From phones to baby monitors, the tech products that we most fear will be hacked

From phones to baby monitors, the tech products that we most fear will be hacked

Search results for “smart appliances” have increased by 300% as people are becoming reliant on devices that promise to make their life easier.

Alarmingly, a recent report by Which revealed that a home with smart gadgets could be vulnerable to 12,000 hacking attacks in a single week.  

Intrigued by this, BespokeSoftwareSolutions utilised the online analytics tool Ahrefs to find the product that we are most worried about being hacked. Please see #gid=0">here for the full data set.

The smart product we are most concerned about being hacked

Bespoke Software Solutions can reveal that the product we are most concerned about being hacked are our phones, with a massive 716,400 total global online searches per year. As phones have become integral to modern life it’s no surprise we are worried about them being hacked, with important passwords, financial and personal information all being at risk. Spikes in data usage, performance issues, pop-ups, or changes to your screen are all indicators that your phone has been hacked. 

Second is the computer, with a total of 31,920 global online searches per year related to hacking. If your computer is hacked, the hacker can steal your personal data or delete the programmes you have installed, so if you see frequent pop-ups (especially ones telling you to visit strange sites), you must act quickly.

The iPad is third with a total of 29,160 global online searches per year. Apple has made changes and has implemented more security in their latest updates, but older devices are still vulnerable to hacking.

Coming in fourth is Wi-Fi with 23,760 annual searches and completing the top five is the Amazon Alexa with 16,800 annual searches in relation to hacking.

A spokesperson at BespokeSoftwareSolutions shared their tips for ensuring your smart products are safe

Although it is easy to believe that you could be the next person to be hacked, there are some simple steps you can take that will undoubtedly improve the security of your smart products.

Change default passwords and get a password manager

• A weak default password is one of the simplest ways for one of your devices to be hacked. All of your passwords for online accounts should be different, strong, and unique. For example, your Instagram password should not be the same as your Amazon or online banking password. Using a password manager is an easy way around this. Password managers generate secure passwords for you, and you'll never have to struggle to remember another password again.

Keep your products fully up to date

• As our phones, laptops and apps are all open to a hacking attack, it’s fortunate that the companies that make them are constantly looking for new bugs, fixing them, and implementing tighter security measures in new updates. So, always remember to download and update the most recent versions of apps and software as soon as they become available.

Be vigilant to phishing

• We've all received text or email messages informing us that someone is attempting to log into our accounts or that we've spent money we don't remember spending. The most important thing to remember is to think before clicking on any of these links, as they may be a scam. Check the validity of the email address from which you received this message, as there will usually be a key letter or a misused bit of grammar in the address, like an out of place full stop, indicating that it is most likely fake.

Enable two factor authentication

• One of the best ways to protect your online accounts from even the most sophisticated hackers is to use two-factor authentication. A second step of authentication makes it much more difficult for a hacker to gain access to your accounts because it combines two factors, either your username or password and then your phone number or possibly something physical like a fingerprint as a way of confirming authorisation. If your username or email address has been compromised, adding this extra layer of security will provide you with additional protection.

Methodology

1. Bespoke Software Solutions sought to determine the smart product that we are most concerned about being hacked.
   
   
2. To do so, a seed list was gathered by compiling multiple articles detailing the most popular smart products.
   
   
3. BespokeSoftware then utilised Ahref’s keyword overview tool to discover the average amount of monthly global Google searches related to products being hacked from so far this year.
   
   
4. The keywords used were: is my [product] hacked, how to know if your [product] is hacked, how do I know if my [product] is being hacked, what to do if your [product] is hacked, how to remove a hacker from my [product], [product] hacked, has my [product] been hacked, signs your [product] is hacked, how to check if [product] hacked.
   
   
5. The total number of global monthly searches for the above terms were subsequently collected.
   
   
6. To obtain yearly search volumes, the combined results for each phrase was multiplied by 12.
   
   
7. After collecting the data from Ahrefs, the team were able to rank the products from the lowest number of average yearly searches to the most, thus creating a list of the most worried about products this year.
   
   
8. All online search volumes extracted from Ahrefs are based on monthly global Google searches.
   
   
9. Smart locks, smart lights, smart coffee machines and smart cars were assessed for the research but yielded no results in relation to online searches about potentially being hacked so were excluded from the data.
   
   
10. The data was collected from 16/05/22 to 17/05/22 and is accurate as of then.

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