Your Satellite Calls Aren't Encrypted. Here's Why.

Your phone call might have traveled 22,000 miles through space with zero protection, and someone with an $800 satellite dish could have heard every word. A new study from UC San Diego and the University of Maryland intercepted real, unencrypted satellite backhaul: voice calls, text messages, login credentials, and DNS queries, all pulled out of the air with consumer hardware.

I explain how everyday data ends up on satellites in the first place, remote towers, ships, aircraft, rural networks, and why so much of it stays unencrypted while TV signals have been scrambled for years. Vendors sell encryption as an extra license, carriers downplay the risk, and recent telecom cybersecurity rules got rolled back.

Then the part you can control: end-to-end encrypted messaging instead of SMS, a trusted VPN in remote areas or in flight, and HTTPS and official apps for anything sensitive.