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Smartphone as a security breach to our private lives.

Today, we do almost everything with our smartphone, but on the way we forget it is a computer in

every way and our personal information may be in danger.

The first mistake of the average smartphone user is the belief that these devices are safer from your

home PC and in most cases they are not aware of the tremendous amount of personal and business

information that is stored on their device. Using our smartphone one can find a lot of information

about us. For example where we are (GPS), what we are interested in (browser history), who our

friends are (Facebook), our plans (logs), our finances (bank online connection), how we work and what

we work on (business emails) and sometimes other personal information stored on our personal

computer (by using the synchronization between the smartphone to the computer). In the near future,

even our wallet will become digital and will be replaced by the smartphone as planned today by many

cellular providers around the world.

While smartphone makes life easier, we do not need to get home to send email or an office to close a

deal. But the concentration of business or personal information on one small device creates security

and privacy issues that the cellular providers may have not done enough to solve. Smartphone is a

portal to our digital life, and if anyone gets in, they’ll have access to more knowledge than we would

like to, so it puts our security and privacy in constant danger.

Part of the problem is that the victims themselves help hackers due to their lack of attention to

security issues. For example most users do not bother to use the most basic security setup – the

automatic locking of the device, which requires opening by password.

Technological solutions exist and continue to get better all the time, the real and largest challenge is

raising awareness of the users about the dangers and ways of dealing with them. The problem is that

most users do not bother themselves enough about security and they are not aware enough to

recognize the dangers to them even if they are clearly in front of their eyes.

A typical example of recent years are the various Facebook scams, when users read promising posts

about sensational photos or videos and click on the link that eventually ends up with their user name

and password are stolen and used by the attacker for other various scams. All the users had to do in

order to avoid the fraud is simple - do not click the link. Using similar ways, hackers can gain control

over our phone and over the information stored on it, and through that access our bank account.

Dealing with threats against our smartphone begins with awareness and continues with technological

solutions. Just like we lock the door before we go to sleep at night and we make sure everyone are

buckled in the car, users need to consider the question of how to protect their devices and the

information on it. It's starts with correct behavior while surfing the net and using common sense, such

as maintaining and creating complex passwords, different on each site. It is important not to be

tempted by free proposals that ask you to provide personal information or share links to dodgy sites,

and finally to supervise the physical device, such as not to let it unattended on a table in the

restaurant.

Copyright © 2013 TotalDefense, Inc. | All rights reserved www.totaldefense.com Page 2

About TotalDefense:

Total Defense(@Total_Defense) is a global leader in malware detection and anti-crimeware solutions. We offer a broad portfolio of leading security products for the consumer market used by over four million consumers worldwide. Our solutions also include the industry’s first complete cloud security platform, providing fully integrated endpoint, web and email security through a single Web-based management console with a single set of enforceable security policies

Total Defense is a former business of CA Technologies, one of the largest software companies in the world, and has operations in New York, California, Europe, Israel and Asia.

Visit http://www.totaldefense.com/ for web, cloud & mobile security solutions for home users and businesses.