54% Of Mobile Users Do Not Have Passwords On Their Phone
March 15th, 2011 | by Mobile Data Group |Chances are you lock your door when you leave home, don’t leave the keys in the ignition when you run into the corner shop for milk and have some kind of security software on your computer.
But what about your smartphone?
For many people, a phone these days is a mobile office crammed with valuable contacts, a digital wallet from which you buy songs on iTunes or shoes on Amazon, and a portal to your online bank account.
Rather than locking the phones like bank vaults, most smart phone owners treat their devices with as much concern as they do Monopoly money.
According to a survey by data security provider Symantec, 54 per cent of smartphone users do not have a password lock on their phones when they turn them on or wake them from sleep mode.
“I think there’s definitely an awareness gap right now,” said Mark Kanok, group product manager for the Norton mobile division at Symantec.
“Just a few years ago, your phone was a phone. Then the iPhone comes out and people are downloading apps. People are now starting to ask the questions, ‘How is this going to affect my privacy? What happens if I lose it?’”
On top of the dangers of your phone being lost or stolen, there are also a growing number of malicious apps designed to steal data from it or rack up huge texting bills.
Last week, Google pulled several dozen free apps from its Android market that had been stuffed with damaging code.
Symantec estimated that the apps were downloaded anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 times in a four-day period before they were pulled.
John Thode, vice president and general manager of the mobility product group for Dell, said many smartphone users don’t realise the value of their device until it’s gone.