In Chapter 10: How to use mobile phones as securely as possible, we discussed the security challenges of using basic mobile phones – including issues with voice communication and text messaging (SMS/MMS) services. Those phones primarily (if not exclusively) use mobile networks to transfer calls and data.

Advances in technology now mean that mobile phones can provide services and features similar to desktop or laptop computers. These smartphones offer many new ways to communicate and capture and disseminate media. To provide these new functionalities, the smartphones not only use the mobile network, but also connect to the internet either via a wifi connection (similar to a laptop at an internet cafe) or via data connections through the mobile network operator.

So while you can, of course, make phone calls with a smartphone, it is better to view smartphones as small computing devices. This means that the other material in this toolkit is relevant to your use of your smartphone as well as your computer.

Smartphones usually support a wide range of functionality – web browsing, email, voice and instant messaging over the internet, capturing, storing and transmitting audio, videos and photos, enabling social networking, multi-user games, banking and many other activities. However, many of these tools and features introduce new security issues, or increase existing risks.

For instance, some smartphones have built-in geo-location (GPS) functionality, which means they can provide your precise location to your mobile network operator by default, and to many applications you use on your phone (such as social networking, mapping, browsing and other applications). As mentioned before, mobile phones already relay your location information to your mobile network operator (as part of the normal functions of the phone). However, the additional GPS functionality not only increases the precision of your location information, it also increases the amount of places where this information might be distributed.

It's worth reviewing all the risks associated with mobile phones discussed in Chapter 10: How to use mobile phones as securely as possible as all of them are also relevant to smartphone use. Chapter 10 covers issues of eavesdropping, interception of SMS or phone calls, SIM card related issues, and best practices.

In this chapter we'll take a look at the additional security challenges posed by smartphones.

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