The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes in their report "mobile phones were not designed for privacy and security". While the report is mostly focused on the wide varieties of mobile phone tracking (from GPS to wireless access), it illuminates perhaps the root of the issue noted in many mobile security articles: Mobile phones now mimic personal computers, and it begs the question: Why?<p>For such a ubiquitous device that holds so much personal data and is portable in ways laptops will never be, one wonders why we are designing mobiles to be just like tiny laptops with all the same protocols, applications and OS APIs. First, sure, it's easy, but who ever heard of an old-school phone dying from a DDoS attack (which now is the current major mobile threat)? Or, being taken over by malware and every contact, password and account login sent to the Maldives for quick smash-and-grab sessions against bank accounts and so forth?<p>Maybe the intrinsic issue is really that we are still doing the "make it smaller" thing with tech and calling that innovation instead of "make it different" which out of the box often comes with intrinsic security of its own for actually being different.