When your phone battery dies, are public charging stations safe to use?

Protect your password at public charging station A Toronto resident plugged his cellphone into a charging station at the Eaton's Centre, but when he returned, it was gone.

Concerns are being raised about the security of cellular phone charging stations in public places, after a man’s device was stolen from one in a Toronto mall.

Theodros Assefa told CTV Toronto he used a public charging station in the downtown CF Toronto Eaton Centre and when he returned to his phone following a fire alarm, the device was gone.

Brightbox, the company that operates the charging station, said it is not responsible for the phone as they believe the charging station worked just fine.

"We can say with absolute certainty that the Brightbox unit operated exactly as it was designed to," the company said in a statement. “If a device was in fact removed from the unit without the user's permission, it was done…through no fault or malfunction of our hardware or software."

Assefa believes someone must have been watching as he entered his password.

Cadillac Fairview, the real estate company that owns and operates the Eaton Centre, has agreed to pay the cost of replacing Assefa’s phone.

With a report from CTV Toronto’s Pat Foran