Hacking Secret: What Hackers don’t Want You to Know (2015)

CHAPTER 6: ARE COMPUTERS OR PHONES SAFER WHEN IT COMES TO ONLINE INFORMATION?

COMPUTERS

There are a lot of benefits to using your computer as a method of doing your online banking, for example. You have the ability to download anti-virus software and to encrypt all of the information through your own methods and through the methods of the bank. You can create your own system of encryption actually, and without a lot of knowledge about how technology works and what you can or should do to improve it. You end up very secure and you feel that way.

With your computer you have a lot of storage options available as well. You are able to keep as much information as you want or need easily accessible through your computer because you generally have at least several gigabytes (most computers have over 500) of space. Many computers now have far more than this with hard drives in excess of 1 terabyte of space. You also have the ability to increase your available space through external hard drives or even replacing your current one.

Because you have so much space you don’t have to worry about maxing it out when you add all the information that you need to it. You can easily store all of your electronic documents or even scan in paper documents to store electronically. You also have the ability to condense those files so they take up very little space on your hard drive. If you want to put them into an external hard drive you can condense them so they have to be ‘expanded’ again in order to be actually read or used.

Another benefit of storing information on your computer is the availability for collaboration. You can easily send any files you want to someone else and even continue to work on them with that other person all at the same time. This can be a benefit for documents that you want to keep safe but don’t necessarily need to keep locked away. For example, work projects that require you to work with someone else to create a file or presentation can easily be worked on without having to be in the same physical location.

PHONES

Now your phone does not have the ability to download anti-virus software. You also don’t have all the same options for encryption and such because that type of software and development just isn’t available on a mobile phone. Yet there are several benefits to using a phone as your method of doing online banking or storing important information that you don’t want hackers to get ahold of.

One of the biggest benefits is that, in today’s society, most people keep their phones with them at all times. That means you probably don’t go very far without your phone in your hand. Because of this, it’s very difficult for a hacker (or potential hacker) to get their hands on the physical device (the easiest way to steal your information).

Another benefit is that your phone is capable of requiring several different methods of identification which are much more difficult to fake, such as voice, face and fingerprint recognition. These types of passwords are much more secure than anything that you type into a computer which means it’s nearly impossible for a hacker to recreate them. This means they have to bypass the password feature, a step that will take them longer to accomplish.

There is another benefit to using your phone which actually plays on the issue of not having virus protection. You generally don’t need virus protections on your phone because, at this point in time, they are not as simple to attack with a virus. Very few hackers are currently working on attacking smartphones because they are more complex and they are entirely different from computers. Most hackers are continuing to focus on regular computers or on cloud storage. If you do open something on your phone that has a virus, in most instances it will not affect the phone (at least not in the right way) because it doesn’t have the same type of software.

Many phones also have the ability to completely wipe the information if you lose them. All you have to do is set up a feature in your settings or through the manufacturer of your phone or even through your wireless provider. Then, if your phone goes missing, you can use a special code or feature (that doesn’t require the phone itself) and authorize a complete wipe of all the information that is contained on the phone. Be careful with this however because the information will be wiped completely and if you find the phone you can’t get it back.