I travel a lot for work, and airports are basically my second home. I’m always hunting for charging points because my phone’s almost dead by the time I reach the gate.
Yesterday I overheard someone telling a colleague to never use public USB charging ports because of something called “juice jacking.” It stuck with me because I’ve been doing this for years without thinking twice.
Is this an actual security risk, or one of those things that sounds scary but rarely happens?
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It’s a real risk, but it’s not panic-worthy either.
USB ports aren’t just power. They can carry data too. If a public charging station is compromised, it can potentially try to access your device or push something to it. You usually won’t notice anything happening in the moment, which is what makes people uneasy about it.
We bring this up during onboarding for a reason. Most people assume “charging is charging,” but that’s not how USB works.
The scary part isn’t always data theft right away. Sometimes it’s about tricking the device into trusting a connection. Once that trust is there, the damage doesn’t have to happen immediately.
That’s what bothers me. If something did happen, I wouldn’t even know when or where it started.
So, what do people actually do instead? Carry power banks everywhere?
Pretty much, yeah. Power banks, wall chargers, or even USB data blockers if you travel a lot.
Public ports aren’t guaranteed to be dangerous, but they’re also not guaranteed to be safe. Most people don’t stop using them because of a breach. They stop because they realize they’ve been trusting something they can’t see or control.
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