Security

Phone security is one of the first things a person should look into before deciding whether or not to buy the phone. On almost a weekly basis I am hearing in some news story or headline about a company whose servers where hacked and thousands of peoples personal information such as social security numbers and credit card numbers were stolen. The same concept goes for your cell phone, hackers have the ability to steal information off of it, monitor your calls, as well as much more.

Since all three phones I have been examining run on different operating systems, they therefore all must have different types of security measures behind them. For this blog I will be looking at what operating system on each of the phones provides the user with the most security. However, since both the Windows phone and Android phone that I am using run old versions of their operating systems and the Apple phone uses the newest version of its operating system, I will just be comparing the newest versions of all of them, to provide a better comparison (I would upgrade the Windows and Android devices to the latest systems but I can't risk compromising any data on them, since they are my fathers work phones). The three systems are iOS9, 8.1 for Windows, and KitKat for Android (although KitKat is not the latest version it is used by the largest percentage of Android users according to Wikipedia, so I have decided to compare it to that).

To start, I will be looking at each systems ability to download applications. In this regard the iOS and Windows are most similar. This is because they only allow the users to download applications that come through their respective application stores. This allows the companies to monitor what kinds of apps are going onto their devices, which in turn provides more security to the user since it is harder for hackers to get their malicious applications into those stores. The KitKat however allows users to download applications from anywhere, whether it be through their application store or a third party. This is not good because many of the apps found on the internet contain malicious data that could harm your phone, or even yourself, depending on what the hackers intents are. (Citation - Softonic)

Next, we will be comparing how secure your phone would be if it ever got into the wrong hands, such as by either losing it or theft. All three systems allow for a user to locate their device and erase all data from a remote location. This is good to do incase you have very important or private information on it that you do not want anyone to access once you no longer have your phone. However, only Windows allows a user to send the phone commands from a remote location using SMS, Wifi, and cellular data. This is more beneficial because on the other two devices the lost phone must be on a Wifi or cellular data network to work. Lastly, only the iOS system allows all the data to be fully encrypted on the phone, making it much harder for a hacker to retrieve the information. (Citation - Softonic)

Finally, we will compare the different ways a user can unlock each of the phones. To start, the iOS phone uses fingerprint technology to read the owners fingerprint and then unlock the screen. It also offers the use of a 4-digit PIN, or a normal password to unlock the screen. The Windows phone offers the least amount of options in this regard because it only has a PIN or password. The KitKat offers the most because it has an option for a PIN, password, pattern, and facial recognition through the use of the cameras front facing lens. (Citation - Softonic)

Overall each phone offers many similar security features as well as some unique ones that make each device different. Normally I would pick which one I thought had the best security overall but in this case I think i'm going to leave it as a tie since there are many ups and downs to each one.