This entry is part of the series Ten things you can do to improve IT security and reliability without spending money

How many of you use the passcode or password feature on your mobile phone?

Let’s imagine for a moment what information would be available if someone found (or stole) your mobile phone.

First, they’d probably find the phone numbers and maybe addresses of your closest family members, your children, perhaps elderly parents.  It would likely be easy for them to figure out who is who, since most of us enter “mom” as the phonebook entry.  Or if you’re married a long time like me, you have “mom1” and “mom2”.  My soon to be son-in-law has “girlfriend mom” as the entry in his phone.  You may have pictures of all these people also.
If you use the notes or memo feature on your phone, whatever tidbits of personal information (maybe account numbers, passwords, etc.) would be ripe for picking.

And to top things off, if you receive email, particularly email business email, on your phone, you will have potentially exposed private and confidential information.

Considering the negative impact the exposure of all of this could have, I suggest to you that a momentary pause to enter a password before using your mobile phone is well worth it—at no cost and 2 seconds extra effort.  By the way, on most phones that I know of, you don’t need to enter the password when answering an incoming a voice call.