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Nam Y. Huh/AP/Press Association Images

How gross is your smartphone?

The smartphone “is always warm, stored in dark places, so bacterias are growing on your phone”, while another study claims mobiles are 18 times dirtier than public bathrooms.

WHEN WAS THE last time you cleaned your phone?

You feel a bit ick now, don’t you.

The idea of germs being spread on one of the devices we touch most throughout the day was brought up at the Consumer Electronics Show today where companies offering better sanitising were also promoting the cause of cleanliness.

The technology show has long had a focus on health, but makers of sanitising devices said people need to look in their pockets and purses to the microbes on their personal gadgets.

The smartphone “is always warm, stored in dark places, so bacterias are growing on your phone,” said Dan Barnes, co-founder of Phonesoap, which was displaying its device which cleans and recharges a phone.

Barnes said he got the idea after reading a study indicating “that mobile phones are 18 times dirtier than public bathrooms”.

Barnes said his $50 device uses ultraviolet radiation which “kills the bacteria’s DNA, so that they can’t live on your phone anymore”.

Similar devices were also seen at the huge electronics fair, including one called CleanBeats, which sanitises, plays music and recharges two phones through a USB connection.

The CleanBeats device is based on NASA technology, and will soon hit the market with a $499 price tag, said spokesman Dennis Rocha for the California-based startup.

The company website says its device produces “hydroperoxide catalytic molecules” to clean the surfaces of touchscreens.

© – AFP 2014 with additional reporting by Sinéad O’Carroll

Read: Will 2014 be the year of wearable tech?

More: The best 3D printers that appeared at CES 2014

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    Mute Joe Lafferty
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    Feb 17th 2012, 7:14 PM

    Gardai are keen to speak to owner of the account “select username, password from user” about the intrusion. First data on laptops, now this. Bad week for Eircom. Tut tut.

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    Mute Bob Coggins
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    Feb 17th 2012, 11:53 PM

    Compliance in quarter are gonna be checking Irishjobs.ie on Monday….

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    Mute Barry
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    Feb 17th 2012, 7:25 PM

    It seems eircom can be trusted, there are secondary year students that know how to secure data better then eircom does for its customers,

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    Mute jimbo
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    Feb 17th 2012, 7:21 PM

    Another breach of data where will it end?

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    Mute Ian イアン [STGオタク]
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    Feb 18th 2012, 8:19 AM

    When Sean Sherlock gets his wish granted by the ACTA genie.

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    Mute Donal McCarthy
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    Feb 17th 2012, 8:18 PM

    StudyHub uses email addresses as user names so it’s quite a serious breach, given the number of people who have one password for multiple accounts. My junior-cert student came to me today and was all ‘daaad, stupidhub isn’t working!’.

    It’s probably just as well, although still laughable, that Eircom require you to register separately for MusicHub; SportsHub; StudyHub; Support and for your Eircom account, i.e. 5 times.

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    Rory
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    Mute Rory
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    Feb 17th 2012, 8:45 PM

    Looks like someone wasn’t sanitising their inputs! Boom! I bet it was little Bobby Droptables… :)

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    Mute Aaron Hastings
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    Feb 18th 2012, 2:42 PM

    Those who thumbed-down this comment clearly aren’t from the Internet :)

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    Mute Chris Jordan
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    Feb 18th 2012, 7:55 AM

    Eircom have got to be one of the most inept ISPs out there. Where will it all end? Amateurs.

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    Mute foggy_lad
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    Feb 18th 2012, 2:10 AM

    At least it didn’t take the incompetents 6weeks or more to admit this intrusion and inform customers and report it to the data protection crowd.

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    Mute Aaron Hastings
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    Feb 18th 2012, 2:40 PM

    I really wish the media would stop using the word “hack” to describe cyber security breaches. These are known as “attacks” or “cracks” by data security experts. The definition of hacking is completely different and unrelated to illegal activity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)

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