New Study Shows Increase in Time Spent on Personal Devices by Cyber Hackers

By Eryk Yunk

STARKVILLE, Miss. (Take 30 News)---How protected are your personal devices? A new study shows that they might not be as safe as you once thought.

The amount of time cyber hackers spend in personal devices, like cell phones or laptops, has  increased by 10 days from the previous year.  These hackers are mining data from devices and could even be stealing personal information, such as credit card numbers or even your home address.

Chandler Underwood, an Information Technology Coop Associate for Trustmark Bank, commented on this new information.

“Whenever you click a link in an email, what I would call a sketchy link on that website, when you do that, you’re essentially giving a hacker permission to get on your device and do pretty much whatever they want” said Underwood.

With the increase in usage of personal devices people are spending more and more time connected to the internet, which gives these hackers more time to get inside their devices.

“You know with more in points you’re gonna obviously have more vulnerabilities just its gonna follow a linear pattern” Underwood added. 

It’s not only your personal devices but also public devices like these computers on campus can be at risk.

Clouds and data sharing sites have also made an impact on how hackers can access your information.  Sharing personal data over unsafe internet networks can make you an easy target for hackers. 

“The internet is fun it’s supposed to be fun but there’s more and more devices being put out there and there’s more and more devices in everybody’s hands so I definitely think in the future were gonna have a whole lot more issues with cyber security and cyber warfare” Underwood warned.