Who Can See You

At least once a year I write an article that seems to make some readers swear off technology, for at least a day. I don’t share this information to frighten readers, but instead to keep you informed. Realistically, there are roughly two things that give users of technology a cause for angst. They are the loss of privacy and the potential loss of their information. With that said, the current manifestations of these threats occur in two unsuspecting locations.
The first location is your cell phone. I think that it is fair to say that more people are afraid of their cell phone being hacked than they computer. The new way of compromising cell phones is actually not that new. Bluetooth hacking has been around almost as long as Bluetooth technology. In the recent years, the hacking of phones via it’s Bluetooth connection has taken off because more phone users have their Bluetooth connection enabled. A major reason for the sudden increase in Bluetooth usage are those cool looking wireless earpieces with the glowing blue lights. Programs like bluez, bluesnarf, bluesniff, and others allow program users to scan for nearby Bluetooth connections. Once they are located, the program users can view recent calls, the phonebook, and other information on the detected phone. Some programs even allow you to place phone calls from the detected phone without ever touching or seeing the cell phone.
Many bluejackings happen because people simply fail to change either in the default Bluetooth settings or pairing settings. An easy solution is to disable your phone’s Bluetooth visibility. This can be done in the phone’s settings. The other simple fix is to turn the Bluetooth function off when you are not using your earpiece.
The other wireless fright comes from using your laptop on an unprotected wi-fi network. These are the public networks that you find at coffee shops, bookstores, college campuses, and fast food restaurants. The threat doesn’t come from outside these networks or even from the hosts of the networks, but from your peers who are using the network with you. Programs like EtherDetect, Eavesdrop, Ethereal Network Analyzer, and others allow users to intercept wi-fi signals from their network peers. Unlike the wireless highjacking of cell phones, wi-fi intercepting doesn’t normally allow direct access to your computer. However, it can provide all the information that a person would need for access to your computer. Intercepting programs report in real time what appears on the screens of the computers that are sharing the network. This means that if you are checking your email or bank account, then whoever has intercepted your wi-fi signal may have the log in and passwords to those accounts in addition to having the ability to read the emails that you have viewed. The fix for wi-fi intercepting is commonsense. As a rule of thumb, don’t enter any information on a public network that you wouldn’t want made public.