Why is it not a good idea to charge your mobile phone at the airport

If you are the type of person who only uses a mobile phone battery and usually forgets to take an external battery with you, you must have charged it at one of the free charging points at the airport.

But this is not the case, and for this reason, we are going to explain to you the risk that you are exposed to when you charge your mobile phone or other device using USB at the airport.

The main risk you face when charging your mobile device at the airport is called juice jacking, which is a type of cyberattack where criminals take advantage of USB charging points in public places like airports to install malware on your device and access your private data without the need for consent.

Obviously, the purpose of this attack is to access sensitive information such as passwords, emails, banking application keys, photos, and videos to blackmail you or steal money directly from your account.

To infect your device through this attack, cybercriminals host their malware in USB ports at airport charging points and when you connect your smartphone to one of them, this malware gets automatically installed on it.

This is possible because the USB ports serve to recharge the battery of the mobile phone and transfer data between it and the computer, and in fact, of the four ports in these USB ports, two are used for charging the battery and the remaining two for data transfer. It is precisely in the USB pins where criminals hide their malware.

But, so that you can protect yourself and not fall victim to this attack, we are going to give you some simple tips that you should follow:

1. -Avoid charging your mobile phone or any other USB-charged device in public places such as airports, cafeterias, or libraries
2. -Leave home with enough battery life: Now that almost all mobile phones have fast charging, we recommend that you charge your mobile phone half an hour before going to the airport, so you don't need to use charging points at the airport.
3. -Always carry an external battery with you to charge your phone when the battery is low
4. -If you have no choice but to charge the smartphone at the airport with its USB cable, after plugging it in, enter its options and give it permission to charge only.

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