18 Everyday Things You Didn’t Know Could Be Hacked

Your smartphone

Look out pick-pockets, you might be out of a job: Hackers don’t even need to reach into your pocket to steal your credit card information. If you keep contactless credit cards on your phone you’re susceptible to being hacked, because with malware hackers can virtually swipe your plastic without laying a finger on you. Whether you’re using Paypass or SamsungPay, a hacker can infiltrate your phone by reading the Radio Frequency Identification Chip (RFID) on the card. Even ApplePay which is supposed to be more secure has had breaches. If the phone is jail broken according to Timur Yunusov, head of banking security for Positive Technologies, it can be hacked. “Or hackers use public Wi-Fi, or their own ‘fake’ Wi‑Fi hot spot, and request users create a profile. From this point, they can steal the ApplePay cryptogram [the key to encrypting the data].” If you use ApplePay to purchase items online, beware of fake websites, avoid using public Wi-Fi to buy things and try keeping your phone in an RFID blocking wallet.