Is Your Phone Overheating? Mobile Spyware Could Be to Blame!

Staff Writer / 10-02-2020 / Apps

Ever held a smartphone after short use or a charge to find it extremely hot? This seems to be a problem experienced by more and more people these days, especially as phones become more advanced. This could just be a factory fault If you experience this problem when your phone is brand new, but if your phone starts overheating after a few weeks or months of usage, there could be a few other not-so-obvious reasons, including mobile spyware and cryptocurrency mining!

Apps & Spyware

Apps, especially those that run in the background, drain battery life and cause devices to overheat. When installing apps, users often tend to grant all “permissions” requested by the app instead of reading them carefully. By doing this, you open the door for mobile spyware to infiltrate your smartphone, leaving it vulnerable not just to overheating but also to theft of sensitive private data. For example, a simple calculator app from the Google Play Store could request permissions to access your microphone or contacts. Other permissions requested by apps can even be hidden by the app developer, such as access to system files that can then become infected by mobile spyware and malware.

Mining Cryptocurrencies

In more serious cases, hackers can now use an infected smartphone to act as a rig to mine cryptocurrencies. Early last year, software company Opera added anti-cryptocurrency mining features to their mobile browsers since finding that hackers can mine cryptocurrency using a network of smartphones to form a cryptocurrency rig, unbeknownst to the owner of the smartphone. Opera said that the mining of cryptocurrency is estimated to be affecting more than a billion people worldwide, causing their devices to overheat, lose efficiency and drain batteries. Internet security experts caution smartphone users to thoroughly scrutinise the apps they download and be vigilant when visiting websites. It’s also a good idea to download antivirus software from trusted software developers such as Kaspersky Labs, Avast and McAfee.

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