I found two USB sticks on the ground. Now what? [duplicate]

As from the subject, I want to see what's inside. I am seriously interested in finding the owner if possible and returning them, but I am worried it could be an attempt at social engineering. I own a MacBook Pro Intel with OS X v10.6 (Snow Leopard). It is a very important install.

What would you do in my situation if you want to see the content without risks? Any proposal is welcome.

I decided not to plug them in, and I brought them to the hotel reception. They will forward it to the police.

Solution 1:

Why look at the content? I can understand that you are curious, but the content of those drives is none of your business. If you lost a drive, would you want others to look at the content?

Leave some notes in the area where you found them or bring them to the lost property office if you have one.

Solution 2:

Disconnect from network. Boot from CD. Do not mount HDD.

Plug in USB drives, mount them and poke around.

Solution 3:

It could be full of nanites that are going to crawl into your computer and turn it into the master computer for the super-secret Tristan da Cuhna nuclear program. :)

All kidding aside, with the possibility that it could have some form of malware, government secrets, terrorist documents, data used in identity theft, illegal pornography, or child pornography your best bet is to turn it over to law enforcement in whatever jurisdiction you found it in with as much information about where you found it as possible. Leave it to them to figure out what to do with the USB stick.