Top 10 Tips to Make Smartphone Privacy Remarkably Solid!

Smartphones have been widely used worldwide due to their amazing designs and features. We know that folks love their smartphones as a dearest friend. But it turns into a killer when your privacy is leaked out and your private data is hacked by some nasty hackers especially your credit card numbers and information about your financial details and bank accounts. When you are getting bored, the smartphone offers you the best games to play; it helps you in finding nearest Starbucks for a cup of coffee and such like other utilities in everyday life. But again, if it goes to some wrong hands it turns into an enemy disclosing your contacts, location history, banking data, and more.

Smartphone privacy was the hottest topic in tech circles in past few days due to announcements by Google and Apple that they are revising their privacy policy to enhance the security level of the smartphone data to secure their users.

So the smartphone users are required to be remained highly watchful for protecting their private data stored in their devices. Here’re top 10 most effective tips which are quite useful for protecting your important private data absolutely secure and safe.

1. Don’t Forget to Lock Your Phone:

The simplest tip which seems very minute in nature is “Don’t forget to lock your smartphone” if you are really a security sensitive personality. Locking a smartphone though looks nothing difficult but surely there are many folks who don’t care to do this for protecting their data to be hacked. Just set up a screen lock with a powerful password to protect it from the access of anyone except you.

The password selected for locking a smartphone should be more than of four digits…however, an alphanumeric password is highly appreciative in this regard. Also, assure that your phone locks automatically within 1-5 minutes without usage.

2. Use ‘Find My iPhone’ Like Service:

A free tracking service is also very helpful in protecting your data on your device. Android, BlackBerry, iOS, and Windows Phone devices all offer their customers the applications to lock, track, or wipe their phones remotely if lost. It is really a powerful tool for protecting sensitive data alongside for recovering a lost/stolen smartphone.

3. Never Leave Your Smartphone Unattended/Care Free:

Caring is more than vital than curing…a thumb rule we learned in our life. So never leave your phone unattended or care free while sitting around in public where any opportunist can steal it. Leaving your phone unattended in the office in the presence of co-workers or at home in the presence of guests looks logical to some extent but leaving it care free in the place where those people rush who are unknown to you is a big danger.

Also, make yourself habitual to put your smartphone in your coat, pocket, desk (yes, even at the office), briefcase, purse, backpack, wherever.

4. Don’t Give Your Phone to Strangers:

It is a common practice we see nowadays, the strangers ask you to provide them your smartphone for a while to make an emergency call home, it is also tremendously dodgy….instead of giving your phone to such a stranger, ask him the number on which he wants to call and make the call by yourself by puttting the speakers on for an open conversation.

5. Your Smartphone System Should be Up-to-Date:

Never be lazy to install the latest updates for the operating system and security apps you have on your phone for protecting your data. Almost all smartphone companies introduce updates time to time for enhancing security level of their devices, so missing an update might result in a fatal move. Also be aware of the softwares with malicious viruses and bugs that have number of vulnerabilities and exploits to steal your data. Only trusted apps and softwares provided by smartphone vendors should be installed on the sets and their updates should run in prior time to make your device quite free from bugs and exploits.

6. Don’t Forget to Manage Location Settings:

GPS or carrier-aided location tracking features are common to offer with a smartphone. It is just to improve the functionality of some applications such as Google Maps or Foursquare. Now, bundle of such apps have an access to your location data to share with your friends at Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social networks.

To avoid from any hassle, just try to manage your location settings according to your wish, if you are a security sensitive person hen it would be preferable for you turn off all forms of location assessment.

7. Pay Full Attention to the Apps you have on Your Smartphone:

When you install or have install an app on your smartphone, do your full homework to know about its features concerning to privacy and data protection. Before clicking on “Allow” for downloading and installing any app on your systems, try to fully read and understand the full info about the said apps whether these apps require your location, call history, contacts, and other data for their work or not.

Also, it should be noted that majority of apps store your data and deliver it to its developers or send it to third-party companies for other uses, so “permissions” should be made carefully. If an app seems dubious to you, read the reviews on that app written by reliable tech experts to make sure that using this app couldn’t be fatal for the security and privacy of your system.

Moreover, if an app has become out dated on the basis of your usage…then instead of bearing its load, just delete it from your system memory, it would help you in enhancing protection level.

8. Download Apps From Reliable Sources Only:

Always download apps from reliable sources like Apple App Store or Android Marketplace, the apps from any untrustworthy source or developer might harm your device security and can be used in stealing your precious data. For jailbroken iPhones, Cydia is the reliable source to download apps otherwise all other sources would prove risky and fatal for the device.

9. Be Watchful to Open Attachments!

So emails come to you with attachments on your smartphones. So be quite watchful to open these ones…..as these might be malicious and packed with number of viruses to kill your system security.

Only open those attachments which come with the emails from your friends and the folks whom are known by you. These precautions should be practiced strongly even while working on your PC.

10. Encrypt Smartphone Data:

Data encryption system has been introduced in almost all popular smartphones which enable them to encrypt the contents of the phone. This is absolutely a smart way to protect sensitive data from the access of wrong hands especially in the case of lost/stolen iPhone without lock screen option.

This is particularly vital for the memory cards of Android smartphones. In case the phone lost/stolen, nobody would be able to access to your documents, photos, songs, and other files.

Via: InformationWeek

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• Smartphone privacy