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Sharkey Has Tips for Your Laptop

Leisure travelers carrying laptops may not have to fear their boss's wrath if they lose some data along the way. Nonetheless, it sure would suck for anyone, whether a business or leisure traveler, to have a beloved MacBook or other machine seized at the airport. That's why today's Joe Sharkey tips matter to you, whether you're headed to London for a convention or just to get crazy drunk.

Sharkey reports that though laptops are not being seized all over, a lot more are being opened and inspected some way by airport security. When machines are seized, their owners may get no explanation, and they simply disappear like the second sock of a pair, never to be seen again.

He relays the suggestion, as per a professor at the University of Oklahoma, that concerned techies store all their computer data on a flash drive "that goes in your checked luggage or is Fedexed back and forth." He also says that you may have "suspicious" data on your hard drive and not even know it: something as harmless as a file with "blueprint" in its name could set inspectors off. To that end, a Sharkey pal suggests that you swap some "suspicious" file names for innocuous counterparts. "Puppy pictures," "Cupcake recipes," and "Lullaby sheet music" all would work--"Terrorist notes," not so much.

[Photo: Josh Bancroft]

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