Last April the world came across the news that Rafael Quintero Curiel, a member of the logistics corps of the Presidency of Mexico, had been found guilty of the theft of at least six Blackberry phones belonging to officials of a delegation of President George W. Bush, during a meeting between the two leaders in New Orleans. I subsequently began receiving emails from relatives, in which journalist David Gewirtz, editor-in-chief of ZATZ Publishing, referred to this incident as a possible case of harm to the national security of the United States; a little impressed by the subject I gave myself the task of locating the expert.
According to David, beyond seeing this as a simple racial incident in which an employee of a certain origin took something from a U.S. official without permission, what is really important is to ask what happens to the information inside these devices or any other laptop.
In the opinion of this renowned writer, the most serious problem is that you usually have personal and confidential information on these devices and that when the privacy character of them is lost, it disappears, because it is information that is exposed to competition, criminals or any other malicious person.
This issue becomes more relevant if one takes into account that every year more than 600 thousand laptops are lost in the airports of the United States; data says that more than 10,000 laptops disappear every week at the 36 largest airports in the United States and about 2,000 at medium-sized terminals, according to information published at the end of last June.
The note says that "53% of affected users stated that their computer contained confidential information of their company, but 65% had not taken any measures to protect it. No less than 76% of the companies surveyed acknowledged losing between one and two laptops a year, due to theft in 22% of cases", so the problem of loss of information is not a miniscule matter.
For all of the above, the recommendation we make is that you be more careful with your portable electronic equipment the next time you are going on a trip with them; at least if you are a little clueless, start looking for ways to protect your information, because tomorrow you may find that your life is practically in the world domain.
