Fear sells. Whether you’re hawking handguns or security software, scaring the bejesus out of your potential customer base is often a winning ploy. It’s no accident that security vendors, consultancies, and their page-view-hungry handmaidens in the blogosphere are quick to report every real or imagined threat.

The exorbitant costs of breaches that might coax money out of a consumer or in-house security staffers. Case in point: the supposed vulnerabilities of smartphones, tablets, and mobile payment system to hackers. Type “mobile security threat” into Google and you’ll get 206,000 hits.

But you’d have to dig very, very deep into that humongous store of Web pages to find actual examples of serious mobile exploits. Because there are almost none, according to Verizon’s 2015 Data Breach Investigations Report, which includes data and commentary from 70 security firms in addition to Verizon’s own data.

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