Cell phone security not as tangled as the web - Your Life - Brief Article

With more and more cell phones practically becoming handheld computers capable of sending and receiving e-mail, the Internet, and photographs, just how protected are these mobile machines from hackers? "Cell phone networks are not public access," indicates Dennis Silage, professor of electrical engineering, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa. "They're not as available for outside hacking. If I were to send an e-mail message from a machine on a computer network, at that point you can intercept and decode it because it's on the Internet. But once it reaches the cell phone network, it's reasonably secure."

Silage points out that radio transmissions on the cell phone network are encrypted, and even if someone were trying to listen to them, he or she would have a very difficult time even finding the radio signal or displaying the message.

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