Discussion on:

London calling: More people at Olympics, more stupidity

When did losing a mobile phone became stupid?

Losing my mobile phone a few years ago certainly wasn't one of the smartest things I've ever done.

your article is funny.............. if you have lost your phone, you must be very careless....

You could feel that way when the corporate security office and HR have a discussion with you.

No password, no phone.

See "Subject".

that it didn't happen to me. What I do find funny is the number of people who keep the phones in their shirt pockets and get very surprised when they lean over and the phone falls out.

On a side issue, I was once on hand when the local council were dredging a part of the river beside one of the major tourist lookout points for the area, the most common thing they found in the river silt were mobile phones, a few thousand of the suckers. Either lost or dumped there.

I think anyone who won't invest $15 to get a Carry Case with an over flap deserves to lose their phone. Those that carry them in their back pocket and eventually sit on it and crack the screen, Stupid!

If you carry your valuables in your front pants pocket it will not fall out and it will be almost impossible for someone to remove it without your knowledge. Don't get caught with your pants down..

I always have my phone in my front shirt pocket, together with my 'wallet' (my public transport pass which has all of my other cards/passes inside it). Phone is attached to my shirt's upper button hole with a coiled lanyard. Have had it like this for years.

1) My phone never falls.
2) I never lose my phone.
3) Nobody can steal it without having at least 1-2 seconds more. Sure, if someone grabs it from my hand and pulls strong enough it will go - but it may just give me another second, just enough time maybe...

In fact the one single time 3 years ago that while out of the house/office I disconnected my phone from my shirt, on a train in Germany, I instantly lost it. Found it again at the Lost & Found office at a railway station, but that was one scary day.

"During the Olympics, the total population in London is expected to swell by a third, with an extra million people using the tube every day. This, Venafi anticipates, will lead to an additional 17,000 lost or stolen phones,"

These numbers aren't of much value unless we also know how many phones are lost by one million people over a two week period. 17,000 phones over 16 days is 1063 phones per day. That works out to about 0.1% of the people losing their phones daily, or 1.7% of those million people over the course of the Olympics. Unless we know what percentage of people lose their phones every day, we don't know if the numbers for the Olympics are higher than normal or just average.

How do you differentiate between lost and stolen units? How do you account for the the increase in pickpockets and petty thieves drawn to an major international event attended by millions of travelers?

It's an isolated set of numbers for a single event, and no conclusions can be reached without control numbers to compare with. Statistics 101.

Strapline says estimated 67,000 phones lost or stolen at the Olympics. Story says 67,000 might be lost or stolen in London during the Olympics - maybe 17,000 more than a normal 2-week period. These are two very different statements.