The President's use of his personal cell phone presents some exploitable cybersecurity risks.
Bob Sullivan reports:
While the Internet stirred last night about the meaning of the word “Covfefe”—generated, one could guess, when the President fell asleep mid-Tweet, phone in hand—a far more important Trump cell phone issue got far less attention.
The Associated Press reported that Trump is giving out his cell phone number to world leaders so they can call him directly. Not only is this highly unusual, it creates plenty of security risks—not to mention public records issues.
Earlier, marketing expert Pace Lattin had noted that Trump—at least sometimes—appears to leave location tagging on, pointing as evidence to a Tweet sent during the President’s recent international trip which was tagged with the location “from Taoromio, Italy.”
“Trump has location tagging on. That is a huge security risk. Means his phone’s GPS is on,” Lattin Tweeted.
(Other Tweets don’t seem to share location, so perhaps the president turns location on and off for effect; still, who among us hasn’t screwed up such privacy settings?)
The location information, combined with the wide sharing of the device’s phone number, create serious risks, says Jeff Bardin, Chief Intel Officer of security firm Treadstone71.