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The Double-Edged Sword of The Smartphone
By Randy Wyles | August 9, 2010
Careful! That smartphone of yours could land you in jail. Actually, that’s only true if you plan on committing a crime. If you’re a God-fearing, law abiding citizen you only have to worry about losing all of your money and personal information.
The Smartphone; An Investigator’s Treasure Trove
A smartphone’s software will leave digital fingerprints and footprints all over the phone, telling investigators, when they obtain the phones from criminal suspects, just what locations that the suspects have pulled up and the directions they received to get there – as well as any photos taken that can contain information as to exactly where and when the pictures were snapped. Smartphone will even store words typed long after the message is sent – even if the criminal thinks it has been deleted.
This particular smartphone feature came back to bite the former mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, right in his political and personal backside – landing him in jail. He didn’t realize his little “love note-text messages” to his mistress, then Chief of Staff, Christine Beatty were being stored in his phone. When the phone was subpoenaed, those messages – like falling dominoes – ultimately led to Kilpatrick’s multiple convictions on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.
By the way; Kilpatrick’s new number? It’s Prisoner 702408, Oaks Correctional Facility, Michigan Department of Corrections, Manistee, Michigan. And as if he didn’t have enough trouble, he’s now facing federal charges related to the alleged misuse of his campaign funds.
Yes, investigators love smartphones. But smartphones can hurt the innocent as well.
It’s Your Life – And Your Phone
Criminals with any real knowledge of smartphone technology can easily steal your personal information, which isn’t hard considering that some of the newer models of phones – that have been rushed to market to handle the latest smartphone craze – have “holes” in their encryption and security systems resulting in passwords and other personal information being stored in easily accessible “plain” text.
Meanwhile, consider the latest convenience application for smartphones which takes online banking to a new level. Banks like Chase now allow you to simply take a photo of the front and back of a check and, using the Chase app, send the image to the bank – which then deposits the check into your bank account. Yeah, that’s just great – because it’s so incredibly difficult to drive to the corner and run that check through the ATM.
Again…be careful! Those check images you send via the smartphone are usually saved in the smartphone and, therefore, can be retrieved along with your other personal banking information – like accounts numbers and passwords – if your phone is stolen.
The best advice may be to severely limit what information you put on your smartphone, because if someone gets access to your smartphone – they have access to your life!
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