Lana Del Rey arrives for the Recording Academy and Clive Davis pre-Grammy gala at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, California. File/AFP

Always have a backup for your work, says singer Lana Del Rey who seems to be very vulnerable where thefts are concerned. On Wednesday she appealed to her followers not to listen to some of her unreleased songs.

She said on her private Instagram account that the leak appears to be related to the theft of her personal laptop earlier this year. A few months ago, she parked her car at Melrose Place (actually Melrose Ave.

in Los Angeles) and stepped away for a minute. She had left her backpack in the car. Someone then smashed the windows of her car and stole the backpack which had her computer, three camcorders and hard drives. Also pilfered was a 200-page book she was working on for the publishers Simon & Schuster. She also lost family footage on the camcorder, according to Indo-Asian News Service.

"I had to remotely wipe the computer that had my 200-page book for Simon and Schuster" which I didn't have backed up on the cloud," she continued, "And despite that, people are still able to remotely access my phone and leak the songs and personal photos."

Despite all that, she has a ninth album on the way. The Grammy nominee learnt a very important lesson the hard way: always back up your work.