Monday, July 8, 2013

The Boogie Man In Your Pocket

This was published on Technorati.com
http://technorati.com/technology/article/the-boogie-man-in-your-pocket/
Published: July 24, 2012 at 5:36 am

You have a smartphone? It's already too late. He has your bank account number, passwords, confidential friends list, and much more. Forget your social security number and your fingerprints, all a professional fraudster needs is your smartphone. It's the equivalent of a burglary in one insidious move. He doesn't even have to steal it.

Every day it seems, you hear about security breaches at major companies like Sony, and personal attacks via viruses attacking your home computer, identity theft, etc. There are many news stories (UK telegraph & Mashable for example) giving examples how vulnerable smart phones are.

No doubt about it, the boogie man is out there, and he is hot on your heels after you. Now there is yet one more way he can get to you, find out your user names, passwords, who you call, who calls you, who your friends are, your calendar agenda, and even track where you go. The vast majority of people are wide open to attack without even realizing it.

Your Smartphone. It has a processor, memory, an operating system, it is a COMPUTER shrunk down into the palm of your hand that happens to have a phone function, but it is primarily a computer.

Your smartphone is every bit as vulnerable as your home computer, in fact even more so, because we do absolutely nothing to protect them. Most people install antivirus software on their computers, but somehow, not our phones, yet we use our smartphones to store highly personal information on, such as banking details, credit card numbers, employee number, etc.

Compounding this, more and more apps are relying on device browsers to run, while browsers on mobile devices aren't as secure as home computers.

Small screen sizes also inherently add to the problem of people out and about on the go hastily clicking on links without really reading and understanding what they are doing.

This is a particularly juicy target for nefarious individuals who want to do you harm. In fact, McAfee, the antivirus company that regularly releases threat reports, states that in the fourth quarter of 2011, the number of mobile malware samples jumped from less than 150 in the third quarter of 2011, to well over 400 in the fourth quarter.

According to McAfee, the first Android exploit came with the first SMS Trojan discovered in the wild in 2010, since then the landscape has become more and more volatile, with sophisticated  malicious code seen in the official Android Market during the first half of 2011 like DroidDream, DroidKungFu, and Plankton.

I have compiled a list of ways you can protect yourself and prevent your device from falling under the control of someone else...

* Don't click links in emails that may have you download something or sign in to a website using your username and password. Always go directly to the website. For example, if you get email from Bank of America, don't click any links in it. Instead go to the Bank Of America website directly by typing in the URL in your browser.

* Don't visit websites that aren't "known" to you. You have very little to fear from Ebay, Amazon, Google, CNN, etc... but unknown websites with lots of ads are just waiting to inject some nasty malware code into your device via your browser.

* APPS: The ultimate culprit, trojans. There are thousands of apps tempting you to download some free new super app that does wonderful things, but hiding within may well be malicious code with evil intent, even opening a backdoor into your device to transfer your information out.

* WiFi: Try to avoid using public WiFi on your smartphone. This opens up your device to the wild west of the unknown on the internet because there aren't any network security measures in place. Public WiFi hotspots are playgrounds for hackers seeking to harvest data from your mobile device.

* Activate installation password protection measures to prevent your device from downloading apps or files without your permission

* Install antivirus software on your smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. Among some of the mobile security software offerings:

Total Defense, formerly a division of CA Technologies.

Webroot offers protection for both Android and iOS devices

Macafee Mobile Security

Norton offers Norton Mobile Security 2012

and finally Kapersky Mobile rounds out the list.

Good luck out there. Enjoy your device, you can, if you exercise a bit of awareness and common sense.


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