Expert Articles
Tips to Keep Your iPhone or Android Safe From Hackers
Reported by itacceleration.com
By Jennifer Bell, Freelance Writer & Blogger
Learn Helpful Tips and Tricks to Secure Your Phone From Criminals
Hackers are becoming increasingly knowledgeable when it comes to hacking people’s computers, websites, emails, social media accounts, and most commonly, cell phones. Hackers want to erase, exploit, or steal information from people’s personal devices or accounts and have discovered many ways to do this. As hackers become more of an issue, the use of digital forensic services is also becoming increasingly popular in order to recover information that was deleted or manipulated. Here are some helpful tips to secure your iPhone or Android against hackers and keep your personal information private:
Installing an app that has additional protection is a simple and mindless way to keep your device safe from hackers. For both iOS and Android users, the app Webroot offers a free secure web browser that provides additional security to your device. Webroot provides antivirus protection and also allows you to lock or wipe your phone from another device; this is necessary if your phone was lost or stolen.
It’s important to delete pages you’ve opened online in order to best erase your digital footprint. This minimizes the amount of data that can be hacked into by online criminals. This also helps ensure that your phone won’t get any viruses that may pop up on a website after you’ve closed out of it but not deleted it from your history.
Public WiFi is an easy way for hackers to make their way into a person’s iPhone or Android. Unsecured WiFi allows for personal data to be easily compromised by hackers. Specifically, unsecured WiFi is often how hackers get into bank accounts.
With certain tools and codes, hackers are able to take advantage of public access points and hack their way into a person’s mobile phone; that’s why it’s best to use WiFi that requires a password.
Besides getting rid of common bugs and making a phone work faster, the point of a phone update is to protect your phone against viruses and increase security. Software always has vulnerabilities that are not always found right away; therefore, the phone company creates updates to fix these vulnerabilities. This also applies to the apps on your mobile device. Apps often have holes in them that hackers can “crawl’ through and get into your device, app updates close these holes and secure your device from digital criminals.
Make sure to update your iPhone and Android every time a new update is available, as well as apps; hackers are able to see when a cellphone is not up to date.
Hackers have taken advantage of the convenience of public charging stations in places like malls and airports. Cybercriminals have figured out ways to upload malware onto public charging stations that can infect phones with viruses in order to steal data or passwords to personal accounts. Public charging stations are often the way that hackers can get into credit cards and bank accounts.
Avoid public charging stations and simply carry your own charger with you when you are traveling or out and about, there is no way to tell if a public charging station has been a product of hacking.
Many apps exist, created by hackers, have one purpose: to steal data. These apps are disguised as useful and helpful apps in order to lure people into downloading them. Apps that are most likely to be connected to hackers are apps that require a lot of permission before using them. These permission questions ask you to allow the app to access parts of your phone that are not relevant to the app such as the camera, microphone, and email accounts. This can be avoided by simply asking yourself, “does it make sense that this app needs to access this part of my phone?” Often, people don’t take the time to read the permission an app is asking for which allows hackers to get in their mobile device with no problem.
Before installing an app, do a brief research on it too. It’s important to see what other people are saying about the app. If this app has been connected to mobile phone hacking, people will write about it online to warn others.
By checking up on news and updates having to do with keeping your iPhone or Android secure, the higher the chance your mobile device will not be a product of hacking. There are constant news and website updates that will inform you on new ways to keep your personal information on your phone private. Keep yourself informed and you and your mobile device should remain safe.
About the Author
Jennifer Bell is a freelance writer, blogger, dog-enthusiast and avid beachgoer operating out of Southern New Jersey
