You’re running around town, busily attending to your business. With you, as always, is your trusty smartphone, your all-in-one calendar, contact list, to-do list, mobile bank, camera, GPS, and pocket gateway to the internet. Where you go, it goes. And it must, for your entire life is locked up in that little box. And it’s safe and sound in there, right? After all, it is a “smart” phone.
Wrong.
Your little friend could turn into your worst enemy if it ever gets hacked. Or maybe that should be restated, when it does get hacked. Think about everything in your phone right now. Now think about it in the hands of strangers with bad intentions. It’s a scary thought. It’s a scary reality.
Why would anyone hack a smartphone? The same reason they would hack a PC: money. Scammers and tricksters want money. The more profitable it becomes to hack smartphones, the more they will try to do just that. For right now the main targets are still PCs. But as more and more people upgrade from older phones and start mobile websurfing with abandon, the smartphone hacking business will become more profitable, which means more popular.
So how would a hacker get into your phone? There are a few ways. One way is to exploit a weakness in the phone’s operating system (OS). To avoid this, keep your software up to date and make sure you’re running the latest version of your operating system. Other than that, you cannot really control the security of your phone’s OS.
The other way, however, is far easier. The hackers will depend on you, the phone’s owner, to open the virtual door and invite them in. And if you’re not careful, you will do just that. Things people do everyday on their phones open the door to thieves and scam artists.
Is your phone password protected? An unlocked phone is public information waiting to be viewed. Whether someone steals your phone or you simply forget it somewhere, once a stranger picks it up, your information becomes their information.
Only download apps from a trusted source. Sure, the latest smartphone game sounds fun, but downloading apps from a shady or unknown website is asking for trouble. And forget about “jailbreaking” your phone. That disables the phone’s security features. You might as well just post your personal information online right now.
Don’t click the link in that e-mail! Unless it’s from a friend and you can verify that they actually sent it to you, clicking a link in an e-mail is never a good idea. And yet people are far more likely to click while browsing on their phone than while using their PC at home.
Hackers may still mainly target PCs for now, but it won’t be long until the focus shifts to smartphones. Between smartphones’ lower level of security and smartphone users’ general lack of vigilance, it’s only a matter of time until your smartphone falls under attack. Don’t rely on the “smart” in the phone to protect your information. Use your own smarts to protect yourself.
I never really thought of the consequences of having my phone unlocked. Thanks for reminding me.