how secure is it to use your phone as a modem.

estreetb

sorry to start another thread but its in relation to this thread here
are vodafone making a new prepay offer in march?

how secure is it to use your phone as a modem.

what info is made available from the phone by doing so

thanks

Idleater

Not much more than your house phone I'd say.

estreetb

nereid wrote: »

Not much more than your house phone I'd say.

please elaborate

Tom Dunne

Ok, you seem to be quite worried about security, so I will give you a quick rundown of the way things work.

Networks work in layers, with some layers hidden from others. Your web browser, for example, typically works at the highest layer, because that is where you interact with the computer/device.us

As data moves down the layers, it becomes more, well, techie. The net result is that the higher layers don't usually care about the lower layers. The web browser (and web server, for that matter) don't care how data is sent, as long as it gets there.

So, using a phone as a modem is no less secure than using a dsl or cable modem. It shuffles the data around (albeit in a different manner) at a lower layer, no different to any other modem.

estreetb

thanks Tom, im not techie as youve probably guessed

my main concern is that the phone could be accessed and data retrieved from it or contaminated by a virus/malware that might be on the pc

seamus

estreetb wrote: »

thanks Tom, im not techie as youve probably guessed

my main concern is that the phone could be accessed and data retrieved from it or contaminated by a virus/malware that might be on the pc

That's possible, but very much an outside chance. The virus in question would have to be specifically written to act in this way.

This is especially true for mobiles since spyware which runs on windows cannot spread to any mobile except one which runs windows mobile.

Most "tethering" as it's called, is set up in such a way that phone simply appears as a network device (like a router or an old modem) which provides a service. The phone and the computer don't communicate in the same way that two computers would, so the odds of a virus being written to infect a phone in this way is very low. In order for a virus to spread from computer to computer, it needs to be able to recognise other computers on the network. A mobile phone in tethering mode will not appear as another computer so it will be ignored by any viruses written to spread over networks.

estreetb

seamus wrote: »

That's possible, but very much an outside chance. The virus in question would have to be specifically written to act in this way.

This is especially true for mobiles since spyware which runs on windows cannot spread to any mobile except one which runs windows mobile.

Most "tethering" as it's called, is set up in such a way that phone simply appears as a network device (like a router or an old modem) which provides a service. The phone and the computer don't communicate in the same way that two computers would, so the odds of a virus being written to infect a phone in this way is very low. In order for a virus to spread from computer to computer, it needs to be able to recognise other computers on the network. A mobile phone in tethering mode will not appear as another computer so it will be ignored by any viruses written to spread over networks.

thats good to know. so even if theres a virus on a windows pc it cant infect a connected symbian device.

thanks for explaining that

seamus

estreetb wrote: »

thats good to know. so even if theres a virus on a windows pc it cant infect a connected symbian device.

Unless it was specifically written to seek out and infect Symbian devices connected to the PC.

There probably will be such a virus in the not-too-distant future, but I don't think it warrants concern at the moment.

estreetb

forgot to ask, when browsing using phone as a modem does your number show up in any logs like when the IP address is logged normaly

seamus

Your service provider will have all of the details of your access, but websites won't know that you're using a mobile phone to access the web. They'll see an IP address exactly as if you were using DSL.

Some log analysis can be used so that they'll know you're on a mobile operator, but they won't see your number, your location, phone type or anything like that.

estreetb

thanks Seamus