10 ways to secure your smartphone | Articles | Phones

At a min­i­mum, the code is the pro­tec­tion that is nec­es­sary today, with­out which not a sin­gle rea­son­able per­son can do. Even bet­ter is to use a PIN code and a fin­ger­print scan­ner.

By the way, it is fin­ger­print read­ing that pro­tects the best so far (oth­er bio­met­ric data is eas­i­er to crack), along with a com­plex pass­word.

Of course, enter­ing a pass­word every time is incon­ve­nient, but the num­ber of pos­si­ble options makes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hack­ing less like­ly.

Smart­phones now allow six-dig­it pass­words, which can be enabled in the device’s secu­ri­ty set­tings.

You can (and should) put a pass­word on your smart­phone, but if you have appli­ca­tions that require spe­cial pro­tec­tion — for exam­ple, mail or a bank appli­ca­tion with access to your bank card data.

Android offers its users a spe­cial option — to pro­tect a sin­gle appli­ca­tion with a pass­word — in this way no one can open your bank appli­ca­tion, and will not get access to your results in games.

iOS users, unfor­tu­nate­ly, do not have access to such a fea­ture, how­ev­er, for exam­ple, bank­ing appli­ca­tions, as a rule, offer pass­word or fin­ger­print pro­tec­tion inside the appli­ca­tion itself.

When you are con­stant­ly logged into appli­ca­tions, it is very con­ve­nient, and the smart­phone works much faster, plus you always have access to new mes­sages, etc. How­ev­er, if sud­den­ly some­thing hap­pens to the smart­phone, an out­sider can get the same access.

So, if you are real­ly wor­ried about your own secu­ri­ty and the pri­va­cy of your data, it is best to log out of your account as soon as you are done.

Even at the dawn of the devel­op­ment of the Inter­net, we got used to the fact that every­one around was warned — the pass­word should be com­plex, not tied to your name or date of birth. And pass­words should not be repeat­ed, so that if one of the accounts is hacked, the rest would not suf­fer. When­ev­er pos­si­ble, choose pass­words for apps and accounts that con­sist of let­ters, num­bers, and sym­bols.

In order for all pass­words to be stored in a smart­phone, there are spe­cial appli­ca­tions, and iPhone users can use Key­chain.

The main thing, at the same time, is to make sure that the main pass­word of the appli­ca­tion or smart­phone is com­plex.

Smart­phones, of course, are much less prone to virus­es than com­put­ers. How­ev­er, this does not mean at all that there are no virus­es under them at all. On the con­trary, in the past year, many users have suf­fered from the action of dan­ger­ous pro­grams that affect­ed smart­phones. A high-qual­i­ty antivirus appli­ca­tion, like a pro­gram, will scan your smart­phone for dan­ger­ous pro­grams. This is rel­e­vant for Android users, since, unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are no wor­thy appli­ca­tions for iOS yet, how­ev­er, man­u­fac­tur­ers update the firmware and the fol­low­ing item is very rel­e­vant here.

This is more rel­e­vant for iPhone users as Apple reg­u­lar­ly releas­es device secu­ri­ty updates. To always be pro­tect­ed from pos­si­ble virus­es, try to down­load updates as soon as they appear. This is fair­ly easy, as the device usu­al­ly reports that an update is avail­able.

Jail­break­ing is, of course, a con­ve­nient way to open up addi­tion­al fea­tures of a smart­phone, how­ev­er, along with the open­ing of func­tions, it weak­ens the inter­nal pro­tec­tion of the axis.

As for appli­ca­tions, the App­Store and Google Play check devel­op­ers for a rea­son — this allows you to sep­a­rate poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous appli­ca­tions from those that you can trust. There­fore, if you do not want to expose your smart­phone to addi­tion­al risk, beware of appli­ca­tions from third-par­ty devel­op­ers.

Anoth­er way that your smart­phone can be accessed remote­ly is Wi-Fi. The pub­lic net­work is of course con­ve­nient, plus you don’t need to spend mobile inter­net traf­fic. How­ev­er, every­one has access to it, so it is bet­ter to avoid such net­works.

If the net­work is home or work, then do not for­get to set a com­plex pass­word or cipher, for exam­ple, WPA2 (usu­al­ly this is pro­vid­ed dur­ing the ini­tial net­work set­up).

We do not mean spy ciphers or com­mu­ni­ca­tion in a spe­cial­ly invent­ed lan­guage, but if you are very seri­ous about your own secu­ri­ty, then there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty to encrypt your cor­re­spon­dence. Most com­mu­ni­ca­tion apps offer encryp­tion as a stan­dard option, but when it comes to mail, there aren’t many options. There­fore, care­ful­ly study the pos­si­bil­i­ties and choose a wor­thy appli­ca­tion.

Encryp­tion com­pli­cates the task for those who gain access to the cor­re­spon­dence. How­ev­er, this will not help if the smart­phone is phys­i­cal­ly in the hands of an unau­tho­rized per­son.

If you are very wor­ried about the safe­ty of cor­re­spon­dence, delete mes­sages imme­di­ate­ly after read­ing. By the way, there are appli­ca­tions that do this for you.

If you lose your smart­phone, or it is stolen, this does not mean that all the data will be in the hands of oth­er peo­ple. Both Android and iOS allow users to con­trol their smart­phone remote­ly.

On Android, this can be done using the Android Device Man­ag­er web­site or app. After that, go to your Google account and you will be able to track the smart­phone, call it, block or delete all data. It is bet­ter to check the func­tions in advance in order to be pre­pared in a cri­sis sit­u­a­tion.

On the iPhone, the process is pret­ty much the same — through iCloud, you can use the Find My iPhone app. Of course, you first need to set up iCloud on your smart­phone and on your com­put­er. You will be signed in with your Apple ID.