While many people today can’t wait to get their hands on the latest smartphones on the market, there is another segment of the population that likes to use their mobile phones until the device is completely broken and dead. Sure, the second category of people are saving money while being more environmentally friendly, but they’re also putting themselves at risk of all kinds of cyber attacks that can have long-term financial and emotional consequences.  Here, we’ve explained the dangers of using very old mobile phones. It lacks security updates If you’re using a smartphone, you’ve probably already received one or more security patch updates till now. A security patch is a software update from the phone manufacturer to fix all the known vulnerabilities in a particular mobile phone model. Since cybercriminals are relentlessly searching for new ways to circumvent the security on mobile phones, phone-makers are required to keep fixing security holes now and then. However, most manufacturers stop sending out patch updates after two or three years (about five years in the case of Apple devices), making the mobile phones significantly less secure. If you weren’t aware, security vulnerabilities become common among the hacker community every few weeks or months, putting users of unsupported phones at higher risk of hack attacks.