Edition 1: Phone Privacy Screen
TLDR: A privacy screen is the cheapest way to increase your Cyber Health. It hinders malicious onlookers from discerning information displayed on your phone, like passwords or communications.
Attack vectors: account takeover, data theft, iCloud compromise
Threat: A threat actor stands in your proximity. They watch or record you enter sensitive information, like an iPhone passcode, bank credentials or private messages. With that information, the threat actor compromises your accounts.
Two well-publicized examples underscore how much damage this malicious onlooker can cause. (1) Joanna Stern's investigation for the Wall Street Journal details how a stolen iPhone passcode can upend someone's entire life. The passcode allows the criminal to alter iCloud settings including resetting FaceID. They then go after stored credit cards, crypto apps, private notes which contain other passwords and off they go. (2) The Free Beacon piece covers how three Columbia University deans were photographed texting unsavory messages about a speaker during a seminar on anti-semitism. The messages were published in Congress and the deans resigned.
Our recommendation: Install a privacy screen on your phone.
How it mitigates likelihood: A privacy screen physically limits the range of positions someone can view screen contents. Unless they are directly behind it, the screen appears black. This also protects against onlookers at wide angles from long distances, which is especially important as smartphones can now zoom in over 100x.
With a privacy screen you can disregard more of your periphery and operate more confidently. A threat actor is discouraged as they have to take more risk to glean the desired information, increasing the chance you sense them. You are literally decreasing your attack surface.
Counterarguments: (1) When a privacy screen is installed, the effective screen brightness is dimmer. Say your default screen brightness is 50%. To achieve the same level of effective brightness, you will have to increase screen brightness to 60-70%, taxing your battery. (2) The second drawback is multi-person viewing is more challenging. Because you are limiting the field of vision, multiple viewers of the same phone may feel like sardines in a can. For people who watch videos with friends or family on their phone, this may be cumbersome.
How Members of The Cyber Health Company are protected: When a Member joins, a Cyber Health Care Package is delivered to their home or office. The contents of the package extend Cyber Health to the physical world, including 2 privacy screens that custom fit their model of phone. The package also includes 3 camera covers to physically deactivate laptop or PC cameras when not in use, a Faraday bag to prevent malicious signals from reaching a device, crypto wallet or key fob while in cold storage and 2 PortaPows (USB-A and USB-C) to counteract malicious charging ports while traveling.
Jeremy Banon
Founder/CEO
The Cyber Health Company
About The Cyber Health Journal: This journal analyzes a product, feature or recent development in technology and how it impacts personal cybersecurity, online privacy and digital immunity.
About the Author: Jeremy Banon was hacked in 2016 and founded The Cyber Health Company in 2021 to help others avoid the same fate. The company provides the toolkit and team to support the personal cybersecurity, online privacy and digital immunity of high-risk individuals and corporate executives.