Donald Trump is still using his unsecured Android phone, despite hacking risks

The Secret Service issued the President with an encrypted device last week, but he appears to have held onto his personal handset

Trump has reportedly been tweeting from his old phone while watching TV at the White House (Getty)

The President is still tweeting from his old, unsecured Android smartphone, despite fears it could be hacked.

Ahead of his inauguration last week, the Secret Service issued Donald Trump with a secure, encrypted device, but he appears to have kept hold of his personal handset.

The President has been using his own Android smartphone to tweet while watching TV shows in the White House, despite the “protests of some of his aides”, according to a report in the New York Times.

Trump’s personal handset is believed to be a Samsung Galaxy device.

He therefore has the option to protect it using Samsung’s Knox technology, which is approved for "sensitive but unclassified use" by the US Department of Defense, but the decision to keep using it at all is inviting trouble.

Security has long been an issue for the Android operating system, and if a hacker was to break into Trump’s phone, they could potentially access classified files and listen in on meetings by hijacking its microphone or camera.

When Obama first entered office in 2009, he campaigned to keep his BlackBerry, despite security warnings from the Secret Service. He eventually got his way, but had to settle for a heavily modified handset with limited functionality.

During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last summer, Obama described the handset he was using at the time, saying that his handlers told him the phone was “state of the art, but it doesn’t take pictures, you can’t text, the phone doesn’t work, and you can’t play your music on it