?
Via T3
