As business owners, our smartphone is our lifeline. We use it to do banking, make updates on social media and, most importantly, keep up with our customers, suppliers and vendors . For many of us, our phone not only stores our personal pictures and videos, but also the trade secrets for our business. That is why I was not surprised when an infographic showed 33% of us would pay up to $1,000 to recover our lost or stolen smartphone. And, you should note, that incredibly large number mainly reflects our perceived value of the data stored on the device.
- Enabling Hackers
Because of this, it is easy to understand why the State of Minnesota recently passed a bill requiring all smartphones to have a “kill switch”. With this feature, all new smartphones sold within that state will have to give the owner the ability to remotely lock or wipe the phone if it is ever lost or stolen. Once it has been “wiped”, no one will be able to reactivate your phone without your authorization. And, let’s say you were lucky enough to recover your phone afterwards. As the owner, you will be able to restore it with any backup information you stored to the cloud. Though Minnesota is the first state to enact this law, CTIA (the industry trade group that represents leading phone manufacturers and service providers) has agreed to provide access to a “kill switch” on all smartphones made after July 2015.
However, despite its apparent benefits, did you know that this kill switch has one major drawback? Using it would make the information on your phone less secure because it makes it easier for hackers to remotely disable your smartphone. This is the reason why the CTIA has refused to automatically enable this feature on all smartphones. They are leaving the decision to use the kill switch completely in your hands. Essentially, if you want the ability to remotely track your phone, you will have to deliberately decide who poses the lesser risk: a thief or a hacker.
- Enabling Stalkers
Unfortunately, when it comes to the privacy of the information on your smartphone, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Until I read a recent piece by Puneet Mehta I did not know that smartphones had sensors that could track and disseminate information regarding your elevation, speed at which you are traveling, and even your emotions/ moods. This is in addition to being able to pinpoint your location! And, even worse, this information is being collected and sold to third parties without your consent or knowledge! In one interview, Senator Al Franken (D-MN), discussed how one of his constituents had a stalker who could monitor all of her movements and actions because he paid to get access to the tracking information from her phone.
So what exactly is being done to rectify this? Well, Senator Franken recently sponsored a bill called the “Location Privacy Protection Act” . According to Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, if Senator Franken’s bill becomes law, app developers could no longer collect your location and other data from your mobile device sensors in secret. They would have to get your affirmative consent before retrieving and sharing any of this information. Moreover, companies that retrieve data from more than 1000 mobile devices would have to publicly disclose how they are using and sharing this information.
- Are The Proposed Protections Enough?
Senator Franken’s bill, however, is not currently law. And even if it were, its effect, combined with the kill switch, would not be sufficient to completely protect the information on our smartphones. Let’s face it: so long as we choose to own and use a modern smartphone, we have implicitly given up the right to absolute privacy. However, if both of these laws were in effect, they would give us more tools to: (i) stop thieves in their tracks and (ii) stop stalkers by increasing our knowledge and control over the flow of information from your smartphones. No these two law are definitely not enough; but, though imperfect, they would grant us more rights and protections than we currently have.
