Lesson Learned

The other day at lunch, my car was vadalized and my bag with laptop (among other things) was stolen.  After having some time to reflect on the situation as well as my loss, Ive put together a list of recommendations for securing private and important information.  Luckily, I was already taking some of these precautions, but others I wish that I had.

1. Never leave anything of significant value in open sight in your car.  Either put it in the trunk when leaving or take it with you.  Common sense, I know, but I cant tell you how often Ill leave to run an errand and leave my bag, or camera, or IPOD sitting in clear sight. 

2.  If you carry a briefcase or bag with you to and from the office or somewhere else, only bring the essentials.  I have a habit of throwing everything that I might possibly need into my bag each morning.  There were a couple of things that I had no use for on that day that I put in my bag anyway and those are the things Im most disappointed I lost.

3.  Password protect your computers.  If the computer is password protected, it is harder to get into the files and less valuable to the average thief who may try to re-sell it.

4.  Back up all of your important files twice - either online, with a portable hard drive or flash drive.  I shudder to think about what position I would be in if all of my files had been on that laptop.  I back them up, but not as consistently as I should.  I lost about a month's worth of data.

5.  Don't bookmark financial and personal use websites in your web browser.  Hard lesson learned.  I had some bank information, email accounts, and a lot of other sites tagged as bookmarks.  Thus, I had to spend half the day changing passwords and calling all of my financial intitutions. 

6.  Don't carry unnecessary personal information in your bag or purse (i.e. financial, addresses, photos etc..)  I had personal photos and some home information on the flash drive that was also lost when my bag was stolen.  There is really no reason for me to carry that on a daily basis.

7.  Finally, record the serial numbers and product information for all of the valuables that you carry with you regularly.  This is the best way to track stolen goods.

Moral of the story is that you can never be careful enough when it comes to protecting your personal information.   Take these precautions and you won't have to learn the hard way. 

Comments

[Shawn Ferguson]

Very helpful Ryan. Thank you. By the way, I stole your bag. Don't tell anybody.