Some 55,843 mobile phones and 6,193 other devices, such as laptops were left in Lond cabs over the past 6 months a recent study suggests.  The study surveyed 300 taxi drivers and warned users to password-protect equipment amid rising fears of identity theft.

GadgetTrak provides two layers of protection in cases of mobile loss or theft. GadgetTrak’s lost and found tags provide a way for those that simply find your device to return it to you, without having to engrave your personal information on the device, the finder can simply log onto our website and communicate with the owner anonymously. The second layer is GadgetTrak software which provides is in cases of actual theft, our software enables devices ranging from iPods, mobile phones, laptop computers and more to communicate back to the owner regarding its location as well as the ability to remotely wipe data from the devices.
Source: BBC

In a continuation of the segment that ran on Good Morning America this morning, ABC News also did a nice write-up of the story.

Cracking a laptop password is a lot easier than most people think, regardless of operating system whether it is Windows, OS X or even Linux. Password protected laptops may slow a thief down, but gaining access to a stolen laptop is quite easy as there are open source and commercial tools available specifically for this function. According to LaptopTheft.org a 14 character password can be cracked within minutes.