Posted on 03/21/2013 8:21:21 AM PDT by EXCH54FE
Devastating cellphone hacks that hijack your most personal gadget and rob you of privacy and money have long been forecast. But even as smartphone users in Asia are beginning to suffer exploding bills and emptied bank accounts at the hands of hackers, U.S. users largely remain safe and blissfully unaware of the gathering threat.
Criminals have been probing the systems that protect U.S. smartphone users for years, searching for the right combination of programming tricks and social engineering that would allow them to sneak onto users' phones.
They took a year-old mobile virus named NotCompatible, which allows hackers to take complete control of a phone, and posted the malicious code on websites. Then they sent out enticing spam emails with links to the booby-trapped sites. The emails were all the more tempting because they appeared to come from friends or others on the recipients’ contact list. Security firm Lookout says 10,000 customers per day are still being tricked to click on the bogus link and landing on the booby-trapped pages, and virtually all of them are in the U.S.
"This Android malware is unique," he said. "It's exactly the same scheme and end game as before, but it's just being circulated through different means. And it's working."
U.S. smartphone users have been spared much grief from mobile malware so far for a variety of reasons. Chief among them: Most users get their apps from a centralized and safe source. Apple keeps tight controls on its App Store, so malware writers are largely ignoring that platform. And while Google's Play Store for Android is not as tightly controlled, criminals haven't had much luck sneaking infected software onto that platform, either. That leaves hackers with time-consuming, methods such as tricking users to visit a rogue website and electing to install an app.
(Excerpt) Read more at redtape.nbcnews.com ...
I got a voice mail from Verizon asking me to call an 800# because of “a change in my account”. I called Verizon yesterday and said that the voice mail on the 800# asked me to confirm my phone number. I didn’t. Agent checked with supervisor and they couldn’t make sense of it; promised to call me back but so far nothing. Also had a Starbucks mobile recharge intercepted by an ebay member who hijacked my paypal account. Troubling.
DA-DA, plus I know not to bank using my phone even with that.
I did notice when I was at work one day not using at all, and the battery drained and so googed it and I realized it is doing stuff even when I dont use it myself, and when the signal is weak it uses more power to amplify it.
So now I stow it in Airplane mode when I am working near a phone and that keeps it out of trouble.
I love that Iphone.
Thanks for that tip. I will certainly use it.
I love waze navigation. It is a full GPS-mapping and voice navigator that links to gogole and bing (to find people and businesses) and it allows you to report speed traps and red light cameras and traffic problems, and gives you those warnings from others, and you can comment on them and post pictures to those warnings.
And it displays positions of recent wazers so you can see if the roads ahead of you have been covered (reported)
it is free
And people wonder why I won’t have a cell phone......
Also had a Starbucks mobile recharge intercepted by an ebay member who hijacked my paypal account. Troubling”””
Tailors put pockets in pants so yhou can carry real money!!!
Just this morning I was wondering: “Why doesn’t ridesthemiles have a cell phone?”
Now I know.
What you think of as real money is but a paper representation of an electronic ledger entry.
Real money is the balance indicated on millions of electronic ledgers. Plastic is the means for making the entry directly.
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