The moment the President-Elect enters the White House, The Secret Service is issuing a new phone. This was the case with the former president, but Donald Trump seems to be quite fond of his Samsung phone and he continues to use it with great fervor.
What concerns the Secret Service the most is that, comparing the president’s schedule with his twits, it is evident that the president has the phone on him during important meeting and briefings. Not long ago, while North Korea was undergoing middle-range rocket tests, Mr. Trump was in a meeting with the Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe. Instead of retreating to a safe location, Mr. Trump went to the balcony while having the document in front of him exposed to camera flashes. To say that this is dangerous would be an understatement, because a hacker could use the microphone or the camera of Mr. Trump’s off the shelf phone and, in a way, broadcast everything that was discussed at the meeting back to the hacker. This is why President’s phones and phones that belong to certain government officials are the much safer alternative.
The former president’s phone, Mr. Obama’s, came without a camera, no GPS, no possibility to install other applications and with only a few numbers saved before-hand. We’ve covered topics on how easy it actually is to hack into one’s phone and what are the risks involved. In that light, however, maybe it’s for the best to remind ourselves with a new example which was done by Verge just for this occasion.
