Your cell phone may be the victim of the next wave of viruses.
Houston's Clear Thinkers
Longtime Houston attorney Tom Kirkendall's observations on developments in law, business, medicine, culture, sports, and other matters of general interest to the Houston business, professional, and academic communities.
It was bound to happen, along with spam and all the other nasties that are out there on the internet. According to several recent studies, more and more people are beginning to use their cells to perform more and more functions including internet use. One survey found that in Asia more people use their cells to access the internet than use their PCs, and it seems likely that in the near future this will be true for everyone worldwide. Virus programmers are just as savvy as any other programmer, and they are beginning to catch on to the fact that mobiles offer the best platform for doing damage. Of course, that means we all have to buy new programs that protect our mobiles. Itís a rather vicious cycle. I have wondered whether hardware such as Bluetooth makes us more susceptible, since it relies on remote access. Will there come a day when random people on the street can zap our phones?
Of course we groan over the incursion of hackers and other kinds of ìpredatorsî into worlds we once thought were safe, but in truth we should all recognize that these kinds of activities are ultimately unavoidable. As Einstein famously noted, technological advances are always morally neutral. Our current technology allows us to access exponentially greater amounts of information with tremendous ease and at greater and greater speeds. This is great for the consumer, the average citizen. But it is equally as useful for those who wish to do harm. We can continue to come up with new ways to combat them or new spaces they havenít yet found, but as with the atomic bomb, you can never completely eliminate the negative impact these devices will have.