How to protect your Mobile Phone from Hackers and Thieves

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Let’s cut to the chase:

  • Regularly back up the phone’s data! If this is done every day, you won’t have to worry much about losing important information if something happens to the phone—such as a ransomware attack.
  • Keep the phone’s software and applications updated.
  • Delete apps you no longer use, as these can reveal your GPS coordinates and garner data about you.
  • Never post about your vacation while you’re on vacation.

6WBut there’s more:

  • Employ the device’s password-protect function (which may even be a biometric like a fingerprint).
  • If the phone has more than one type of protection, use both.  You just never know if the phone will get lost or stolen.

Public Wi-Fi

  • Never use public Wi-Fi, such as at airports and coffee houses, to make financial transactions.
  • Though public Wi-Fi is cheaper than a cellular connection, it comes with risks; hackers can barge in and “see” what you’re doing and snatch sensitive information about you.
  • If you absolutely must conduct sensitive transactions on public Wi-Fi, use a virtual private network or a cellular data network.

And yet there’s more:

  • Switch off the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when not in use. Otherwise, your physical location can be tracked because the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are constantly seeking out networks to connect to.
  • Make sure that any feature that can reveal your location is turned off. Apps do collect location information on the user.
  • What are the privacy settings of your social media accounts set to? Make sure they’re set to prevent the whole world from figuring out your physical location. This is not paranoia. As long as you’re not hearing voices coming from your heating vents, you’re doing fine.
  • Are you familiar with the remote wipe feature of your mobile device? This allows you to wipe out its contents/files without the phone being in your hand—in the event it’s lost or stolen. Enable it immediately.
  • And also enable the “find my phone” feature. You may have lost it inside your car’s crevasses somewhere.

Robert Siciliano CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com, personal security and identity theft expert and speaker is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen. See him knock’em dead in this identity theft prevention video.