Your smartphone is a powerful tool. It can connect you to the world, let you play games, and even take photos. But it’s also a device that can access your personal information and financial data. So how do you keep your phone secure? Here are three simple steps you can take.
Don’t Use Public Wi-Fi Access Points
The first and most crucial step in protecting your phone is not to use public Wi-Fi access points. These can be found in coffee shops, hotels, airports and other places where people congregate for convenience or entertainment. Public Wi-Fi is inherently insecure because it’s unencrypted. That means your data doesn’t have an extra layer of protection from prying eyes. Hackers can see everything you do on the internet by listening in on the traffic flowing through their connection points at these locations, meaning they could steal personal information like passwords or credit card numbers if they wanted to.
Even if you use a VPN service like NordVPN on top of your public Wi-Fi, it’s still possible for someone else at the exact location as you to sniff out all of your activity on those networks without any encryption getting in their way.
We know this might be difficult as most people use public Wi-Fi to play games such as online slots or read the online newspaper to pass the time, but public Wi-Fi is the perfect gateway for hackers.
Know Your Phone’s Principal Security Features
Knowing what your phone is capable of is essential to keep it secure. To begin with, you’ll want to know how to use the security features that come with your device. For example, if your phone has a fingerprint scanner, use it. If not, ask yourself whether or not this might be something worthwhile for you in the future. It could save time and hassle later in life and make accessing things like credit card numbers easier.
You should also know how to update the operating system and change default passwords. You don’t want there to be any chance that someone could access all of these functions without knowing what they’re doing; otherwise, they might get into any account connected with your phone, which would be bad news.
Download Only Trusted Apps
Another critical feature is only downloading trusted apps. You can also check the app’s reviews. A good indication of a bad app is that it will have many negative reviews. If you notice many one-star ratings and most people say they had problems with the same thing, this may be a sign that something is wrong with the app.
You should also consider what permissions an app requires before downloading it. For example, if an app asks for access to your location or contacts list, that’s probably not normal behaviour and could indicate something suspicious.
Keep Your Phone Safe
Keeping your phone safe is like keeping other things in life safe. You need to know what you’re doing, be smart about it, and make sure there aren’t too many risks involved. If you take these precautions with your phone, you should be fine.
