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USB "Condom" Allows You To Practice Safe Charging
MojoKid writes "Yep, a USB condom. That term is mostly a dose of marketing brilliance, which is to say that grabs your attention while also serving as an apt description of the product. A little company called int3.cc has developed a product—a USB condom—that blocks the data pins in your USB device while leaving the power pins free. Thus, any time you need to plug a device such as a smartphones into a USB port to charge it—let's say at a public charging kiosk or a coworker's computer--you don't have to worry about compromising any data or contracting some nasty malware. It's one of those simple solutions that seems so obvious once someone came up with it."
You could do that. I could also not buy your broken charger.
But you know what you're doing. Social engineering will always work on some people though:
"My phone is flat and I really need to take a photo of my big mac to show my friends, can I borrow your charger?"
"Sure, here you go"
"It's not working"
"Try taking that adapter thing off, it's probably mucking up the charging"
Faced with the horror of eating their big mac without it first being photographed, I think you can guess how this story ends...
That's why I tamper-proof my phone with Windows 8, and a picture of Justin Bieber for the locked screen.
[sigh] So much for "Universal".
Hey, man, not my problem if two passengers don't get along, I just drive the bus.
-USB Implementors' Forum, Inc.