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:
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. Rather than trust people to be honest, why not protect your data? With Computrace Mobile, you can remotely recover and delete sensitive data while our Theft Recovery Team works to recover your stolen device.