Your Phone Could be the Next Target

It's ironic I stumbled upon this information this morning because when I first got my new smartphone it did dawn on me my phone could be the target of a cyber attack.  And then just last week, Jeff Levack asked our digital specialist if phones could one day be susceptible to viruses or hackers.

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of information linked to my phone: multiple email addresses, my Facebook account, contacts, and of course, all my searches on the Internet.  So why wouldn't my phone be just as prone to a virus or hacker as my home computer?

Cyber criminals are in fact moving away from e-mail and toward hacking mobile devices and platforms.  A recent report by McAfee says new mobile malware threats jumped 46-percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to a year ago.  Some of MacAfee's other findings conclude Adobe Acrobat is a favored software to exploit and that the fourth quarter of 2010 saw the lowest spam volumes since 2007.

Scary, isn't it?  Though malware is still not a huge threat (or so the wireless phone carriers claim) it's inevitable.  Afterall, some day we will all be carrying around these bite-sized computers so why wouldn't a motive driven hacker want to get into our phones?  Many technology gurus wonder, "will 2011 be the year of mobile malware?"

Check out this link for more information on malware: Malware.