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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/travel/0,3800011481,39266040,00.htm

Heathrow Airport: Lost laptop hotspot
Almost 1,000 go walkies per week…

By Tim Ferguson

Published: Wednesday 30 July 2008

Airports are a hotspot for lost or missing laptops with around 800,000 being misplaced in European and US airports each year.

According to research carried out by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Dell, around 175,000 laptops go missing in Europe's major airports each year - about 4,000 per week.

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In Europe most laptops go missing at London's Heathrow airport with 900 going astray per week, closely followed by Amsterdam and Paris Charles de Gaulle.

The research estimates that another 12,000 laptops disappear in US airports every week.

Worryingly, 42 per cent of business travellers quizzed said they don't have back up for data on their laptops, while 55 per cent said they haven't taken steps to protect it.

Of the laptops that turn up in airport lost property offices, 57 per cent are never claimed. One reason blamed for this is that many laptops have no external identifying label.

Ponemon Institute chairman, Larry Ponemon, said IT departments should look again at the steps they take to protect company laptops and the data stored on them.