Oh dear phone lost yippee now found

[Mercdriver]

My phone decided not to travel to Tenerife on holiday and stayed in airport security, only found out when loading hotel safe in Tenerife, oops. Called sky on wife’s phone to block the phone so all good. Thought oh dear I am going to have to change passwords on all the contacts.

Airport were good and sent message to wife’s phone to say they had the phone, £25 to recover phone so not too bad for piece of mind.

Would airport be free to auction off phone? I can imagine some twelve year old hacking into it and getting the info it contains, does the data protection act not prevent this as they would be selling my info to a third party?

[Eric Mc]

I've never lost my yippee. How could you be so careless?

[Mercdriver]

Bad enough to be included in a pantomime, oh yes it is!

[KaraK]

Mercdriver said:

My phone decided not to travel to Tenerife on holiday and stayed in airport security, only found out when loading hotel safe in Tenerife, oops. Called sky on wife’s phone to block the phone so all good. Thought oh dear I am going to have to change passwords on all the contacts.

Airport were good and sent message to wife’s phone to say they had the phone, £25 to recover phone so not too bad for piece of mind.

Would airport be free to auction off phone? I can imagine some twelve year old hacking into it and getting the info it contains, does the data protection act not prevent this as they would be selling my info to a third party?

I don't think the DPA would be in play here - the airport isn't the data controller/processor for your phone's contents but really.. it's £25. Just pay the damn recovery fee and never worry about it again.

[Mercdriver]

Already paid, so pleased to have it back just wondered what my rights are if they had sold it

[Andeh1]

Impressed they had a working system to recover it!

Did you have a pin code or security setup? Most phones are incredibly secure these days.

[Mercdriver]

Yes 4 digit code and fingerprint too. I did wonder how they accessed the phone to get my wife’s number though. Cannot remember if it was switched on when put through security. It would still have needed code or fingerprint to boot up.

Think security might have removed phone from my bag to x ray it, I filled three bins so collected the three and got dressed, jacket, belt and shoes did not look for fourth bin.

Usual queues bins are ahead of people so not possible to keep an eye on all bins

[gregs656]

Is your wife set up as an emergency contact?

[Mercdriver]

Yes

[the-norseman]

Thats how they got the details then.

[Mercdriver]

Thanks Norseman

[C n C]

Mercdriver said:

Yes 4 digit code and fingerprint too. I did wonder how they accessed the phone to get my wife’s number though. Cannot remember if it was switched on when put through security. It would still have needed code or fingerprint to boot up.

I changed the image on my phone front screen (before login) to a message saying it's <my name>'s phone and asking that if found, they call a mobile number (my wife's), or contact me via an email address in the hope that if I ever did lose it, whoever found it would at least have the ability to contact me even though the phone would remain locked.

[the-norseman]

C n C said:

I changed the image on my phone front screen (before login) to a message saying it's <my name>'s phone and asking that if found, they call a mobile number (my wife's), or contact me via an email address in the hope that if I ever did lose it, whoever found it would at least have the ability to contact me even though the phone would remain locked.

You could just put that into emergency information.

You have to be careful with the emergency information though, especially people who have bank cards/keys attached to the phone. if you fill in all the emergency info such as address, DOB etc and then you loose it, if it has house keys on it and you have your address in the info... prime for robbing.

DOB is common to be used as bank card pin code as well.