How to Keep Your Smartphone Safe

Almost everyone you meet now owns a smartphone and it can be hard to keep your phone safe in this current time, physically and online. If you own a cell phone you’re tasked with keeping it safe yourself.

Especially for celebrities and other popular people, there will always be people who want to invade their privacy and this is what this article will be addressing.

Risks of Phone Hacking

There are many ways hackers can gain access to phones or social media accounts. It could even be getting into the data stored, stealing credit card details, getting accounts password, listening to voice notes, and checking conversations on one’s smartphone and everyone has the fear of the unknown.

Phone hacking is a continuous cybersecurity issue, most especially in Nigeria. People increasingly store and share most of their data on their mobile devices which in itself is a risk of phone hacking. Although there are many ways that our phones are at risk of being hacked, we can also make this a tough one for hackers on our end.

So how can you ensure that your phone is safe at least to a good extent?

How to Secure Your Phone From Getting Hacked

There are a lot of ways that you can protect your phone from hacking and most of them will just involve simple things you can turn on both for your phone generally and your social media accounts. 

Although there are advanced methods to keep your phone secured, the basics are easily accessible and understood by everyone. 

Basic Phone Security Tips

• Don’t leave your phone unattended: It’s best to ensure your phone is with you at all times both in public and private spaces. Leaving your phone can expose you to letting people gain personal access to your phone.
• Have a strong passcode for your phone and social media accounts: Most phones come with no password at all and it’s important that you set one, to protect your phone from the wrong hands. Don’t use common passcodes like “1234” or “0000” or even your date of birth, it’s easier for hackers to think that way and eventually guess it. 
• Keep your pin and credit card details sef: It’s better not to store your credit card details on sites that you’re unsure of, the sites can get hacked and it’s even better not to take pictures of your credit card or store them as numbers on your phone.
• Be careful with your Bluetooth Security: This is very underrated, especially in Nigeria, but using an unprotected Bluetooth network can make your phone susceptible to hacking. If you’re not using your Bluetooth, turning it off is a better option.

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Advanced Tips to Prevent Phone Hacking

It’s important to take all these basic steps to ensure your phone is secured, there are advanced tips that can help you keep your phone from hacking as well.

Avoid unsecured public WiFi

Most hackers often target swift locations like restaurants, banks, malls, and other crowded places that use public WiFi, in most cases the WiFi is unsecured. This can make your phone at the mercy of hackers nearby.

Use your two-factor authentication for your social media

Most social media apps now have a 2-factor authentication setting, it allows you to connect either an email or a phone number that can be contacted if anyone tries to login into your accounts. This can help you monitor access to your account and attempted access. 

Turn on Find my phone for your devices

Android and iPhone users have options to enable their phones to get located in case of any theft or mistakes. If your phone gets lost mistakenly you can find it before hackers do and maintain your data and privacy.

You can use antivirus to protect your smartphone

Hackers can gain access through different malware and antivirus can help you find any virus sent to corrupt or gain access to your data without your knowledge. 

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Be careful of emails that you open 

There are phishing attacks everywhere, you need to be careful of links that you click on sites and everything that comes into your mail. Verify very well if it’s from the original mail or just some hackers copying the emails of companies on the internet.

These are just a few of what you can do to keep your smartphone safe. Please note that people discover new tricks every day that can negatively affect the safety of mobile devices and other technological devices as well.