Some thief swiped my cell phone last week.
While on a quick trip to New York City, I made a hurried visit to the neighborhood Duane Read Pharmacy on West 57th Street. Juggling other purchases, my wallet and a phone charger, I placed my Samsung Android on the checkout counter as I paid for my items and mistakenly walked out of the store without grabbing it. With the brisk walking pace necessary to navigate correctly on busy New York streets, I crossed West 57th and jumped onto 5th Avenue before realizing my error. Within two minutes I returned to the Pharmacy but obviously two minutes too late. The phone was gone from the checkout counter. A listless and disinterested employee gave me a stupefied glance without responding one way or the other to my questions. The store manager, a wonderfully responsive person, dialed my cell number to see if we might hear it ring—perhaps it had fallen into a gap between checkout lanes? Upon the third try, the phone went to voicemail immediately. The culprit had turned off its power to begin whatever a criminal does with a stranger’s cell phone. With so much of my “life” on that phone as emails, passwords, personal photos and family information, I actually shudder to think what that criminal will do with this data!
My Apple iPhone-loving friends have quickly told me that I’m “screwed.” “Why the heck didn’t you buy the iPhone like we told you?” They’ve gone on and on about how the iPhone is impossible to open and impossible to transfer and copy its stored data. Perhaps they’re right. Yet these sentiments have given me little solace. The “I told ya to buy an iPhone” has come across more as schadenfreude than compassion.
My cell phone insurance has delivered a brand-new Samsung Android complete with all my stored data and a list of functioning apps. Yet how can I know if my personal data hasn’t been downloaded to the dark web (wherever that may exist) and being used to bribe or bankrupt me?
Readers of this column may recall that this very magazine, plus four of our Amaturo Sonoma Media Group radio stations, were hacked by professional thieves four months ago. Every ounce of data—all music libraries, all recorded and printed advertising copy, all work for the magazine’s June issue, all historical information—was wiped clean from our computer servers. Only a single note, a ransom message from the thieves themselves, was left on those servers. It was an infuriatingly toned “wipe the tears of self-pity from your eyes and send us your ransom money or else” kind of letter. Its cold and threatening tone inspired my amazing team of editors, writers, broadcasters and engineering folks to muster a collective, “Go straight to hell thieves!” battle cry and they then began to rebuild everything from scratch instead of submitting to the hackers’ demands.
I worry that I’ll soon be faced with another set of demands by another set of thieves wanting to profit from their crime (and my failure) that day in New York City. When it comes to managing tech, this just hasn’t been my year!
While this was the first and (I hope) last time I’ll have my phone stolen, I’m betting you, or someone you know, has faced these very similar moments and threats, I’d like to hear from you. If so, I’ll benefit from your experiences or at least take comfort knowing someone else wallows in that very deep, cold place of self-pity. But please don’t tell me I should have bought the iPhone…
