Spending the night out? Don’t forget to carry a USB condom!

Don’t get carried away by the headline—don’t be surprised either. This topic does not come anywhere close to ‘sex’. A USB condom is not for humans, but for your smartphones and tablets.

When you are running out of juice on your smartphone or tablet, the first thing, you hunt for is a power adapter for the device. If you are not at home, you end up searching around for a free USB port on anything from a desktop PC or laptop to a media player or even a television set.

Plugging in your smartphone to an available USB port for recharging the device is done without thinking. Plug in and recharge. Though it sounds pretty simple, it could cause havoc in your life.

Your smartphone contains immense data that can be stolen and used against you. Your pictures, selfies, data, music, pin codes, app data, almost everything that is on your smartphone is useful to someone out there. So when you plug in your smartphone to any unknown computer’s USB port, a possible malware residing on that PC or laptop could pull your smartphone’s data without you knowing it. If you are heading to your friend’s place, you may think you are safe. But even your friend could be in the dark with viruses and malware lurking around in his computer. Not only data being hacked, getting infected by the malware also be an additional threat. You could get the malware transferred to your device (and vice versa).

So what is the best option to charge your smartphone without the fear of being hacked or infected? The first-best solution is to either carry your charger along or to buy yourself a portable USB charger. The next-best solution is to get yourself a USB condom.

As the name suggests, a USB condom is similar to a regular condom. It is a super simple device or gadget (dumb gadget actually), which cuts off the data section of the USB port and only passes the power through. This causes an isolation of the PC and the smartphone and only ensures that the power is passed on to charge the device.

A standard USB 2.0 port contains four pins—one for +5V power, one for ground and the other two for data. The USB condom is just a simple USB extender with the data pins cut off. Only pins 1 and 4 are used, while pins 2 and 3 (for data) are not connected. This gadget is pretty small and can be plugged into your USB cable at all times. When you need to sync your smartphone with the PC, simply disconnect it.

You can make a USB condom for yourself. All you need is a USB cable extender. Buy the shortest length possible to avoid power loss. Then simply peel off around 2 cm of the cable’s outer portion (sleeve) anywhere on the cable between the two connectors. You shall find four wires inside. Cut off the data wires (usually white and green) and tape the ends using an electrician tape. If you are not sure of which wires to cut, or if you are having a cable with different colours, then you could probably take the help of a friend who has some electronics background.

You could also make one yourself using a simple PCB, a female USB socket, a male USB connector and a soldering iron. All needed is to join the pins 1 and 4 of the two USB ports and leave the pins 2 and 3 unconnected. Conceal the connectors in a simple plastic case and you are done.

Don’t want to take the trouble, check with your local smartphone dealer if he has one or order it online. SyncStop is an online shop where you can get yourself a USB condom for around $10 (approx Rs 600).