Smart Phone, Dumb Security
With technology expanding to extraordinary heights and growing exponentially, lingering threats of identity theft grow too. Every minute counts when it comes to protecting your identity. Programmers and app developers have made strong attempts to make your smartphone a safer device. However, development has not been consistent throughout. Now even stronger attempts are being made to protect you and your identity.
The latest measures being put in place have very simple, yet effective methods of keeping you safe while allowing quick access to your data and applications. Two factor authentication is the latest in security measures and has recently become widely available on the majority of smartphones. Identity authentication is a technique by which vendors can quickly and easily make sure you are who you say you are.
Two factor verification prevents attackers from successfully accessing your private information. Methods such as phone verification are implemented into two factor verification. The way by which phone verification works is simple: you begin the login process and after signing into a website or app will be asked to provide your phone number. When you provide your identifying phone number, you will usually receive an automated call or text message to that number and will be asked to respond with a unique code or security answer.
Aside from phone verification, the basic model of two factor authentication is pretty simple. There are of course two parts of the verification process. Both parts are most often simple questions for which only you would know the answers to. The first question is likely to be relative to something that you know, like one of your parent’s date of birth. The second question is even more specific and is likely to be relative to something which you own.
When you become the victim of identity theft it is most likely because you have fallen victim completely by indirect targeting. Attackers are likely to target general audiences or a group of users and typically don’t pick out one specific individual. When the attack occurs and your information has been put in their hands, multi-factor authentication deters their ability to actually use it to access your private data.
4 Responses to “Smart Phone, Dumb Security”
More like smart phones stupid people. I can’t believe some of us out there still use Password123 for their login profiles. How dumb can you be? No iPhone can make up for that.
The title of this article caught my eye, because a good friend of mine recently got some of his personal information stolen while utilizing an app on his iPhone. Nowadays we have smart phones but often they aren’t quite smart enough. Phone verification seems to be the most effective method out there to stay one step ahead of any crooks who may want to steal your info with malevolent intent.
I am a huge phone security nut. What type of smartphone would your recommend to keep my information protected?
@David: You can try Iphone, BlackBerry and other.