Tech Talk : Smart Phones

By Dave Rutledge

    Over the past year you may have noticed the increase in popularity of smart phones. Smart phones are more of a computer with a phone attached to it, and can make communications easier for the business professional or computer power user. Their bulkiness over current ultra small and thin regular cell phones is made up for in the fact that they are a PDA, computer, MP3 player, and phone all combined into one small package. For the person on the go, the smart phone is quickly replacing the laptop for common daily tasks.

The operating systems can be the popular Windows Mobile, or a proprietary operating system. Either operating system is sufficient for the average user, and most office environments. The popularity of the Windows Mobile operating system is that it operates similar to a true Windows XP and 9x operating system, which makes it easy to learn for Windows PC users. Windows Mobile also comes with Mobile Office that includes Excel Mobile, Powerpoint Mobile, and Word Mobile which all can transfer files to their full version counterparts on the PC. Proprietary operating systems will take some getting used to, but mostly are easy to operate and learn. Smart phones with a proprietary operating system do not usually come with Mobile Office, but offer their own equivalent word processors, spreadsheet, and slideshow tools either packaged with the operating system, or more likely available for download at an additional fee.

The functionality of most smart phones is that they can send and receive email over POP or similar email servers, or Windows Mobile can use a Microsoft Exchange Server for businesses. The smart phone does this by connecting to the Internet over a wireless data stream that you have to purchase a monthly payment plan for. Either operating system can connect and view the Internet to a limited ability, with the Windows Mobile offering Internet Explorer Mobile that views websites mostly as you would see them on a PC. Depending on the model you select you can have a built in camera that can record video, with memory expansion abilities with the same SD cards that most household cameras use. For the business professional or computer power user on the go you can select a model that can plug into your laptop and act as a mobile Internet access point, allowing you a faster than dial up connection wherever you get data stream coverage.

As with any developing sector however smart phones are in danger of getting ahead of themselves in areas of security; and currently I would not recommend the use of smart phones by children or by people that do not require the use of the tools on the go. The cost of the phone itself, monthly phone plan, and the monthly data stream plan makes the expense of the phone unrealistic for the average family, especially if buying them for multiple people in the household. If you ever had the unpleasant billing experience of going over on a regular cell phone bill imagine combining that with a bandwidth overage bill, which some users such as children can use lots of bandwidth in simple chatting and Internet surfing. For the parent concerned about what their children are doing on the Internet computer supervision becomes difficult if not impossible with smart phones, and there are no current programs that police the websites the child can view. Internet Service Providers have made steps toward disallowing inappropriate material from being downloaded, but can obviously only police so much, and have missed a lot of material that can still be offensive or harmful. Make no mistake, most if not all of the programs and tools that you may be supervising your child for on your PC can exist on a smart phone.

The other issue of security for smart phones is that of your data stored on them. Few models of smart phones are secure out of the box, and most require purchase of additional Anti-Virus, Encryption, and Firewall programs to make them more secure. Common Wi-Fi security issues are present without proper firewall and encryption tools as you are now sending and receiving information over a wireless connection that can be viewed by anyone in the area.

Most smart phones can use Blue Tooth to connect to other Blue Tooth devices, which opens the doorway to attacks known as Bluejacking or Bluesnarfing, which basically hacks your device and can use the information to send you emails or redirect you to participate in unsafe activities, most of the time without your knowledge. When a device gets hacked all of the data stored on it is available to the hacker, which is a large security concern for companies using the devices for essential communications in the field. Security issues such as this open the door to phishing and spam attacks for the hacker as they now have your email contact list. They will now phish for information by sending you legitimate looking emails getting you to sign in to some kind of service you commonly use, and when you have you have given the phisher all of your sign in information, or agreed for them to use your account for bogus billing. Bogus billing is billed directly onto your phone bill, and can be hard to prove as the attacker may download something to your phone to make it look like an authentic purchase. If you can, turn off the Blue Tooth ability when not using it, or make sure it’s not discoverable to other Bluetooth devices to help avoid such attacks.

Smart phones also require the security hardware to catch up to industry standards, as a lost or stolen phone can become a breach of security. How large a breach of security depends on the information stored on the device, such as captured credit card, passwords, or banking information. The current ability of most smart phones is that they can be locked from starting with a personally set password. The draw back to this system is that some phones allow the system to be wiped clean, which does get rid of most data but allows for use of the stolen device after wiping. Further anti-theft devices have to be developed to bring the smart phones up to industry standard security for business or high end use, such as fingerprint biometrics or a USB port addition to plug into biometric devices.

Smart phones are definitely becoming more popular and making mobile communications easier, even opening the Internet to an audience that may not have ever seen it before. However as with any product smart phones should be researched before purchasing to decide if it is worth buying, and then to decide which one best fits you. Don’t forget that smart phones are basically a computer that has a phone attached, which brings every security and online safety concern that can be raised for computers and wireless devices.

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