The next time you’re travelling, think twice before charging your phone at a public charging station. Your phone might be subject to ‘juice jacking’. It is a type of cybercrime that extracts sensitive information like passwords, bank details and credit card details from phones and tablets by infecting a public charging station or a USB cable. Alarmingly, a phone charged at one of these infected stations or with an infected cable can also infect other USB cables. Read on to know more.
Juice Jacking Is The New-Age Cyber Crime Through USB Ports
Phone charging facilities are available at public places like airports, railway stations, restaurants, hospitals and also inside trains. Many travellers watch movies, play games and do other activities on their phones to ditch boredom on a long-distance journey. And this results in a drop in the level of charge in the devices. Without even realising the threats, they connect their phones to public USB sockets.
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Your Data Might Get Compromised, Your Actions Might Get Tracked… And You Might Have No Idea About Them!
There are different types of juice jacking. Hackers can derive sensitive data from the system through the process. They can even take a backup of the system. The miscreants might also install malware into the phone using the port which can help them in tracking the activities done on the device. In the extreme case, the malware might end up locking the device entirely depriving the owner of its access. Also, it is not always easy to understand that a phone is juice jacked. The person might keep using the phone thinking it is safe, only to realise later that some data has been compromised. Again, a person who doesn’t have any idea about juice jacking wouldn’t even know how the data leak happened.
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So, it is best to keep your data cable handy and turn on the battery saver mode on the phone. Also, ensure that your data cable is charged beforehand.