It's a nuisance to type in a password, but it'll help keep your data safer. So how do you protect your handheld? First, turn on the password-protection feature. A terrorist, for example, could figure out where a group of high-level executives or politicians regularly congregated. In the hands of stalkers, terrorists or, say, pesky marketing companies, such information could be compromising. The byproduct is that the providers will know details about your life and habits: when you leave work, what route you take and whether you stop at Hooters on the way home. This risk is real because service providers, like GoAmerica and Verizon Wireless, will be required to implement location-based services so that the FCC can make sure that as you move around, you aren't being overcharged by your carrier. 'Such information could be used to create a central profile of you that will be used by marketers, hate groups and would-be terrorists,' says Ponemon. The problems will multiply as wireless networking technologies, like Bluetooth, allow devices to talk to one another. But Lawrence Ponemon, a senior partner for PricewaterhouseCoopers, warns that as third-generation cell phones and PDAs with powerful processors become common, they will become more vulnerable. Since there are few wireless PDA networks today, such break-ins are almost unknown. Using the technology that allows one PDA to synchronize with another, they were able to intercept patient data as it was beamed around the company. The teens, it seems, walked into the company armed with another Palm PDA. The PDA network was being tested by a group of physicians, nurses and clinicians who wirelessly swapped patient information from one PDA to another. (nasdaq: PALM - news - people) personal digital assistants. The network these kids broke into was a peer-to-peer wireless network of Palm This, however, wasn't a typical computer hacking incident.

They then cruelly boasted about their findings on a Web chat room, exposing their classmate's identity.

Padlock Your Palm Last summer a couple of teenagers hacked into the network of an Internet health company, intercepted 14,000 patient records and discovered that a classmate was infected with HIV. Top Of The News: GE Zeroes In On Deal Lucent's Troubles Mount News Scan A.M.: JTen O'Clock Tech: IBM, Callaway Pair Up For Golf Around-The-Globe: JLeading Eccentric Indicators More Faces In The News: JCan't Buy Me Love News Scan P.M.: June 27, 2001Įdited by Nikhil Hutheesing, Best of The Web, 02.26.01 stocks hold rally, interest rate cut spurs market

Ten O'Clock Tech: Sharp's Handheld Offensive

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