Mobile Phone Reviews
 
 
Mobile Phone Users Vulnerable To ID Theft

Mon, 30 Mar 2009

Around 4.2 million Britons are leaving themselves open to identity theft and fraud by failing to protect personal data stored on their mobile phones, new research has revealed.

According to a survey by data protection security experts Credant Technologies, consumers save a range of sensitive information on their phones that could be exploited if it fell in to the wrong hands.

The study of 600 London railway commuters found that an alarming four out of five mobile users fail to protect such data from third parties by securing their phones with a password.

Almost a quarter of those surveyed admitted to recording pin numbers and passwords on their handsets, while 16 per cent said they stored their bank account details on their mobiles .

Ten per cent said they saved their credit card information on their handsets, and 11 per cent admitted to storing government records such as Social Security and Inland Revenue details.

More worryingly, the survey found that 99 per cent of people use their phones for business in some way, despite 26 per cent of them being told not to.

More than a third of respondents used their phones for sending and receiving business emails, with more than three-quarters storing business contact details and nearly a quarter keeping customers' information on their handsets.

Paul Huntingdon, public sector director at Credant Technologies, warned that lost phones could lead to the theft of a personal identity and the ruin of a professional one.

"Once you have access to someone's emails, passwords, birthdays, business diary, documents, children's names and pets' names you can easily masquerade as that person, sending out emails under their name, reading all their corporate data and getting to see every personal detail of their life," he said.

"People are ignorant of how easily a professional thief could take over their life and effectively destroy it. It is therefore imperative that all mobile phone users, even with the most basic handset, password protect and encrypt them."
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