Your phone is on two percent battery and you’re stuck at the airport due to a delayed flight, when you see your saving grace—a free charging station at the gate! We’ve all been there, and we’ve all used them, especially while traveling, and you probably didn’t think twice about plugging in. Well, you should.
What is Juice-Jacking?
“Juice jacking,” as the travel scam is called, targets desperate travelers in need of a charge. Daniel Smith, a security researcher at Radware explains how this works. “Attackers can use fake charging stations to trick unsuspecting users into plugging in their device. Once the device is plugged in the user’s data and photos could be downloaded or malware can be written onto the device.”
Hackers can download anything that is on your phone, since the charging port is doubling as a data port. We’re talking passwords, emails, photos, messages, and even banking and other personal information via apps.
There have been several campaigns to increase public awareness about the scam since 2011, when the term juice-jacking was first coined by investigative journalist Brian Krebs. This past April, the FBI Denver official Twitter account tweeted a warning stating that “bad actors have figured out ways to use public USB ports to introduce malware and monitoring software onto devices” and that travelers should avoid using unknown charging cables and plugging directly into public USB ports.
Sounds scary right? While it never hurts to be protective of your personal data while traveling, how worried should you really be about juice jacking at the airport?
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How Common is Juice-Jacking?
With all the official warnings cropping up over the past decade, it’s easy to assume that hackers are draining your data every time you enter the terminal. However, it seems that anxious travelers can breathe a small sigh of relief.
“There are no documented cases of juice jacking ever taking place in the wild,” says Dan Gooden, Senior Security Editor at Ars Technica, “Left out of the advisories is that modern iPhones and Android devices require users to click through an explicit warning before they can exchange files with a device connected by standard cables.”
Even though the likelihood of becoming a victim of juice-jacking is low, there are easy ways to eliminate the risk altogether.
How to Prevent Juice-Jacking
If you find yourself always on low battery and relying on public charging stations, there are products out there that will protect your phone data while charging in public spots.Consider purchasing a super tiny data blocker, which is a “USB defender” that protects any data from being stolen off of your phone.
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