Be Informed and Prepare when Away from Home

In a recent FCC advisory, travelers were warned about juice jacking, a cyber-attack method used to harvest personal data from personal devices at public charging stations, oftentimes found in airports and infected with malware aimed at stealing your data.

To guard against being a potential victim of juice jacking, the FCC offers the following tips:

1. If using a public port and prompted to “share data”, select “charge only”.
2. Use an AC power outlet instead of a public USB charging station.
3. When traveling, remember to bring your own USB cables and AC/car chargers.
4. Consider using portable chargers and external batteries.
5. Find a trusted supplier to purchase a charging-only cable to prevent data from transmission during charging.

“We don’t want to scare members, but we do want our members to be prepared to make the right decisions,” says Support Services Manager Travis Uchino who is concerned with raising member awareness about security threats. “Juice jacking can happen at any public charging station, not just those at airports, but it is more apt to happen in a situation where people are desperate for a charge.”