Digital Blunders: 10 million missing mobiles

Mobile phones have a habit of getting themselves lost either through getting pinched or being misplaced, but the numbers will surprise even the most careless of phone owners.

Over 18 per cent of respondents to silicon.com's digital blunders survey confessed they have lost their mobile phone, while a further 15 per cent said they know somebody else who has lost their phone. Considering 52 per cent of the UK population own a mobile phone, and a third of those have been misplaced or stolen, the numbers are very high.

Mobile phone crime is a major contributor and is steadily growing with approximately 15,000 handsets stolen in the UK each month.

A silicon.com reader gave us a recent example of having his mobile phone stolen when he received a call from his mother from North America while in a noisy Notting Hill pub. He walked outside so he could hear the news from home only to have someone come out of nowhere on a bike and swipe it from his hand mid-conversation.

Crime is one factor but there are also those individuals who just have a habit of losing things. Another reader confessed to losing his mobile phone while out one weekend, waking the next day bewildered by its disappearance. However, the following weekend all was revealed when he lost a second phone he had borrowed from one of his flat mates along with their keys through a large hole he discovered in his trouser pocket.

The best advice we can give here is avoid making calls in crowded public places and never lend your phone to flat mates.

To visit silicon.com's Digital Blunders site and find out just how wrong you can go with a simple email, visit http://www.silicon.com/digitalblunders where you will find stories like this one:

"When I was getting divorced, my now ex-wife sent me an email telling me she couldn't afford to live in our flat and therefore wanted me to buy her out. I forwarded this to a mate, adding the comment: "Fantastic, the flat is going to turn into a Grade A bachelor pad, let's start pulling cheap sluts," and unfortunately copied her in the reply."

For more email confessions, visit http://www.silicon.com/digitalblunders