Revealed: the most common phone security mistakes
A Channel 4 News survey finds two thirds of people stay logged into their email accounts on their phones, and a fifth have sent bank details via text, leaving them vulnerable to identity theft.
- Staying logged in – 69 per cent
- Sending emails over insecure networks – 46 per cent
- Sending bank details in text – 17 per cent
- Photos of passports etc on your phone – 12 per cent
The survey, Could your phone come back to haunt you?, asked a series of questions about people’s habits with their phones to find out if the respondents were “data daredevils”, “digital natives” or “the pro”.
Of more than 700 respondents, the survey, part of the Data Baby special report, found that 69 per cent are permanently logged into Facebook or email accounts without logging out.
Other bad practices examined included texting bank details, having photos of important documents such as passports on a phone, and sending private emails over insecure or public wi-fi connections.
Open access
For the two thirds of respondents who stay logged into email and social media accounts, this means that their account can be accessed if their phone is stolen, lost or hacked into. They can even be accessible after you restore your phone to factory settings.
This is because your cookies are still “active” if you don’t log out, or fail to untick the box that allows the site to remember your login.
Even if your phone is wiped, a Channel 4 News investigation found that all the information on your phone, from personal texts to photos and bank details, can be retrieved using specialist software.
Encryption
Some protection is offered through data encryption, which stops the data being retrieved after your phone is wiped.
Half of the respondents to the Channel 4 News survey encrypt their data (which could be because some of the latest iPhone models offer this automatically).
However, of the 350 people who do not have data encryption on their phones, 63 per cent of respondents do not log out of Facebook and email accounts. These people have no protection from identity theft if their phone is stolen/lost or even, as the Channel 4 News investigation found, resold.
Are you a data daredevil or a digital native? Take the Channel 4 News survey, below.
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Text happy
The survey found that 17 per cent of people have sent bank details via text, 12 per cent have photos of their passport, driving licence or contracts on their phone and 50 per cent have sent personal emails over insecure or public wi-fi.
Some of the data risks with phones can be alleviated with data protection software. A fifth of respondents to the survey had downloaded such software.
Wireless networks
Nearly half of respondents (46 per cent) admitted to sending personal emails over an insecure wireless network. A previous Channel 4 News investigation found that it is easy to intercept all the information sent from your phone through wi-fi networks, leaving your information easily accessible.
The survey also found that more than 80 per cent of people polled had the internet on their phone, and that, somewhat alarmingly, three people did not know what a phone was.
Watch videos from the Data Baby special report, below.