By Tony Larks, Vice President, Global Consumer Marketing, Trend Micro

Pssst, have you heard the one about the stolen iPhone, the New York Times journo and the World Wide Web? No? Well, very briefly, this is what happened. Are you sitting comfortably?

A US tech journalist by the name of David Pogue tweeted last Thursday that his iPhone had gone missing whilst he was riding an Amtrak train a few days earlier. Luckily for him, Pogue’s friends over at tech site Gizmodo got on the case and started rolling coverage of the saga to track down the device via Apple’s Find My iPhone app.

Pogue was confounded at first because the phone was switched off, but the thief then made the fatal mistake of turning it on at some point and the built-in GPS alerted those now joining in the chase via the web to its location.

Eventually, aided by Google Street View and Maps and Pogue’s directions, local police officers tracked the phone down to the back garden of a residential block in a decidedly dodgy part of Maryland.

It’s a great tale of what can happen when the Internet mobilises and pulls together to help someone in need, but sadly it’s all too rare. The likelihood that any of us mere mortals could attract as much attention on Twitter and then persuade the cops to join in a hunt for a piece of glass and metal are pretty slim.

Yet these mini computers we carry around in our pockets are almost impossibly vital to our daily lives now. They’re our MP3 player, mini TV, camera, calendar, organiser, and even digital wallet, all-in-one.

It’s not just sensitive business data that we could regret losing if our phone goes missing these days; it’s the photos you took at that once-in-a-lifetime gig the other night; the music library you’ve spent the past three years building up; the video clip you took at your best friend’s wedding.

This is where the cloud comes in – it provides a place to safely back-up your mobile in just such an eventuality.

With Trend Micro(tm) Mobile Backup and Restore, you can be sure that there’s an up-to-date, secure copy of all of your phone’s vital content on our servers – backed-up as regularly as you need.

It means if that moment we all dread finally comes, at least you can have peace of mind knowing that all of the really important stuff – the personal stuff – is safe and sound and ready to be re-downloaded as soon as you can buy a replacement handset.

Tony Larks works for Trend Micro and is guest blogging for the Fearless Web. The opinions expressed here are his own.

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