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By editorial@silicon.com, 31 August 2001 01:00

COMMENT Umbrellas, handbags and even false limbs have ended up in lost property offices. It's certainly a bit of a pain when it happens, but not necessarily the end of the world. Remember the case of the stolen laptop at Paddington station? Although the Ministry of Defence eventually recovered the device, there was some concern that it contained sensitive information regarding a fighter plane project. (Cue Cold War paranoia.) Time for a reality check. This sort of thing doesn't happen all the time. It's just the stuff of ministerial nightmares. Right? Well, no actually. An astronomical amount of devices go missing everyday. Caroline Sceats, analyst and guest on silicon.com's Behind the Headlines recently (http://www.silicon.com/a46426) cited anecdotal stats that up to 50 PDAs a day are recovered by registered London cabbies. Taxi Newspaper, the trade rag for cabbies, and mobile security company Pointsec Mobile Technologies did a survey and they reckon it's quite a bit more than that. In fact, 62,000 mobiles have been recovered from the back of London cabs in the past six months. In addition, it says 1,300 PDAs and 2,900 laptops have also been found. Londoners are famed for their generosity, but this is just too much. Why can't we look after our expensive toys - and in a lot of cases, work tools - a little better? Even more importantly, although the device itself is quite easy to replace, the data stored on it is not. As analyst Matt Hanrahan put it: "The value of hardware is nothing compared to the value of the information on a PDA." Do you have a plan in place if your device - or the devices of the staff whose IT requirements you look after - goes missing? Do you know the real worth of that little PDA that's floating around in your briefcase? Why not let us know what you've lost and the ultimate cost of it? You know the address - editorial@silicon.com