For many computer users, keeping safe online is the key consideration and the focus of an industry dedicated to producing antivirus software, but data theft by more traditional methods remains an issue.

Antivirus software firms rightly warn against the perils of surfing unprotected, but forget that many cases of data loss and id theft come from more mundane incidents.

Take the recent story from the Press Association which claimed that a highly confidential memory stick, containing details of top secret anti-terrorist measures, was discovered by a Manchester businessman on the pavement outside a police station.

The USB stick had the printed initials GMP POTU on the outside, which was later discovered to stand for: Greater Manchester Police Public Order Training Unit.

And here’s where the stories differ. The businessman who found the
stick said that it contained over 2,000 files which were grouped under a heading: “Manual On Guidance Of Keeping The Peace by the National Police Improvement Agency.” He claimed it was a virtual encyclopaedia of potential measures to counter serious terrorist attacks.

And he told the PA:
“There are even diagrams of crowd control scenes. If this got into the wrong hands, they would be one step ahead of the police all the time. The information in there is dynamite.”

The businessman preferred not to reveal his identity, but the incident happened in Stalybridge, Manchester.

He said the stick also contained personal information about a number of senior police officers and who would do what in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, including coping with such incidents as explosive damage and acid attacks.

Not so say The Greater Manchester Police, who quickly claimed that no sensitive information was on the USB memory stick. They claim that the information was in fact only used for officer safety training and that the majority of it was already in the public domain.

Mike Freeman, a Superintendent of The Greater Manchester Police, told The Independent that:
“I think it is fair to suggest that in most cases, anyone who found an item belonging to GMP outside a police station might do the right thing and hand it in. The person in this instance clearly had other motivations.”

So there! You decide who is right. Did the businessmen have some fun at the police’s expense with a few exaggerations, or are the police cleverly sowing the seeds of a misinformation campaign. Either way, when reading the numerous antivirus software reviews, always remember that it’s not only on the internet that you can lose data.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

June in the U.S. is known as Backup Awareness Month, although how many people know such a thing is debatable.

But even though summer obviously coincides with the time for protecting one’s digital data, recent research reports have shown that over 90% of people still risk loss by not backing-up properly.

They also show that despite campaigns trying to get people to be aware of basic backup techniques, nearly half of computers lose all manner of digital data in a given year, including music files, pictures, hard drive failures and theft.

And for those wondering how often they should back-up their data, the best practice is at least once a day.

It seems there has been an improvement in the amount of people backing up once a week (around 13% to 14%) and people doing the same task monthly (around 26% to 27%), and computer experts are at least gratified that more people are beginning to see the point of backing-up, even though on such an infrequent basis.

And this is especially true when it comes to laptops which have recently outsold desktops as the computer of choice for many people. But experts point out that laptops are inherently more vulnerable than desktops, not least because they are often mobile and susceptible to a higher chance of damage and theft, making regular back-ups a necessity.

Also, computer users should bear in mind an average modern computer can hold a vast amount of data which could be impossible to replace if not regularly backed up. A hard drive of some 300 GB is able to store nearly 100 full-length films, a staggering 30,000 photographs and over 20,000 music files.

Yet many users, with such amounts of data on their systems (not forgetting their handheld devices and mobile telephones), seem oblivious to the risks involved. It is hoped that Backup Awareness Month will make some inroads into the lethargy.

Guest Article by Neil Camp