Some people roaming the halls of Atlantic High School always seems to be sporting the brand new technological gadgets these youths refer to as “wireless telephones,”  and whichever one of these contraptions you have, ranging from the brand new iPhone 7 to a poorly beaten up Samsung Galaxy s5, it can be agreed upon that the engineering of cell phones has advanced to a new level of smart phones.  But have these rectangular boxes of metal become too “smart”?

 According to BloombergTechnology, it is estimated that there are 3.4 billion smartphones owned today on planet Earth.  It’s your phone that understands the real you.  From what you do, to where you’ve been.  From account passwords, to your deepest darkest secrets.  These phones are said to be more powerful devices than those NASA used to put men on the moon.  At this very moment your phone knows exactly where you are (unless you have turned off the location setting, which limits the other apps on it); it knows your exact position.  It can also tell where you live and where you are employed/go to school which is based off where you spend most of your time.  

There is even an app on Apple devices that will dig up what you’ve done on your phone.  This app is called Lantern and it brings up every website you’ve visited, text messages, facebook friends, locations you’ve been.  Elad Yoran, executive chairman of Koolspan, was quoted as saying that from the information stored on your phone that someone could “extract enough information that you could make a virtual clone of that person.”  “There’s probably more information about you on your phone than there is in your house,”  Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, said.

Has this information made you want to throw your crummy phone out of a car going approximately 40 MPH down East 10th Street?  Or smash it against your concrete basement floor?  If you answered yes to both these questions, then you’re not alone.  Alexis Madrigal of TheAtlantic.com writes that she used to choose convenience over privacy and security, but not anymore after learning of her phone’s massive data collection of her.  Even though cell phones have become a great tool and are a humongous part of today’s society, you should still be careful with what you do and the data that you store on your mobile device.