Brits say their smartphone data is worth £6,504

Choosing between the wallet and the smartphone, the majority of Brits would rather have their wallet stolen, a new research by the Ponemon Institute and Lookout has found.

But that’s not because of the smartphone’s quality, value or price. It’s what’s inside that counts.

A lot of Brits use their smartphones to access corporate email and corporate data in general, and they’re aware that such information is valuable, not only to themselves and their company, but to hackers, as well.

They’ve also said that the photos and videos stored there are priceless -- 38 percent have said that they could never replace the content on their phone.

Nearly half (45 percent) have said that the amount of confidential data stored on their phones has increased significantly in the past 24 hours. That trend is set to continue, the report adds.

In total, individuals value the data in their devices at £6,504, the report adds.

But even though Brits are aware of the value of the data in the device, almost half don’t think data protection features are an important thing to have on a smartphone.

"Despite the growing amount of lucrative data and consumers’ growing concern about getting hacked, almost half of Brits (47 percent) don’t see data protection features as important when purchasing a mobile device", the report concludes. "Unless we start to safeguard our personal data as much as we do our physical belongings, we are liable to lose our priceless content and memories through a breach or hack".

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