Valuable data hiding in those pockets
The list of things that customers leave in their pockets runs the gamut from
cash and credit cards to pencils and paper clips. In most cases, these items
are found before cleaning and returned intact to the customer, who may be
grateful, embarrassed or puzzled to see what was left behind.
Now a new item is turning up with some frequency — those tiny USB flash drives that can hold up to several gigabytes of data.
Credant Technologies, a UK data security firm, surveyed 500 drycleaners who
each reported finding an average of two flash drives in customers’ pockets in the last year. At that rate, Credant estimated 9,000 such drives
were left in pockets at the UK’s 4,500 cleaners last year alone.
The unassuming looking little drives can hold loads of sensitive data and may be
used to transport files in a shirt or jacket pocket between home and work.
“We conducted this survey to show people how easy it is to lose data,” said Michael Callahan, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at
Credant Technologies. “If the data is sensitive or valuable then people should protect this information… as it could easily end up in the wrong hands.”
Of course, if the data ends up in the right hands — that is, an honest cleaner — it will be returned intact and uncompromised. But what happens if the flash
drive buries itself deep in a pocket and goes through the cleaning process? No
official tests have been conducted, but based on one man’s experience, the drives could carry a care label listing laundering as a safe
cleaning method.
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On the advice of friends, he gave the drive a bath in WD-40 to inhibit any
rusting that might have been started by the wash cycle. But a few weeks later
he ran into another problem. The drive, “for reasons still being litigated” in the Fallows household, as he put it, took another trip through the washer
and dryer.
But no problem. “When it came out — amazingly — it worked again,” he reported.
