Let’s talk cell phone spyware detection. Remember this number: 95%. McAfee estimates that’s the percentage of malware ever devised that has been created in the past year. And, the amount of malware detected by them increased 44% last year, too.

Those are dismal numbers that illustrate the growing threat to online security. Many of the major threats targeting large banks, online moguls like Facebook and Twitter recently have come from Europe and Asia but that doesn’t mean that the everyday user is exempt. The targets are cell phones and tablets. But the techniques for phishing are still the old school kind – because they work.

The large corporations are hit because malware is accessed through links to compromised or malicious sites. Once that site is accessed, it can obtain control of the computer, scrape it for information like passwords, bank accounts, etc. Or, according to a CNN article, “add it to a botnot – a network of infected computers controlled by cyber-criminals”.

Vulnerability Increases the Threat of Cell Phone Surveillance

This sort of threat isn’t about being victim of cell phone spying per se, it’s more that your data is being mined to be stolen. Just like the threats to your technological security grow, mobile phone forensics is expanding, too.

That may be comforting to know you can rely on cell phone forensics from the good guys who are working to battle the bad guys, but cell phone forensic tools are developed as a response to new threats. The best approach is to be proactive.

  • To start, reduce your individual vulnerability through password use – locking your phone – and by being very diligent about using the locking feature.
  • Make it a policy to never give out confidential information such as account numbers, social security numbers or mother’s maiden name in email or through email requests.
  • Do not visit sites that are questionable security-wise. What may seem like fun or a great deal could in reality be a cell phone monitoring system that scrapes all the data there and turning into a great deal of trouble!

is one of very few complete mobile phone forensic analysis labs so we have seen the proliferation of malware and growing need for computer and cell phone spyware detection services.

Take steps to be as vigilant as possible with your personal devices because security issues are not going to go away.

-Brenda McGinley, CEO, All in Investigations, All in Investigations