Friday, April 6, 2012
Extra Credit
Most finders of lost phones try to access personal data, survey finds
March 20, 2012
By: Amy Gahran
Thinking about some stranger accessing your phone is an uneasy thought. Having them going through your photos, your messages, your passwords and everything else we store on our mobile devices is a scary thought. The recent rise in smart phone carriers has caused the amount of smart phone thieves to rise. These thieves are taking smart phones from owners and running to access personal information and even changing passwords to accounts to take over.
A recent study was done in cities all over the country by Security software provider Symantec. The Company purposely lost 50 cell phones that had no locks set on them and found that in the vast majority of cases -- more than 95% -- the people who found these missing cell phones tried to access personal or sensitive information, or services such as online banking or e-mail. This is almost every person that found one of the 50 cell phones tried to access personal information. The Company stated that in order for smart phone carriers to keep their information safe they should set a password lock on their device. Along with setting a password a carrier should make sure they do not store passwords on the device or use one password for all accounts. The last tip they gave is to report a stolen phone as soon as possible to try to stop security breaches before they occur.
After reading this article I decided to put my password back on my phone as well as delete my password application as well. I never thought about how much information is so easily accessible if someone were to take it from me. I think that we all need to be more careful as to what we put in writing because we never know what could happen in the future.
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I believe that people should not be using other people’s phone regardless. Because I know if someone stole their phone they would be pretty upset. One thing that people do not understand it that, if people stole their phone they would not like it at all. But once they do it to someone else it is all fine. That is not how it works. if you do not want people doing it to you, why would you do it to other people. It is only right not to do it. If they are stealing phones to go through their personal business that is just completely wrong. Privacy is a very big thing, because you never know what the person is going through in life. Their messages and pictures in their phone are really private. I think the scariest thing is if a thief goes through someone’s phone and find a picture that is inappropriate they can do anything with that picture. People will never know when their phone will end up missing or someone stealing it. That is why they should keep really personally things out of their phone.
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