No matter if you are an online banking or a mobile banking user, a Gmail account user or a Facebook account user we all are familiar with the word OTP (one-time password). Yes, it is the password that gives your online banking or your social networking account a much better security that we had before. Now a day one-time password (OTP) is most popular feature of most of the Banks through which a user verifies its identity using OTP that has been sent to their registered mobile number that they had provided to the bank at the time of account opening in the bank.
Not only the banks but also the Social Networking Services like Facebook, Email Services like Gmail started using OTP (one-time password) as a two-step verification to help their users to secure it from the hackers.
With no doubt OTP (one-time password) is secure cause when you try to log in to your online bank service or to a shopping website or to your social networking website first you need to fill up your email id and password area then when you click on log in button that web service then sends a one-time password directly to your registered mobile number. Once you put that one-time password then only the web service confirms that it's you.
An OTP is more secure than a user created password and it gives your online account an extra layer of security. But is it 100% secure? Think if someone has permission to view your text messages then what. We generally download applications into our smart phone from GOOGLE PLAYSTORE. Different applications need different permissions before you install them. Without giving them that permissions you can't install them into your phone. Some of the permissions are essential but many of them are useless. For instance, if a Play store small game app asking for your Read SMS Permission it sounds funny cause that app does not require that permission at all.
So, whenever you are giving an app to Read SMS permission your OTP (one-time password) security is in danger. It is more dangerous when you download Third party apps from UNKNOWN SOURCES. In such cases when you are downloading apps from unknown sources you might giving permission to Hackers to read your Text Messages.
So Be Careful
Not only the banks but also the Social Networking Services like Facebook, Email Services like Gmail started using OTP (one-time password) as a two-step verification to help their users to secure it from the hackers.
With no doubt OTP (one-time password) is secure cause when you try to log in to your online bank service or to a shopping website or to your social networking website first you need to fill up your email id and password area then when you click on log in button that web service then sends a one-time password directly to your registered mobile number. Once you put that one-time password then only the web service confirms that it's you.
An OTP is more secure than a user created password and it gives your online account an extra layer of security. But is it 100% secure? Think if someone has permission to view your text messages then what. We generally download applications into our smart phone from GOOGLE PLAYSTORE. Different applications need different permissions before you install them. Without giving them that permissions you can't install them into your phone. Some of the permissions are essential but many of them are useless. For instance, if a Play store small game app asking for your Read SMS Permission it sounds funny cause that app does not require that permission at all.
So, whenever you are giving an app to Read SMS permission your OTP (one-time password) security is in danger. It is more dangerous when you download Third party apps from UNKNOWN SOURCES. In such cases when you are downloading apps from unknown sources you might giving permission to Hackers to read your Text Messages.
So Be Careful
- What you should not do: Try not to download any application from unknown sources because they are highly risky.
- What you should do: As you have to give read SMS permission to install some play store application so during installation give that application the read SMS permission but after installation change the settings and set the option from ALLOW to DENY. To do that go to your phone settings then go to Permission, one by one click on Read SMS, write SMS and delete SMS option and set all the permissions from allow to deny. This will stop the application from reading writing and deleting your text messages. Your OTP is now secure :)
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