Surprising Facts About Mobile Insecurity: How Your Phone Exposes Privacy

By Karla Robinson
August 8, 2012

“Thinking we safeguard our phones by physically keeping close tabs on them is way off, according to researchers, because millions of us already provide mobile data to marketers, business analysts, and law enforcement every day,” reports Mobiledia.
The post provides details regarding five ways smartphones are giving away personal information:
1) Carriers “generate a lot of information from consumers’ cell phone use, and make personal information anonymous, sell it to advertisers or hand it over to FBI and police officers,” notes the post, adding that tracking programs also aggregate other information.
2) Smartphones have big bulls-eyes. The big data trend targets personal data including contact lists and Google search words to provide insight into Internet-user behavior.
3) Law enforcement isn’t required to obtain a warrant to search smartphones and “in some places, if law enforcement officials can guess a password and unlock a confiscated device, they can impersonate the phone’s owner by sending texts,” explains the post.
4) Phones with apps that transmit user’s geolocation can make them vulnerable to robbers or burglars who know they aren’t home.
5) While it is known that posting on social media is public to some extent, “consuming content and ‘just browsing,’ was always assumed to be private, anonymous even, but this is also being threatened,” Mobiledia writes.

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