Phoning Home

Phoning home, in computing, refers to an act of client to server communication which is undesirable to the user and/or proprietor of the device or software. It is often used to refer to the behavior of security systems which report network location, username, or other such data to another computer.

Phoning home may be useful for the proprietor in tracking a missing or stolen computer. This type of phoning home is frequently used on mobile computers at corporations. It typically involves a software agent which is difficult to detect or remove. However, there are malicious types of phoning home such as surreptitious communication between applications or hardware installed at end-user sites and their manufacturers or developers. The traffic may be encrypted to make it difficult or impractical for the end-user to ascertain what data are being transmitted.