Business Security Information

What do you and your employees use mobile phones for?  Of course, phone calls and checking voice mail, but what about checking any of your online accounts or purchasing items online?  Well, lately, I have been reading a lot about mobile phone spy software, and then this past weekend, I watched the movie “Mall Cop” with my kids.  A character in the movie called Pahud uses his girlfriend’s cell phone to spy on her location using GPS tracking.  It turned out to be a good thing as far as the movie ending    was concerned, but in real life most people do not like to be tracked or spied on.

If you search the internet, you will find an enormous amount of websites offering a variety of mobile or cell phone spying software.  The price of the software ranges anywhere from less than one hundred dollars up to hundreds of dollars.  The software I looked at allows someone to listen into a person’s calls, listen to their messages, view their text messages, track the location of the phone, view the phone’s contact list, and, one of the neatest but also the scariest features, allows a person to activate a phone’s microphone remotely and listen in even when the phone is in a person’s pocket.  I found the software on  sites that include flexispy,  thespyphone, mobile-spy and world-tracker.

A lot of the sites marketed their software as a solution for parents to track their teens phone usage and for spouses to determine if their mate is cheating on them, but that does not mean that it can’t be used for other purposes as well.  The good news is that the software that I looked at required someone to have physical access to your phone to install or activate the software although most required no more than 10 to 15 minutes to actually install the software.  I would suspect but have not confirmed that like all things technical that someone will or has developed a way to remotely install and activate this type of software on a person’s mobile phone.   Just as spy-ware can be installed on computers remotely through the use of trojans, malware, infected e-mails, and visiting infected websites, I would presume that this type of capability will become more prevalent for mobile phones as well in the near future.

So how do you know if your phone has spy software installed on it.  From looking at a few of them, it appears that no trace of the installation is left on the phone, but you can look for a few give-aways.

• If the phone is warm even though you have not used it for some time, it could mean that hidden transmissions have occurred on the phone.
• If your battery life between charges dramatically drops, this is a good indicator of hidden transmissions.
• If the screen flashes on and off without any apparent reason, it could indicate an incoming spy call.
• If your monthly bill shows an increase in SMS or data transmission activity, it could indicate the phone is being accessed remotely.
• If your phone receives text messages with random numbers and symbols, it could indicate someone sending a system command to the phone.

To reduce the risk of this type of spy software being installed on your phone, you should password- protect your phone and not let it out of your sight or possession when possible.  Also, be careful and don’t open a text message or go to a website you don’t trust which might have those remote installation possibilities.  This is similar to what you do to protect your computer from remote attacks.  For those with an iPhone, the Center for Internet Security has released a free guideline that provides information about security configuration settings for the iPhone and which covers system-setting changes, updating firmware and passcode system settings.  You must provide some information on the site to gain access to the guideline, but it only takes a few seconds to do this.  The Center also has other security guidelines for operating systems, network devices and other software.  Go here and check the download section to gain access to the iPhone security guideline document.

Related posts:

1. Security Issues With Smartphones
2. Social Engineering Means What?
3. Are You Using VOIP — Is It Secure?