Mobile Phone Apps and Phone Security
Computers are often portrayed as being insecure and people are warned about making sure that they have adequate protection in the form of anti-virus software.
Fewer people are as aware of mobile phone security. Setting PIN numbers for phone access is basic practice for a lot of phone users. However, as phones become more and more powerful, in some cases being the equivalent in processing power of the desktop machines of only a few years ago, its worth thinking of how best to keep your mobile phone secure. Not only are todays phones powerful enough to hide viruses and trojans, more people own mobile phones across the world than computers, and being linked to automatic payment mechanisms such as monthly billing contracts makes them an increasingly profitable target for criminals.
Recent news items highlight this. In one case the suspicion was that an application downloaded over a million times providing wallpapers for Android phones was able to access the phone number and subscriber identification and send it off to a third party website.
In another case, a talk by a security researcher showed that a compromised game triggered calls to premium numbers which were then charged to the subscribers bill. The calls were for only up to $12 a bill, but its easy to see when apps are downloaded in their millions how sums generated by this sort of scam become very lucrative for the mobile phone fraudsters.
Here are some suggestions on how to take care your mobile phone remains secure :
- Check your bill regularly for calls to numbers you don’t know about, especially premium numbers of any kind that you don’t know about and contact your network operator where you have unexplained phone charges
- Make sure you check the applications you download carefully, if you feel anything odd is happening with them. One benefit of things like Apples Appstore is that you can report problems with apps through iTunes and get your money back.
- Check back regularly on this site for news on phone security – as a mobile phone insurance news site we will keep reporting on incidents of this nature.