Eduardo Duarte Sa
IT110 – Professor Jon Frankel
Smartphones
Smartphones modernized our lives, facilitated our communications, on-line transactions, and
entertain us with games and social media. On the other hand, smartphones are the easiest target for
hackers to steal personal information from the users.
Hackers are taking control of the of the phone of regular users and mostly of people who
have valuable online accounts. The hackers simply call up companies like Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint,
and AT&T and resets people’s password. Having that kind power in their hands, hackers can reset
password of accounts connected to that smartphone such as Facebook, Twitter, google, and steal
virtual currency. Thus, they can do whatever wrong doing they want to that specific target victim.
According to Popper, “In January 2013, there were 1,038 such incidents reported; by January 2016,
that number had increased to 2,658” (The New York Times). Another interesting fact, hackers are
focused on people who talks on social media about owning virtual currency (bitcoins), which
transactions are considered irreversible. What is astonishing is that the article informs us that most
victims of these attacks in the virtual currency community have not wanted to acknowledge it
publicly for fear of provoking their adversaries and does not explain why. However, the article
informs us that some victims suffered threatening to release naked pictures and other details as an
example mentioned “details of a victim’s sexual fetishes”. It could explain why many victims
decided not report to the police the situation. Smartphones are like Double edge sword. It has the
beneficial part “the good”, the unlimited global access and its facilities, but also the bad, the
possibility that out there a hacker could steal or chance your phone accessibility and use it against
