This is your butt calling

 

Image from Unsplash

Colds, traffic jams and pocket dialing are those age-old annoyances (as in: they already existed in the last century) for which science cannot find good solutions. I come to this because our son, who is currently undergoing the orientation week at the University of Amsterdam and 'therefore' does not go to bed early, accidentally called us up at 2:48 last the previous night. A typical butt call.

All we heard was a loud buzz out of the Amsterdam nightlife, and the next morning we also received the images via Snapchat. Just to be sure, we called his name into the phone a few times, and of course there wasn’t any response. Oh well, I'd rather be called out of bed like this than for a real emergency. The damage was now limited to some heart palpitations on our side of the connection and lying awake for a while because I was already sketching the contours of this blog in my mind.

Butt calls are made when a phone is inadvertently activated by pressure or movement inside a pocket. Sometimes a combination of chance inputs leads to a telephone connection. Another time it just leads to a screen that turns on and consumes power unnecessarily. My son can relate to that: his usage stats implies an enormous amount of screen time. So it doesn't surprise me that we received such a call from his pocket.

Well in this case we only heard nightlife noises, but what if your phone accidentally rings someone while you are in a confidential meeting, or have a private conversation that is no one else's business? If that takes place in an otherwise quiet room, such a conversation can be overheard on the other side. Which can lead to embarrassing situations, and perhaps even leakage of confidential information (business or private). I know of meetings where the telephones must be switched off completely.

What else can you do about ringing pants pockets? Flip phones are immune to it. For Android, there are apps available that ask for additional confirmation before actually calling. I don't think it's really handy, because if you really want to make a phone call, you always have to take an extra bump and, moreover, your pocket can also do that last action. You will not find such apps in the app hitparade. Fortunately, there is a very easy way to avoid butt calls: lock your phone before putting it in your pocket. You know, just briefly press the power button and the screen goes blank. Your phone is already secured with a pin code, fingerprint, facial scan or, if necessary, a swipe pattern (right?). Most trouser pockets will fail to unlock the phone.

Pockets seem to like to call 112 (or whatever your national emergency number is) and keep the emergency center unnecessarily busy. Taken to the extreme, this could mean that another call, where every second counts, comes in too late. Pocket dialing can cost lives.

There are more ways in which you can leak information completely unintentionally. For example, because someone looks over your shoulder at your screen, also known as shoulder surfing . If you want to work on your laptop on the train but don't want someone to watch, then you should either sit in a corner or place a privacy screen in front of your screen. Such a screen is a polarizing filter, which allows the light to pass in only one direction, so that you only see what’s on the screen when you sit directly in front of it.

A well-known analogy of data leakage is losing or accidentally showing paper documents (we had a much talked-of incident involving a Dutch minister). Notes with passwords lying around also fall into this category. Talking about it is such a natural way to leak information that I'd almost forget to mention it.

My son comes home tomorrow and then I can tease him about not being able to control his phone.

 

And in the big bad world…

This section contains a selection of news articles I came across in the past week. Because the original version of this blog post is aimed at readers in the Netherlands, it contains some links to articles in Dutch. Where no language is indicated, the article is in English.

• your phone really doesn't eavesdrop on you.  [DUTCH]
• criminals try to lure you with a cost of energy adjustment.  [DUTCH]
• the Apple Mac does have antivirus measures.
• the NCSC blogs about risk minimization.  [DUTCH]
• a Russian cybercriminal had himself interviewed at length.
• smartphones should get security updates longer, says Brussels.  [DUTCH]
• the ANWB (Dutch AA) is starting a digital highway assistance service.
• many mobile apps have to deal with a vulnerable supply chain.
• the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration will wait a little longer with the introduction of the new fraud system.  [DUTCH]
• Japan bans the floppy.
• Telegram wants to hear from German users how generously the chat app should provide information to the police.  [DUTCH]
• KPN's wiretapping facility was insufficiently secured.  [DUTCH]
• the Dutch government may from now on use the public cloud.  [DUTCH]