Many individuals use their smartphones for personal and business purposes. These gadgets hold sensitive information such as photos, text messages, videos, passwords, emails, and account numbers.
Your smartphone landing in the wrong hands can be catastrophic. Hackers can gain access to your smartphone and buy stuff with your money, steal your identity and impersonate you, etc.
It would help if you, therefore, made an effort to protect your smartphone from hackers. Here’s how to do it:
Backup Your Data
The idea of smartphone backup is always good. Backing up your data will ensure the protection of your sensitive information. One of the advantages of backing up your data is you can wipe your data remotely if you lose it or your smartphone gets stolen.
This will be possible if you have a copy secured for that data in the cloud. An effective backup system ensures fast, on-demand cloud deployment to software of your choice. Choosing cloud storage as your backup effectively secures your data by integrating data encryption, such as two-step authentication, to prevent unauthorized access to your data.
Backing up your data makes it easy to transfer from an old to a new smartphone if yours got stolen or lost.
Use a VPN
Public Wi-Fi networks expose your personal data to the risk of unauthorized access. It would be best if you refrain from hopping onto public Wi-Fi networks unprotected. You may consider using a VPN connection that masks your IP address from hackers.
The VPN connection allows you to connect privately to unsecured public networks in hotels, cafes, airports, etc.
Snooping through your internet activities is highly blocked by a VPN connection, and the protection of your documents, sensitive data, and activities is assured. VPN connections are found for free and premium services.
Be sure to invest in a premium connection to ensure the amount of professional and personal business managed with smartphones.
Lock Your Smartphone
Locking your phone is a critical step in helping you to protect your data. Hackers are not only found on the internet, but they can be physical too. When your phone gets stolen, it is safer when a phone lock is active.
Some smartphones are set to erase all data if several unlock attempts is attained. Be wise enough to include more sophisticated lock strategies such as facial recognition, fingerprints, voice, and retina unlocks.
Avoid Installing Suspicious Applications
The overall requirement for various applications is to allow permissions to several parts of your smartphone. If you are not careful enough, some application asks for access to your files manager, listen to your microphone, or access your camera.
Some applications legitimately require these permissions to complete their functions, but they are prone to abuse.
Install applications only from trusted sources that have positive online reviews about their services and privacy protection. Apple’s Google app vetting is stricter than Androids.
This puts Android users at a high exposure to hackers. These apps may seem genuine for being on the Play Store, but the less strictness makes them available on the app or long before being taken down.
Read Next: How to Stop Sharing Location Without Them Knowing on iPhone
Review Installed Apps
Smartphone application software often requests updates to function effectively. An application could have been genuine when you first installed it but may soon turn into something malicious.
Be sure to review new terms and conditions and permissions when you allow an update. You can check from your settings to see what the applications permit to access if your smartphone automatically updates apps over Wi-Fi without your knowledge.
There are free app packages that help you know what permissions you have allowed to your phone if you have a hard time doing a review. The apps may also help you detect and alert you on the app that has a malicious history.
In case of a “phishing” attack attempt, the app warns you from entering a password into an untrusted webpage or an untrusted app.
Update Apps
Installing updated software is a critical step in protecting yourself from hackers. Many smartphone users refrain from updating software because it may seem tiresome and intrusive. These updates can change your phone’s interface, which is even more annoying.
It becomes easy for hackers to bypass the security of old software, exposing you to a higher proportion of being hacked successfully.
This is because hackers check out for patched vulnerabilities. Be sure to also avoid using unofficial tools to root your smartphone.
A rooted phone exposes your data to hackers because there is the defeat of technical safeguards that allow applications to carry out prohibited sorts of actions which include snooping on sensitive data on your smartphone.
Hackers are aware that your smartphone contains sensitive information, which makes it a perfect target. People often make payments with their smartphones which could expose their card details.
These details may be used to make unauthorized payments from your card. Be sure to always have a defense system for your smartphone because hackers are polishing their skills to attack your data every day.