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Ah, technology! It makes life so much easier but also opens the door for privacy intrusions you may have never dreamed about.

A case in point is the ubiquitous smartphone. Your smartphone does everything a personal computer can do, and more. Your smartphone sends and receives e-mail, browses the Web, and takes pictures and movies. Of course, it also functions as a cell phone, sending and receiving phone calls and text messages.

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However, most smartphone users havent taken even the most basic precautions to protect themselves from uninvited intruders. For instance, if you have an Android phone, theres a convenient feature that allows you to retrieve you voice mails simply by having the voice mailbox match your phones caller ID.

Theres only one problem: its easy to spoof caller IDs using an application like Spoofcard. Someone using Spoofcard can call your voice mail service using your caller ID and listen to your voice mail messages. The intruder can even delete the messages before you have a chance to listen to them. Its easy to assign your voice mailbox a password, but many Android users apparently dont bother with this precaution.

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But of all smartphones, its the ubiquitous iPhone thats probably most vulnerable to intrusion, especially if its lost or stolen  or if youre arrested. On the iPhone 3G a thief  or cop  can recover all your keystrokes, e-mail, phone calls, voicemails, even your deleted messages. And while this data is supposedly encrypted, all of it is recoverable without typing in your passphrase. (Click here to see how to do it.) The iPhone 4 is supposedly more secure; apparently Apple is taking this vulnerability seriously.

Perhaps the most secure smartphone is the Blackberry. Its so secure, in fact, that governments worldwide are demanding that the Blackberrys manufacturer, Research in Motion, make it easier to monitor. If youre concerned about smartphone security  buy a Blackberry!

October 28, 2010

Mark Nestmann is a journalist with more than 20 years of investigative experience and is a charter member of The Sovereign Society's Council of Experts. He has authored over a dozen books and many additional reports on wealth preservation, privacy and offshore investing. Mark serves as president of his own international consulting firm, The Nestmann Group, Ltd. The Nestmann Group provides international wealth preservation services for high-net worth individuals. Mark is an Associate Member of the American Bar Association (member of subcommittee on Foreign Activities of U.S. Taxpayers, Committee on Taxation) and member of the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2005, he was awarded a Masters of Laws (LL.M) degree in international tax law at the Vienna (Austria) University of Economics and Business Administration.

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