Technology tip: Smartphone cyber security

 Perhaps not surprisingly, the National Cyber Security Alliance reports that smartphone users have a false sense of cyber security about their devices. Research by the Alliance and software security company McAfee found that 72 percent of Americans have never installed data protection applications or security software on their smartphones in order to protect them against data loss or viruses and malware. This despite the fact that 44 percent of Americans use smartphones to access the Internet, 32.5 million Americans access banking information via mobile devices, and 24 percent of consumers store computer or banking passwords on their mobile devices. More than half of smartphone users do not use any password protection to prevent unauthorized device access.