'The psychology of leaving a stranger with your valuables' blog discussion

meher

Thanks Tojo, I admit that I was evading the point you're making but I think some of you are taking a bit further by hypothesing and assuming, as if for argument sake, that anyone would leave the laptop insecure whilst leaving it with a stranger or that there's sensitive data in it while you're on the move. Apart from that, it is, imo, perfectly fine to leave things with strangers based on an intution - it is only a laptop afterall. As it is, there's a crisis as far as the spirit of goodwill is concerned, with it missing which is why we need laws for so many things where just kindness and generosity would've sufficed.

I suspect, it's a cultural thing too to trust strangers more easily, based on the media influence. For famous people, celebrities, they are likely to trust strangers a lot more because of their interactions with all sorts of people. With all these social network kind of thing, the mre your interactions are the more likely to realise that everyone is the same afterall. Or as you'd say in the eastern :snow_grin philosophies, they have a heightened awareness of oneness; oneness meaning we see a part of us in another person. Simply put, if we're trustworthy ourselves, we trust others easily.

tyllwyd

meher wrote: »

Thanks Tojo, I admit that I was evading the point you're making but I think some of you are taking a bit further by hypothesing and assuming, as if for argument sake, that anyone would leave the laptop insecure whilst leaving it with a stranger or that there's sensitive data in it while you're on the move. ...

On the other hand, if you are the sort of person who would take the trouble to make sure that there is absolutely nothing private on your laptop - and that there is nothing stored on your laptop that might give someone access to, say, your email account - then are you the sort of person who would be trusting enough to leave your laptop in the care of a total stranger?

meher

Sorry but if it is ok to ask, why should protecting senstive data have anything to do with being trusting or otherwise? It's not only to comply with the law and respect other people's privacy, but also to be totally in control.

tyllwyd

meher wrote: »

Sorry but if it is ok to ask, why should protecting senstive data have anything to do with being trusting or otherwise? It's not only to comply with the law and respect other people's privacy, but also to be totally in control.

What I mean is, if you are using your laptop as a portable office, you might have an address book stored on it, or you might have drafted letters that are addressed to someone else, or someone might have sent you a draft of a document to review that isn't ready for publication yet - things that are part of your work that aren't to be made publicly available. If you are the person who likes to be in control, you would either make sure that your laptop had absolutely nothing private on it - which would make it less useful as a portable office - or you would keep it with you at all times. To me, from a psychological point of view, someone who was worried about having their work stolen wouldn't be trusting enough to leave their laptop in the care of a stranger. If you don't think the laptop itself will be stolen, then logically, you don't think the contents of the laptop will be stolen either.

meher

Thanks, but presumably anyone would save it in the little flashdrives, pen, stick, disk, card what have you, that they carry around; I was just trying to refute :snow_grin that hypothesis that people who leave their laptop with strangers wouldn't be mindful of the data that needs to be protected. I'd make a distinction between laptop and senstive data. You can always trust anyone with a laptop but you need to have control over teh data; there's no question about trust issues as far as data is concerned, point is that no one else should have access to it at all to begin with.

tyllwyd

The way I was thinking was - if I was working at home on my laptop. I've got it password encrupted, top security software and all the rest. Then I realised I've run out of milk so I need to pop to the corner shop for five minutes. I can't be bothered to take my house key so I leave the front door unlocked while I'm out. It's been fine the other 99 times I've done it, but this time I get caught out and someone has walked in and nicked my laptop. The first line of defence is surely to do the simple thing and lock the door and my own laziness has caught me out.

And although I've protected the information on my laptop, someone now has access to it in the privacy of their own home, and plenty of time to try to hack into it.

The same argument with the laptop in a public place - the first line of defence for the laptop and any information on it, is to keep it with you. I'm not thinking about situations where you know you are taking with you a database of personal information on a memory stick, but more the kind of stuff you would have on a pc or laptop that you wouldn't necessarily think of as sensitive or personal information - until you realise it's been stolen and you remember what's on there.