i-Phone leash may make the holiday list, but what next?

http://amandagramse.blogspot.com/

Great post Amanda! Having recently pondered the thought if investing in one of those fancy things myself, losing it was defintely one of the things that crossed my mind. However, it was more of a concern of simply being out a few hundred dollars. I didn't even condsider the far reaching ramifications you bring up. These are some real concerns if you were to accidentally lose or break an i-phone, but much scarier if it was intentionally targetted for theft! If someone had an agenda to gather personal information about you (or anyone that is close to you), having that device would make the task pretty easy.

Good news is: we're not the only ones that are paranoid... After reading your post, I Google'd the subject and found a few interesting hits, including the following "wish list" article on MSNBC, where a leash is already on the list as #14 for future improvement.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19816720/ Digging a bit further, I came across this blog post where the author has rigged up a home-made lanyard, using an old snowboard leash. http://www.xanga.com/kevina/660136578/item.html. Pretty creative way to improvise. But if people are already asking for this and coming up with their own solutions, I would expect Apple and other fancy phone makers will respond quickly with a factory solution.

The question I have though: Is a leash enough? Considering the amount of information potentially stored in an i-phone, will society eventually demand greater security measures for cell phones and PDAs? We live in a time where everything on the web is password protected and we have even moved to retinal scanners at some airports and high security buildings. Should our pocket sized phone/contact list/photo-album/gps/calendar (aka i-phone) not carry the same levels of security? It will definitely be a sad and annoying day when we have to enter a personalized PIN every time we make or receive a call, but I think that's what we've gotten ourselves into...