Mobile phones are 'Trojan horses' for germs. Here's how to clean them

I've never cleaned my mobile phone, but after chatting with experts for this story, it was the first thing I did.

It turns out mobile phones are "Trojan horses" for carrying germs. That's according to Lotti Tajouri, an associate professor in molecular biology and genomics at Bond University and Murdoch University.

He found more than 17,000 micro-organisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, living on 95 mobile phones he studied .

And with 80 per cent of people surveyed by Dr Tajouri admitting to using their phone in a public toilet, we can start to understand how they get there.

"Mobile phones behave like biological magnets," he says, adding their warm and moist conditions act like "five-star hotel accommodation for microorganisms".

If you're understandably grossed out, keep reading to find out the best way to clean your phone, and how often you need to be doing it.

In the 95 phones Dr Tajouri and his team analysed, they also found super bugs (germs that are very hard to treat), antibiotic resistant genes , and virulence factor genes (these increase a pathogen's ability to cause disease).

He says micro-organisms thrive on phones because they are high-touch surfaces that deliver the right "breeding ground" conditions .

"We load them with all sorts of microbes through our fingers … and when we talk into them, we drop little droplets of saliva.

We transfer these germs back to our faces , Dr Tajouri says, by touching our lips, eyes and nose on average 25 times in an hour.

"Eighty per cent of common infections are associated with hands. Mobile phones negate handwashing ."

Immunocompromised people are most at risk of illness from their phones, Dr Tajouri says.

"That includes infants, the elderly, and of course people with chronic disease like diabetes."

Meena Jha, head of technology at Central Queensland University, says while having germs on your phone doesn't "automatically make you sick", we do need to be practising good hand and surface hygiene.