I find I am often loathe to get my iPad out of my bag and show it to people because of the embarrassing grubby finger marks that will inevitably pock mark its beautiful shiny surface when I lift the cover, but it’s not just the visual embarrassment these finger marks cause that are the real problem, it’s the disease-carrying ability of the shiny glass surface they are sitting on.

A recent study from the Journal of Applied Microbiology found “a high risk of transmitting pathogens from glass surfaces like the iPad to human skin.” Yikes.

Apparently 30% of any virus put onto the surface of an iPad will transmit to the fingers of a new user and as we all know, that’s how colds and flu start, because those fingers then move the virus to eyes and noses and potentially infect the owner of the fingers.

This is one case where sharing definitely isn’t caring! Keep your iPads and iPhones to yourself, or at least clean and disinfect the glass surface before and after you hand it round the room at parties.

I see a gap in the market here for a new antibacterial product, but I also see a much cheaper opportunity to simply keep my iPad to myself, which is how I like it, embarrassing grubby finger marks and all. Hands off!