Flashback of just two decades in Nepal, it was hard to see people carrying bar phones. The dream of people was not a smart phone but basic one. NOKIA, Ericsson, Sony etc were market leaders and the most important factor was basic connectivity, upgrading from pager. GSM network was not much penetrated and the phones which values USD 15 at current dates were much valued just for voice and text.

A mixture of Pager and Landline, at that time was known as Cell phone or phone with mobility synonym as Mobile phone and till now most of the people still call it "Mobile" which uses cellular network and its full name is "Mobile Phone or Cell Phone".

Time increased and technology was emerging, the luxury phone became necessity day by day and it increased its presence. Till date, we have wide ranges of options to upgrade from basic bar phone with minimal features to high end, secured, sophisticated phones which are difficult to fit in the pocket.

The evolution of mobile phone was for communication in early days but after 2010, mobile phones became smart phones and it became a necessity to have phone either for luxury or for showcasing. Bar phones are hardly seen in pockets. We are in such a generation where we have wrong belief that carrying a smart phone makes people smart or s/he is more valuable with brands such as iPhone, Samsung, OnePlus and hundreds more easily available in market packed with Android, iOS, and so on.

The more we upgraded from Voice and Text based phones with tons of apps widely available in market, the more risk we have. RAT is a system which can be easily installed in victim's laptop, desktop or even servers to get access to their screenshots, data, files and almost a person can operate the laptop/computer from any corner of the world with a basic system.

Coming to the recent spyware surveillance named as "Pegasus spyware," now smartphone users are aware that their end-to-end encryption is not fully encrypted or anyone can install spyware system in their mobile phones not only by sending links in WhatsApp but also the spyware was easily installed in phones with blank calls to victims phones from WhatsApp.

"As most people are aware, 'Telegram', 'Discord', 'Signal' which are synonyms of the most secured chat applications are not secured."

Android has basic limitations as compared to iOS for publishing apps in App Store. Blackberry was one of the best and secured systems which was managed by Research In Motion, a Canadian firm managing servers in Canada.

In many countries, Government itself made policy to remove Blackberry services and only handsets were used till few years back. Now in 2021 it is very hard to find Blackberry (even without Blackberry services).

Lots of messaging app providers have been struggling in market branding their app as secured, most secured, end-to-end encrypted which seems to have failed now. People named Pegasus as spyware a few days back after knowing it was collecting data from various journalists, governments, politicians, bureaucrats etc. But till now many people are unaware of what WhatsApp, Viber, IMO, TikTok, ClubHouse, YouTube are collecting from their data.

Google Maps access everyone's location, YouTube is built with an algorithm which collects and measures users' interests and shows related videos. A person is forced to watch whole night killing his or her time. NSO Group, the company behind Pegasus (so-called spyware), was founded by Niv Carmi, Shalev Hulio & Omri Lavie in 2010. Their website is www.nsogroup.com and mentioning

"HELPING GOVERNMENTS MAINTAIN PUBLIC SAFETY"

From NSO Group Website: "NSO Group develops best-in-class technology to help government agencies detect and prevent a wide range of local and global threats. Our products help government intelligence and law-enforcement agencies use technology to meet the challenges of encryption to prevent and investigate terror and crime."

In this digital era, most everything is connected with internet, not only our laptops, desktops or smartphones but also cars, trains, microwaves and hundreds of devices connected to the internet which we call IoT.

"The good and bad thing about internet is 'EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.'"

Nowadays, a device, social media, social messaging, a camera, Instagram, Viber or anything we use are like drugs, which change our habits. We are killing productive time which leads to a dark future and also helps to compromise data. The more apps you install, the more you are at risk.