If you leave your smartphone unattended, you have to expect that others will take a look at chat history, pictures or other content.

This is suggested by a representative survey of 947 smartphone users commissioned by the digital association Bitkom. According to this, 4 out of 10 (41 percent) have secretly taken the smartphone of someone they know to snoop around. 14 percent say they have only done this once, 17 percent say they do it rarely, 5 percent more often and 5 percent even do it regularly. However, around half (48 percent) have never snooped around in other smartphones, and 11 percent did not want to provide any information.

“Photos, short messages, personal data – most people have very personal or even intimate information stored on their smartphone. To protect this, you should definitely set up an access lock with a pin or biometric features such as facial recognition and fingerprint. “You shouldn’t turn off the access barriers out of convenience in familiar places like at home or in the office,” says Bitkom Managing Director Dr. Bernhard Rohleder. “You can also set your smartphone so that no message content is displayed on the lock screen.”

There are no significant differences between the genders when it comes to accessing other people's smartphones, but younger people between the ages of 16 and 29 are particularly curious. Among them, only 29 percent have never risked looking into someone else's smartphone, but 54 have already done so: 20 percent once, 25 percent several times, 3 percent more often and 6 percent regularly snoop around other people's smartphones.

The smartphone is most often browsed by friends (53 percent), 15 percent use their partner's device and 33 percent use that of other family members. 8 percent have secretly looked at a colleague's smartphone.


Note on methodology: The information is based on a survey that Bitkom Research conducted on behalf of the digital association Bitkom. 1,014 people aged 16 and over in Germany who use the Internet were surveyed by telephone. The survey is representative. The question was “Have you ever secretly taken the smartphone of someone you know to look at content, such as chat history or pictures?” and “And which of the following people have you secretly looked at smartphone content?”

Source: Bitkom

Related to the topic: Fear of cyber war?


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