Some facts about lost property

Lost property may be a much bigger problem than you realise. Here are some figures:

In a six month period, 54,874 mobile phones, 4,718 handheld PCs, 3,179 laptops and 923 USB sticks were left in the back of London taxi cabs.
37 million pieces of baggage went missing in air transit last year.
The 2008 Glastonbury festival welfare centre dealt with over 2,000 lost property items handed in over the weekend, including approximately 400 mobile phones, 100 cameras and 400 wallets, as well as passports, airline tickets, car keys and portable electronic device. The office only manages to return a third to their rightful owners.
Between 40 and 50 per cent of lost mobile phones, laptop or PDA devices are left unclaimed at the lost property offices of UK airports. Heathrow airport alone has about 5 laptops and 10 mobile phones handed in everyday. Just 60 per cent are reclaimed, with the rest going to local auction houses after three months. Heathrow has to auction off approximately 730 lost laptops and 1,460 mobile phones every year.
Chiltern Railways receives over 400 items of lost property left on its trains or stations every week. Their policy is to make every effort to contact the owner, where they can be identified.
Research carried out by GfK NOP shows that an overwhelming 76% of people will always seek to return a lost item to its owner. The biggest problem they face is how to identify the owner.
8 out of 10 people rely on their mobile phones as a means of storing important names and addresses, and almost as many of us use our phones as diaries and to store photographs and music.
The confidential data stored on a laptop can be many times more valuable to the owner than the hardware, so make sure yours doesn't become lost property!