In the world of cell phones, the iPhone can currently be considered the king. Tens of millions of people have these devices, which serve not only as phones but as game consoles, schedulers and mini Web browsers. A lot of people get online with their iPhones and then use programs called applications, or apps, to access popular programs like Twitter, Facebook and Google. There are also thousands of other apps available, and basically anyone can create one and sell it or give it away on the iTunes app store.
When you use a program on your regular computer, there is often an option that lets you block the program from storing information about you; for instance, to opt you out of receiving email alerts. A lot of iPhone apps do not have such a feature. In addition, it is easy for the owner of an app to trace your iPhone’s serial number, which ultimately leads back to you.
Some apps can also store the following:
*The model of your iPhone
*The operating system you use
*The versions of the app you downloaded
*Whether your phone is jail broken
*When you log on or off of the app
*Your current exact location
While there have been no high profile cases of identity theft occurring due to a malicious iPhone app, the technology is still pretty new and there is no telling what can happen in the future. To protect yourself, thoroughly read the End User License Agreement for every app BEFORE you download it, if possible. If it’s not available, read it ASAP after download. Yes, you still have to read it even if it is 10 pages long and written in teeny tiny print.
If you find something that looks shady, such as the fact that the app can record and store the phone numbers in your address book (especially if that is not the purpose of the app) or you don’t have the patience to read through the whole license agreement, simply delete it from your iPhone.
It may be a good idea for iPhone users, and for everyone really, to buy identity theft protection as a backup just in case. Even people who don’t use apps but simply use their phone’s Web browser could potentially be putting themselves at risk. Plus, there’s a lot of risk in simply having an iPhone stolen.
Identity protection plans are relatively inexpensive, and they are not one size fits all, so there is a plan out there for every person that wishes to have one. Two of the best are LifeLock and Identity Guard. The number of identity theft victims is actually fairly comparable to the number of people with iPhones, being that there were over 30 million victims in the past five years. Let’s hope that that correlation continues to be merely a coincidence.