The personal spy: the smartphone in your pocket may be spying on you, I

research at British Telecommunications. “We trust and rely on them more. And as we rely on them more, the potential for fraud has got to increase.”

So just how secure is the data we store on our phones? If we are starting to use them as combined diaries and wallets, what happens if we lose them or they are stolen? What if we simply trade in our phones for recycling?

According to the UK government’s Design and Technology Alliance Against Crime (DTAAC), 80 percent of us carry information on our handsets that could be used to commit fraud — and about 16 percent of us keep our bank details on our phones. Geddes says she thought her Nokia N96 would hold few surprises, though, since she had only been using it for a few weeks when I submitted it to DiskLabs. Yet their analysts proved her wrong.

Aside from the text messages stored on her SIM card, the most detailed personal information that could be gleaned from her handset came from an application called Sports Tracker. It allows users to measure their athletic performance over time and she had been using it to measure how fast she could cycle to work across London. It records distance traveled, fastest speed at different points along the route, changes in altitude, and roughly how many calories I burn off. When DiskLabs uploaded this data to their computer and ran it through Google Maps and Street View, they were able to pull up images of the front of her office and her home — with the house number clearly displayed. Sports Tracker also recorded what time Geddes normally leaves the house in the morning and when she returns from work. “If I wanted more information, then I could just stalk you,” says Neil Buck, a senior analyst at DiskLabs.

Geddes writes that she had deliberately chosen to turn Sports Tracker on, and many people might not stop to consider how such programs could be used against them. In February, Google launched Latitude, networking software for smartphones that shares your location with friends. It can be turned off, but campaign group Privacy International is concerned by Latitude’s complex settings and says it is possible the program could broadcast your location to others without your knowledge. “Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends,” the organization