Every few years, an unsourced report circulates that “the FBI says plugging into public charging kiosks is dangerous.” Here’s why you should ignore the freakout and install software updates regularly.
Your phone is designed to communicate safely with lots of things – chargers , web sites, Bluetooth devices such as earbuds or speakers, Wi-Fi, and even other phones, for instance when sending and receiving text messages. If doing any of these normal phone things can give your phone malware, that is a security vulnerability (which is a type of bug).
Security vulnerabilities happen with some frequency. That is why your phone prompts you to update your software so often – the makers of its software find out about bugs and fix them.
So, when you hear a report that public chargers are giving people malware, you should ask “what is the vulnerability being used, and when will it be fixed?” as well as “how widespread is the problem? How many people are affected?” Unfortunately, the periodic reports of “juice jacking” never have such details, usually because they are recycled from earlier reports which themselves lack details.
The most recent news reports reference a tweet from the FBI Denver field office. According to reporter Dan Goodin’s conversation with an FBI spokesperson, the field office relied on an article the FCC published in 2019 warning about USB charging stations. The only source for that article was a warning from the This article has been indexed from Deeplinks
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