US President Donald Trump has made his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, use her private email as one of his most important weapons in his 2016 presidential campaign, in return the president is now making regular phone calls using unsafe devices, according to a new report published by The Washington Post.
Senior government officials usually use encrypted phone services to protect calls or texts from hackers being hacked, but several officials have told the newspaper that Trump uses unsecured phones routinely.
The CNN news network reported last Friday in a report that Trump is still using his personal phone to make calls despite repeated security warnings from his crew that this matter may make him vulnerable to foreign espionage.
But the president was quick to respond to these accusations in a tweet on Twitter, which he denied, describing the report as "completely false news", stressing that he had not used a personal cell phone for years, and that he only used phones that were approved and issued by the government.
Cyber security experts have warned of the dangers associated with unsecured phones, as Alex Hyde, chief researcher at Security Score Security, said unencrypted phone services were exceptionally easy to hack.
"In some cases, it is as simple as going to a mobile phone tower, plugging in a laptop and downloading everything," Hyde noted.
Kirsten Todd, managing director of the Electronic Readiness Institute - who was the Obama administration's cyber security adviser - said access to unprotected phone activities was among the hackers ’evolving capabilities over the past period.
"With enough time and focus, which are available from many quarters, penetration is definitely possible," he added.
Encrypted phones were the standard of high-ranking government officials, dating back to World War II when a wide technology was used to protect against wiretapping.
With the advent of the Internet, phone coding has become less expensive. Most of the encrypted phone lines now use "Voice over Internet Protocol" software to protect against spyware.
However, most standard phone services, including calls and texts, are "fundamentally open broadly," according to Hyde, who said "it is an unencrypted data stream that is streamed over the lines."
The Washington Post says there is now a suite of smartphone apps that provide encrypted call and messaging services, including Signal, Walker, and WhatsApp, the latter being used intermittently by White House officials.
Experts consider leniency a major reason why people choose to use unencrypted phone services instead of encrypted. "There is always a trade-off between encryption and usability," Hyde said. Todd also believes that mobile phone security is an area the government is still struggling to define.