iPhone Thoughts

After all the recent news of the iPhone being hacked, naturally I was concerned about my own phone and whether or not I was going to pick up a virus on my phone.  When I bought it the Apple Store assured me that it would be difficult for any virus to take up residence on an Apple product, and the iPhone was no exception.  They explained to me that as long as I purchased my apps through the App Store, it was going to be safe. All the apps that are approved by Apple have been checked for any kind of malware or anything that might cause damage to my phone.  And that maybe true, but what about viruses embedded in websites I visit? Or, what if I opened the wrong thing on email?  When I did a Google search for iPhone virus, or iPhone 4 virus, primarily what I found was discussions among users answering their own questions.  Any official answers, or what I would consider a reliable source versus some random person on the Internet talking about a virus, most of the responses are from Apple saying there’s no viruses for the iOS operating system. And this makes me skeptical because there seems to be an air of complacency in those kind of statements.  In my opinion this borders on irresponsibility.  Especially with the iPhone 5 coming out in a couple of months, more people are going to become iPhone users. Granted many of the iPhone 5 purchases are going to be an upgrade from previous versions, but with the new changes others might be tempted to switch from their android phones over to a new iPhone.  Unless Apple starts taking proactive action to shield their phones and the iOS operating system they’re going to learn the hard way of how important protection is.  I don’t want to wake up one morning and discover that my phone no longer works or that all my information has been compromised simply because there are no available safeguards. I think the likelihood of something like this happening increases as Apple continues to gain more consumers because the more users they have, the more attractive and worthwhile it’s going to be for hackers to target them.

I don’t have any specific sources of reference for this post because it’s kind of an overview of several Google searches and what different individuals in the Apple Store for me. So this week’s posting is my opinion. It’s just something that’s been bothering me lately, especially in light of the news stories regarding the iPhone information being released.