Do Not Use Public USB Charging Stations: They Steal Your Data

Battery drainage is one of the most common issues we encounter daily. There are various options to overcome this kind of problem. For instance, you can carry out a power bank or a charging cable with an adapter. However, another option can be quite handy in many scenarios. We are talking about public USB charging stations. You can find USB ports in bus and train stations, airports, cafes, etc. However, this could become a true headache.

How Public USB Charging Stations Steal Your Data

According to 91mobiles, it can open a gateway for hackers, and they can steal your data. What they do is just load public charging stations with malware. So once a user connects the USB cable to charge the phone, it can be hacked on the other side and access your phone data.

Hackers infect your phone with viruses while you are charging your phone through public USB charging stations. Later, they will accessor your data. Analysts call the process described above “Juice Jacking.”

When talking about Juice Jacking, we should mention that this is nothing new. Various sources have been talking about this long ago. Also, this is not about a USB charging port but public USB charging slots.

It turns out that every time you connect your phone to such stations, it becomes vulnerable and subject to data theft. Hackers can not only hack data from it but also use the phone to commit cybercrimes. Worse, you won’t be aware of this in most cases.

Fortunately, there are some measures you can take to make your phone less vulnerable. When a smartphone connects to another device, it will ask about further steps – data transfer, charging, etc. So you shouldn’t allow data transfer. This won’t work in all cases. But it is still considered the best solution to protect your phone when using public USB charging stations.