Majority of users not securing their smartphones

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Nine out of 10 UK smartphone users don’t secure their devices against online crime or data theft, even though more than half of the devices (60 per cent) carry sensitive information.

So claims a YouGov survey, carried out on behalf of The Carphone Warehouse and Trend Micro. The companies said that smartphone security is being overlooked, even though mobile devices were increasingly operating like ‘mini computers’.

More than half of the people (54 per cent) who replied said that they had sent their credit or debit card details over the internet using their smartphones, to purchase or download items in the last three months.

Trend Micro security advisor Rik Ferguson said in a statement that on many mobile devices bad links sent through phishing emails were more difficult to detect.

This was because smartphone browsers often didn’t show the URL in an address bar, in the interests of saving space.

“Phishing scams operate in exactly the same way on a mobile device as they do on a PC via spoofed emails,” Ferguson warned.

A large majority (68 per cent) showed no concern about the possibility of being infected by browsing malicious websites on their smartphones.

Most smartphone users questioned were instead more concerned about physically losing their devices (59 per cent) and their contact info (56 per cent).

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