Mobile Society Visuals

This photo I think can be considered explanatory. I think it's an awesome picture because it represents our society today. Teenagers are now equipped and so involved in these mobile devices that parents have a hard time getting through to them. This picture relates back to my topic because this is the affect mobile technology is having on our society today especially with teenagers.

I would consider this a poor example to try and explain the effects of mobile devices on life and society. All this picture shows is a person texting which doesn't really say much. This is pretty much a generic picture that would require you to read some text as to why the author would put a picture like this in a story that he or she was writing.

Mobile Security: Understanding Physical and Cyber Threats

This decade can easily be described as the “Mobile Decade.” Nowadays information is at the tips of your fingers no matter where you are in the world as long as you have a mobile device that can send and receive information. In this day and age you would be lucky to come across a high school or college student that did not possess a cell phone or any other mobile device. Also, now with the inventions of social networks, information is constantly being sent and received by different people all over the world. The problem with this is the type of information that is being transmitted all over as well as how it is being transmitted. There have been a lot of concerns about how private information is easily accessible through mobile devices. Since there was a lot of speculation about this topic, we did a survey to find out how people are using their cell phones.

The first question we asked was, “how often is your cell phone with you?” Out of 79 people that took the survey, about 63% said that they always have their cell phone with them. This can be a good thing and a bad thing, but in terms of mobile security this is a really good thing. If your phone is always with you there is less of a chance that somebody could steal your phone and get into things like your email or your bank account if you use mobile banking. It’s always good to have your cell phone with you or to know where it is.

The second question posed was, “does your cell phone require a password or passcode to be entered in order to access it?” Surprisingly about 75% of the people that we polled said that they do not have a password or passcode on their phone. With me, I have a Motorola Droid and I require a passcode to access my phone, especially because my phone is directly linked to my email and my Facebook page and anyone could just access them without any problems. I think it is important for people to have passwords or passcodes so that only they can access the information they have in their phone.

Our third question was not created to illicit any numeric data relating to who has what capabilities on their phone, etc. Instead, it was meant to better understand how secure people felt when using Internet capabilities on their phones. We asked how worried users were about cell phone viruses. A staggering 96.3% of the 79 people who took the online survey said that they were not worried or hardly worried (one bubble up from "not worried.") This led to our main digging for information to see how worried people should be. 

The following question was somewhat related to the aforementioned one, but asked if people had any anti-virus programs installed on their phones. Only 10.1% of 79 said yes, while the rest claimed to not know if they had it or not, or did not have any altogether for sure. Surely people should be more concerned with the state of their cell phones' vulnerability from a cyber perspective? We delved even deeper with the next question, trying to get to the bottom of this and see if our fears were unfounded (or relevant).

The fifth and sixth questions on our survey asked detailed questions regarding internet use on cell phones. Quickly jumping to the eighth, as a reference point, only 34 people in our online study of 79 had any Internet capabilities on their phones (smartphone or otherwise). Out of these 34, the distribution for how frequently people check their email was pretty spread out. The more you check your email, the more likely you would be to open something containing a malignant code, so that was the purpose of posing such a question. The next asked, more specifically, if anyone had actually been hacked through their cell phone's Internet. Only one person of our 79 online participants had ever been hacked through the Internet on their phone. This alone suggests how little people should be worried, if the chances are 1/79 in our survey (and possibly more if a larger sample was taken). 

Bluetooth devices can also create greater vulnerability patches for cell phone users, as their conversations can be intercepted and listened to through radio frequencies. Website Gizmoto gives specific, detailed instructions on how to eavesdrop on someone's conversation when they are using a Bluetooth headset. Looking at the Google results I got, it seems like a fairly simple task. What does this mean? Do not give out sensitive information on your bluetooth. Physically, this would make sense anyways, as you would not like a passerby overhearing your bank account PIN when you do mobile banking.

Another question we asked our population was if they owned a smartphone or phone with internet capabilities. According to the survey, the results were pretty even, although there were 9 more people who did not have a smartphone. I also found that to be a little surprising because I figured people nowadays want as many features as they can get on their phone. According to an article on lmk.girlscouts.org, only 28% of teens have web-capability on their phones and they only use it for email, checking the weather, sports scores, and social networking. This is really surprising because almost everyone I know has a cell phone that has web-capabilities. I guess this could be a good thing because that means you’re not using email or social networking or banking and you have almost no chance of being vulnerable to cell phone hackers.

The last 2 questions really tie into each other about sharing information with their cell phone. We asked, “how easily do you give out your cell phone number online,” and “how often do you give out personally identifiable information on your cell phone via text, calling, email, etc?” According to the survey, 60% of the population we polled gave their number out to a few websites online. I am part of that 60% because for instance, I use Facebook Mobile, Mobile Email, AOL Instant Messenger, and Skype on my phone, all of which require me to put my cell phone number on their websites. Forty-five percent rarely give out personally identifiable information via cell phone. I think that you have to be careful about what information you give to people and how you give it out.

Sources:

http://lmk.girlscouts.org/Online-Safety-Topics/Mobile-Devices/It-s-In-Your-Hands/Cell-Phone-Statistics.aspx 

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/cell-phones-key-to-teens-social-lives-47-can-text-with-eyes-closed-6126/ 

 http://gizmodo.com/328664/how-to-eavesdrop-on-bluetooth-headsets

Safety of Mobile Devices

A lot of people nowadays are worried about the safety of their mobile devices. I am one of the those people after I had a couple incidents happen to me this past month. I have a Motorola Droid and this past month i have had some issues with it. The first issue is that somehow my phone sent spam emails to 8 random people with just a link, so I had to download anti-virus applications to make sure my phone didn't have any viruses or malware on it. I ended up downloading 2 applications, one that scans all of my other applications and one that scans my phone. Apparently my phone did find something and was able to fix it. This past week my phone has been kind of spazzing out. It would move the menus and click on different applications by itself. I ran the anti-virus applications and it did not pick up anything but my phone did stop spazzing out. So i guess what I am trying to ask is: Are mobile devices safe and secure?

According to an article in the Tech Republic, five main concerns of the consumer are exposure of critical information, lost or stolen devices, mobile viruses, email viruses, and spam. According to another article in Baseline there are ten best practices for mobile security.

The first best practice is to choose your mobile device carefully. Not all devices have the same precautions for security threats.

The second best practice is to turn on encryption. Encryption provides more security coding which makes it harder to hack into the phone.

The third is to require authentication. In other words put a password or passcode on your phone so that only you can use it or if you lose your phone no one will be able to access it.

The fourth is to utilize remote wipe capabilities. If you do this, the IT staff will be able to disable your phone in the event someone steals your phone or if you lose it.

Fifth, make sure your mobile device service has a Lost Phone Hotline. This allows consumers to go to a place where they can figure out how to get a new device if they lose their old one.

Sixth, control third-party applications. Make sure you know what kind of applications you are downloading and make sure they are secure. For example I always read the reviews before I download an application.

The seventh practice is more for the service provider. The provider should set up firewall policies to protect outside traffic from entering consumers phones and getting their private information.

The eight practice is to use intrusion prevention software. This will prevent hackers from trying to hack into your system.

The ninth practice is to keep an open mind about Anti-Virus. This article doesn't really suggest buying anti-virus software but it talks about keeping an open mind about it.

The tenth practice is for service providers to shore up bluetooth. Hackers can easily use bluetooth to hack into a mobile device if the bluetooth is not properly secured.

I am not saying that you have to do all these things to make sure your mobile device is secure, I am just saying to be careful about the things that you download and the things that you do on your device. Hackers prey on consumers with the best mobile devices so that they can get all types of personal information. So just be careful about the type of information you store in your mobile device.