Keeping Your Data Secure

Now, I do not do much with my phone that I am worried about.  I also am not paranoid about people invading my home to find what nefarious acts that I am doing on my computer or my phone.  That being said, I do not want someone to access the information on my phone without permission.  I have always had a pin code or now a pattern lock on my phone.  The new Atrix that I purchased for my wife so that we can switch from Sprint has a Fingerprint Reader and I have encouraged her to use it.  What does kind of make me nervous is the fact that the court has ruled that Police can take your cell phone during a routine traffic stop and look through it without a warrant.  Sure, right now it is only in Florida but the way our legal system works, it could easily be used as the basis for a ruling in other states.   This is even scarier when you add to it that Michigan Police have a device that can copy all of the information on your phone, including deleted information in less then a minute.  Why does this scare me?  Let’s say for instance, your child is in the bubble bath and just gave themselves a soapy Mohawk and are not showing anything but the minute before you snap the picture they stand up exposing themselves to you and the camera.  You delete the photo and think it is gone forever and they find it, technically in the eyes of the law it is child pornography.  The police will charge you with possession of child pornography and more then likely it will make it in to the news papers because it is sensational.  Even if you are later found innocent of the charges, that court decision will not receive the publicity or the front page status like your arrest and the damage will be done.  Not to mention those risqué pictures you took of the two girls in your ultimate fantasy threesome.

The other reason you should worry about this is if you use those free charging stations in airports, ever because they can do pretty much the same thing as that device mentioned above or worse because there are ways to potentially put information on your device without your knowledge like viruses and hidden applications.  People may say it is not possible, and I used to think it was impossible to infect a Windows PC just by connecting to the Internet and then someone figured out how to do it.   So just because it seems impossible does not mean that it really is or will always be so.  We used to think that our government didn’t kidnap random people from around the world, regardless of reason, take them to a not so secret, secret military base in Cuba to torture them with enhanced interrogation techniques.  Then we found out that they did it quite regularly and also wanted to be able to do it to citizens too.  But I digress.

So how do you prevent this from happening?  Android devices have the ability to disable the USB port for anything other then charging.  I am going to show you how to do it with the two most popular brands of Cell Phones, Samsung and HTC.  HTC is easy, this screenshot is from the HTC Sensation, go to Settings and USB and the screen looks like this:

So uncheck the Ask me option and set the Default connection to charge only.  You will have to change this each time you wish to copy things to or from the phone.  If you want you can check the Ask Me and the default to Charge Only, this will let you change it on the fly when you connect it to your computer.

Next you will want to go to the Security settings and enable a screen lock.  The most secure is a pin code, but the pattern lock is secure enough that the FBI asked Google for a back door, which they said was not possible, publically.  In that regard it does not matter which you use if there is a back door around it.  Once this is done, your device is pretty safe from the scanners listed above.  This screen shot is from my Samsung Galaxy Note:

As you can see I have enabled the Pattern Lock and the pattern is visible.  As I said, I know that nothing will stop everyone so I am primarily concerned about deterring the less determined people.  I usually turn it off to be honest and have just left it on since I only use it as a tablet right now until I port my number from Sprint.  This should be very similar to the HTC or other Android devices in how this functions.  I know it works on my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4g Touch, and yes that is a mouth full.

Right now it is configured to be connected to the PC, I am running Ice Cream Sandwich and if you notice in the top Status Bar, the USB icon on the left side.  If you pull down the ‘curtain’ it will say “Connected As Media Device” or something else if you have uncheck this.  If you then click on that it will bring up this page so that you can change it on the fly.  When the first option is unchecked, the USB port only functions as a charging port.

Finally, under Settings, Development make sure that USB Debugging is not checked.  Once this is done, your device is impervious to the device mentioned above.  There is always more you can do to secure your device and this is only the first  step.  I will add more in future articles.  Just because you have nothing to hide, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t or do not need to secure your device because in this day and age you never know what could be misinterpreted or used against you so securing your digital device is the smart thing to do.