Personal Technology Security Series: What Do We Need to Secure

In my last article, I discussed how wonderful it is to live in a time when technology gives us an unprecedented access to information and services right at the comfort of our homes and even at the palm of our hands. I also discussed how most of this technology becomes accessible to almost everyone.



It is no longer a novelty seeing a sidewalk vendor playing mobile games on a smartphone or a security guard watching a videostream of his favorite NBA team. Teenagers often share their OOTDs, foodography and other activities on social media. Busy people often do their banking using the mobile banking application on their cellphones. Free wifi on malls and other public places are a godsend for people who do not have data plans on their mobile devices because it allows them to do all these at virtually no cost at all.

As mundane as those activity may appear, each one of them poses a risk to both the users and the device that is in use.  I will enumerate the risks that a person opens himself for each of the activity listed above:

• As innocuous as it may appear, playing games on the mobile phones may open it up to some risks.  If the games being played are downloaded from untrusted sources (sites other than the Apple App Store or Android Play Store) the phone is at risk of being infected by a malware (virus).  I will discuss the implications of a malware infection on a separate post.
• Watching videos on the mobile phone may also look harmless and it generally is.  However, if one starts downloading pirated videos and start watching them on their phones, there will be risks involved.  One is on the process of downloading the video itself.  These pirated videos may be hosted on websites that have malicious codes on them, infecting devices that accesses them with malware.  Then the video may introduce malicious codes on your devices.  Some videos will prompt the user to download certain "CODECS" in order to play.  Those so-called CODECS may either contain another strain of malware or is a malware itself.
• Sharing stuff about our daily lives to social media may be cool and also appear harmless but there is a danger of "oversharing".  (STORYTIME!) There was an instance where a teacher from a province in the south proudly shared that he just passed a certification.  In his excitement, he took pictures of his ID and his certificates and posted it to his social media account.  Weeks later, he discovered that someone has made a substantial loan against his government social services system account and he is being billed for that.  Fraudsters were able to use the information the teacher shared and loaned a large amount of money, leaving the poor teacher to pay for a several hundred thousand pesos in loan.
• Mobile banking is not dangerous per se.  However, extreme care must be done when using it.  People who sometimes receive a fake notification from their banks saying that their accounts need verification ends up with an empty bank account.  Some careless users end up transferring funds to unknown accounts because of simple error in entering account numbers.
• People who are fond of using any free wifi access points may find their online accounts hijacked.  "Free" wifi access points usually does not encrypt the connection so any data sent/received using those are easily intercepted and stolen by malicious parties (hackers).

Now that we know the dangers of using technology, the next thing that I will write about is how to protect ourselves and keep our gadgets and information safe when using it.