Over dinner some friends of ours were telling us about friends of theirs who were robbed by three young men (maybe even teens) at gunpoint in Baltimore. It’s one thing to give up whatever cash you have on you but these guys held a gun on the man and demanded him to open his bank apps on the phone and move money from there. I don’t know any details, so don’t ask (example: When you move money it has to go somewhere, so can’t law enforcement track down the destination account? No fucking idea.) They also took their car keys and ostensibly the car, tried to take her laptop but she pleaded with them because all of her graduate thesis work was on it.
What steps can a person take to protect themselves against the compromise of their phone and yet still take advantage of the convenience of mobile technology?
(BTW the police were useless and didn’t give a fuck. They just told them they would never catch the guys, and never get their stuff back, even though they were on a street loaded with Ring cameras and whatnot. She actually tracked down one of them because he was using her AirPods with a locator feature, but the police said, well, you can’t prove that he was actually one of the ones who robbed you. I could understand if this was a car window smash & grab, but this was fucking armed robbery.)
For a hundred bucks I got a flip phone that is excellent for communication. I don’t put any information of value on it. I don’t need to make bank transfers while waiting at stop lights. My home computers provide sufficient convenience.
Not to cast doubt here, but we are in “friend of a friend” territory here, which means the details (of which we have few) might not be correct. I can’t imagine a gunman trying to set up an actual bank transfer, which is neither quick or easy.
I don’t think this is a common enough to worry about specifically. Googling around I’ve found very few news stories about it happening (and most are from right-wing tabloids). Keep a password on your phone, add 2 factor authentication to your accounts, and immediately call your banks/change your passwords if your phone gets stolen.
Aside from the attempted robbery, it seems really foolish to have all of her graduate thesis work on the laptop, rather than in the cloud or a network drive.
Good for you. I was just wondering why you think laptop computers are valid, while pocket computers aren’t. 20 years ago, would you have asked us why we need laptops, as desktop are sufficient?
I answered the OP by supporting voice communication on the phone and avoiding storing personal information on the thing. Don’t believe I demeaned laptops. Twenty years ago I was being paid to design computer architectures. Didn’t have any biases against laptops.
I was referring to the calls I get “Dad, I need $50 RIGHT NOW”
It took awhile, but I think I have finally trained them to understand that transfers might take a few minutes or hours, depending on my availability. But, transferring money at a stop light is definitely something I have done.