Wrap That Rascal With A USB Condom

Yep, a USB condom. That term is mostly a dose of marketing brilliance, which is to say that grabs your attention while also serving as an apt description of the product. A little company called int3.cc has developed a product—a USB condom—that blocks the data pins in your USB device while leaving the power pins free.

Thus, any time you need to plug a device such as a smartphones into a USB port to charge it—let’s say at a public charging kiosk or a coworker’s computer--you don’t have to worry about compromising any data or contracting some nasty malware. It’s one of those simple solutions that seems so obvious once someone came up with it, and surely lots of folks, such as business travelers, students, and anyone in a corporate environment that uses a USB stick in multiple machines, will be glad for it.

USB Condoms are currently out of stock, but you should be able to order one as of Monday. It’s not clear how much the devices will cost, but it should be very little, and they’ll likely show up as plain-looking boards without much, if any, packaging nor a chassis.

“If you're going to run around plugging your phone into strange USB ports, at least be safe about it”, says int3.cc. Good advice, that.