Think Before Charging your Device in Public

Low Battery Alert.We’ve all been there. In an age where smart phones and portable wireless devices play an integral part in our ability to communicate with each other, navigate around town, check the time, google the name of that new restaurant, retrieve a boarding pass, and catch up on work emails, a low battery alert is quite a displeasing notification. City walkways, public buildings, parks and transportation hubs all over the nation have begun to incorporate device charging ports into the foundation of their design. This technological progress however, has of course attracted the attention of cyber criminals. As charging ports have become more prevalent in the structure of communal motion, cyber criminals have targeted them for easy theft of sensitive data. This practice of hacking a charging port to steal data is called ‘juice jacking’ and it is becoming more common every day. If a cyber-criminal successfully compromises a charging port, there is no limit to what they will be able to access on the victim’s device. Personal information such as banking account numbers, addresses, contacts and photos can be easily stolen and either used to commit other crimes, or sold to other criminals. Sadly, experts advise that the best way to avoid being a victim of this crime entirely is to simply not use public charging ports. Personal portable chargers are inexpensive, trustworthy, and keep your devices charged, where ever you go. Your cyber security is worth the investment!

Read more at: http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/15/technology/public-ports-charging-bad-stop/index.html

Photo: https://chargetech.com/new-york-city-experiment-in-phone-charging-stations/