Smart phones
are lost because they were accidental forgotten at public places or stolen. A
phone today, is a cybercitizens gateway to their digital life. It allows use of
apps for services such as for banking, social networking and taxi booking,
storage for personal pictures and videos, email, instant messaging and
telephony.
Most phones
have an Internet finder program which helps to locate phones connected to the
Internet. The service works well, if the phone is forgotten at places which are
likely to have a lost and found counter like airports and restaurants where the
staff is unlikely to pocket it. More often, the key risk is the loss of battery
life effectively shutting down the phone. Even when a phone is lost and picked
up by a person wanting to return it, a study has shown that most of the people
browse private data like contact and pictures, understandably to locate the owner.
Most thieves
quickly switch off the phone and remove the SIM card to effectively disable the
Internet finder applications. When a phone is stolen or lost there are three
risks that the owner face.
Financial Loss
Typically, you
lose the value of the phone and the additional cost of calls made from the
phone which obviously, one has to pay for. While there may be insurance that
can be bought to recover part of the cost of the phone; to prevent fraudulent
calls the cellular provider needs to be quickly alerted to deactivate the
number. Ensuring that the phone is
protected by a strong screen saver password will mitigate the risk of expensive
calls.
Reputation Loss
Many personal
applications like Facebook, twitter, email or such social media accounts are
logged on and can be accessed without a password allowing personal information
to be read or malicious comments to be written. Such comments may affect
personal reputation or be defamatory which may results in soured relationships
or legal action. Hereto a strong screen saver password can help. If the thief
is unable to crack the password, the simplest action would be to format the
phone, reload the operating system and sell it in the black market
Privacy Loss
Privacy can be
lost in two ways. By viewing data stored directly on the phone memory or on
memory cards such as personal pictures, by reading private posts, email and by
looking up the browsing history. Private data such as sexting pictures of other
individuals received and stored on the phone may compromise their privacy.
Four steps that
cybercitizens should take to reduce the risks to themselves and the incentive a
thief gets from a stolen phone:-
1. Set
a strong password and short lock screen timeout. If your phone provides the option to erase
data after several unsuccessful tries to enter a passcode, typically 10,
activate it. New phones disallow the formatting of the operating system without a password
thereby rendering the phone worthless and reducing the incentive to steal it. A
strong password or passcode has at least 8 characters that include some
combination of letters, numbers, and special characters
2. Try to avoid using external memory
cards unless they are encrypted
3. Update
the phone regularly, to ensure that vulnerabilities which can be exploited to
unlock password protected phones is patched
4. Backup contacts and other data
Four steps that
cybercitizens should take when the phone has been stolen or lost and returned.
1. Use the Internet finder app to locate
the phone and erase data
2. Reset all passwords for apps and
accounts even if the phone has been returned
3. If
returned, reformat and reload the operating system to avoid any malware being
surreptitiously loaded. Malware can be used to spy, steal credentials and cause
an even bigger financial loss
4. Block you SIM card by calling up your
cellular provider
No comments:
Post a Comment