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It’s a great feeling when a wearable fitness device vibrates to let you know when you hit the day’s fitness goal. The digital fireworks display that lights up your watch’s screen is a signal that you should keep on moving to challenge yourself more … or spend the rest of the day on the couch guilt-free.
While fitness wearable devices, trackers, and apps are excellent motivators for you, cybercriminals love them for their vulnerabilities and privacy loopholes. This doesn’t mean you have to chuck your expensive watch in the bin or delete your fitness apps from your smartphone. Awareness and smart habits go a long way in deterring cybercriminals. Keep reading to learn more about wearable technology vulnerabilities and how you can sidestep each.
Many fitness tracker apps and wearables are equipped with GPS. At the end of a run or long walk, you can view your exact route, sometimes with detailed maps that show street and town names. This tracking feature was potentially dangerous back in 2018 when a fitness app released a heat map of all its users’ running routes for the year, which clearly outlined secret military bases.1
Even if you’re stationed in a suburb and not hostile territory, you may consider the risks of sharing your location data. A determined criminal who has time to spare can guess your address and see the times of days when you’re commonly out at the gym or on a run.
When you purchase a wearable fitness device, you often have to pair it with an accompanying smartphone app to see your daily stats and tailor your fitness goals. Think about all the personally identifiable information (PII) that app now houses: your full name, password, address, height, weight, location, medical concerns, daily activity patterns, etc. In the hands of a cybercriminal, this information can bring a nefarious actor one step closer to impersonating you. Plus, if your health data makes it onto the dark web or is sold to health companies, it may result in serious privacy concerns.
Luckily, there are ways to get peace of mind about the security of your identity. Identity protection services, such as McAfee Identity Monitoring Service, provide expert identity theft support and up to $1 million in identity theft coverage.
Wearable devices complement any athleisure outfit and are a fun way to inspire athletic competition between a group of friends. Here are a few ways you can patch some of their security shortcomings:
When you first purchase any new device, fitness trackers included, your first step should always be to reset the factory password. Cybercriminals know that many people often skip this step, making it easy for them to walk right into new accounts. If you have a hard time remembering your passwords, consider entrusting them to a password manager to remember them for you. McAfee True Key makes it so that you only have to remember one master password to unlock the rest, and it’s protected by one of the strongest encryption algorithms available.
This is a tip you should consider for all your social media accounts. When you post about your life online, you actually divulge a lot of personal details that are helpful to cybercriminals. In the case of fitness trackers and apps, sharing the times of day when you go to the gym, are at the local track, or are on a bike path may give a criminal an idea of windows during the day when your home is empty. It’s unsettling to think that strangers can track your whereabouts, so it’s best to keep those details exclusive to people you personally know and trust.
In the case of fitness trackers and apps, a savvy cybercriminal may be able take an educated guess at your address, with which they can do a myriad of nefarious activities. Some running and fitness apps may be able to still create maps of your running routes but erase street names and other landmarks to make it more private. But when in doubt, turn off geolocation.
Fitness trackers are a fun way to stir up some friendly competition, keep connected with your fit friends, and motivate yourself to exercise and maintain healthy habits. While you’re shopping for a new device or when evaluating your current tracker, keep these tips in mind to enjoy this technology to its fullest.
The post Why You Should Care About Fitness Tracker Security appeared first on McAfee Blog.
When gyms were forced to close last year, you likely looked for other ways to get some exercise and stay active during quarantine. From investing in a few pairs of dumbbells or perhaps downloading an app or two to help you track your workouts, you found alternatives to help you break a sweat. As an accessible, easy way to release endorphins, running quickly grew in popularity along with the platforms that help runners stay accountable. According to Runner’s World, there was a 34% uptick in outdoor miles logged by common fitness apps between March and September 2020 compared to the same stretch in 2019. But are these tools potentially endangering your privacy?
According to TechCrunch, running apps could potentially threaten your security if the data they collect ends up in the wrong hands. Let’s explore the functionalities of these apps and how they could pose a threat to your online safety.
Running apps are solid companions for advanced and amateur runners alike, allowing you to track the length of your run and set a pace for yourself. These apps learn a lot about you the more you use them by gathering health data like your height and weight and even your location. But similar to the threats that exist when you overshare on other online platforms, this data could pose a serious threat to your privacy. For example, location data could identify where you live or where you work – information that you definitely wouldn’t want in the hands of a stranger. If a cybercriminal is able to hack into your account, they could exploit this information to commit identity theft or craft a phishing email disguised as your employer.
Additionally, many of these apps lack basic security measures to prevent hackers from breaking into accounts or from health and fitness data from spilling out. For example, many popular running apps allow the most basic passwords like “qwerty” and “password.” Oftentimes, hackers automate their attacks by targeting accounts with easy-to-crack passwords like the ones mentioned. This allows them to exploit the most accounts with as little effort as possible. Furthermore, these apps do not have the option to set up two-factor authentication, which creates an additional barrier to prevent hackers from exploiting reused passwords.
No matter where you are in your fitness journey, it is essential to take the necessary precautions to minimize the risks of the platforms you use to hold yourself accountable – running apps included. If you are looking to hit your stride while keeping security and privacy top of mind, follow these tips:
Your password is your first line of defense, so it is important that you use one that is strong and unique to your other account credentials. If a hacker does manage to guess your password for one of your online accounts, it is likely they will check for repeat credentials across multiple sites. By using different passwords or passphrases, you can feel slightly more at ease knowing that the majority of your data is secure if one of your accounts becomes vulnerable.
You can also use a password manager to help you create strong passwords, remove the hassle of remembering numerous passwords, and log on to websites automatically.
Some running apps are configured to publicly share user data by default. After you download an app, spend some time researching how to change these settings so your data is not shared with strangers without your permission.
If your running app of choice does undergo any security updates, make sure that they are installed as soon as possible. Developers actively work to identify and address security issues. Frequently update your operating systems and apps so that they have the latest fixes and security protections. The easiest way to do this is to enable automatic software updates on your mobile device.
Next time you go for a run with your location services on, think again about what risks this poses to your virtual security and your physical safety. Enhance your security by only enabling the features that are necessary to optimize your fitness performance. This will help prevent hackers from using your location as a vehicle to invade your privacy.
Since the data collected on running apps involves sensitive health and location information, it is worth reviewing the privacy policies for all of the fitness platforms you regularly use to see how your data might be affected. To ensure that you can keep moving toward your fitness goals while protecting your online safety, stay educated on the tools you use to track your progress and implement the necessary security measure to do so with security in mind.
To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home on Twitter, subscribe to our email, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.
The post How to Remain Secure While Using Running Apps appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
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