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Rooting and Jailbreaking: The Android and iOS Risks You Don’t Know About
We all have phones and they all have their unique security features and vulnerabilities. Both Android and iOS operating systems are usually shipped with built-in user rights restrictions. The process of removing such restrictions, which is not supported by either Google or Apple, is named rooting and jailbreaking, respectively for Android and iOS.
Restricting the user’s rights is a very important and natural default security mechanism in both of these operating systems. Therefore, rooted or jailbroken phones present important security risks, and opportunities for devices to have data stolen or malicious apps to be installs without the owner’s knowledge or consent.
The best thing you can do right now to protect yourself is to update your apps and delete any that are not familiar. Each app update comes with security patches aimed at fighting against vulnerabilities like these.
Both Google and Apple remind users to only download apps from the official app stores. Downloading apps from other sites can be a very risky choice as other sites may not scan apps for malware before making them available. Also, pay close attention to permissions an app asks to access during download. Although all the pop-up permissions may be annoying, common sense works best when deciding what permissions to allow. Remember, if it doesn’t make sense for an app to access certain data or functions, don’t agree to it.