Ever been at an airport or hotel/resort lobby desperately looking for a free USB port charging station for your device and all are being used?  Perhaps you dodged a bullet unintentionally…

Beware of the newest attempt of cyber criminals trying to steal your device’s personal data, it’s called Juice Jacking.  Juice Jacking occurs when malware is loaded into public USB ports at charging stations for the express purpose of stealing your device’s personal info when you plug in your device in order to re-charge.  It can lock your device and/or export data (including passwords) directly to the perpetrator.  Yikes.

No one wants that to happen, so what should you do?  The most obvious answer is to never use public USB ports to re-charge your devices and instead carry around a portable charger.  Or you can get a charging-only cable to take with you on vacation–this prevents the sending or receiving of data while charging your device.  Some public USB charging ports will have prompts including “charge only”, “trust this computer”, or “share data”; if you want to protect your data you will obviously click “charge only”.

To be honest, I only learned about this newest cyber crime just the other day, but I will be sure to implement safety measures from now on in order to avoid this potential disaster by carrying around a portable charger, my own USB cable, and only use regular electrical outlets if at all possible.  Have you been a victim of this type of crime?  How do you protect your data while on vacation?