usb safely removal

Some advice please on usb safely removal.

When ever i plug something into the usb slot say a card or flash drive i never use the safely removal hardware tool.
Ive heard that its dangerous if you dont and been told things like - it will damage your pc or you will loose all data on the storage device.

As its something i have never done, i cant see that it has either done any damage to my pc or that it has damaged my card reader or my card/ flash drive etc.

Im sure its there for a reason, but what reason and what could potentially happen if you dont use this device before you remove the usb

it can cause a crash but most of the time you just lose your data but it can be very bad for both your pc and usb drive its allways better to use it saying that i dont use it

I've lost data on my Flash Drive once, during school, never had a backup and it was just awful. The computers are school were c*ap, i got impatient when it was installing my Flash Drive as new hardware, so i then pulled it out, put it back in, and to my suprise, my Flash Drive would only work after a reformat, which then caused me to lose everything. But now i've learned my lesson and keep backups!

The thing that I have seen the most is it causing your data on your card/drive to become corrupt and unreadable. And then the only fix is to reformat as dan-ger-ous posted. So it is best to do it properly.

for the amount of time it takes, it is probably worth doing, the few times i haven't done it , nothing has happened, but just in case i "safely remove hardware"

Data loss is the biggest possibility, as stated. Personally, i'm far to OCD to not safely remove device before removing anything. I don't want the possibility of losing anything.