Ensuring that you take precautions to protect your computerised security can reduce the risk of your devices being compromised. Understanding that you likely have sensitive information on your phone that would put you in jeopardy if it fell into the wrong hands should inspire you to be more proactive with the security of your devices.
Why Device Security Is Important For Mobile Phones
Nowadays most people use their mobile phones more frequently than desktop computers or laptops, which means that they likely have a lot of the same information as your desktop or laptop. If you understand the importance already of securing your other devices but your mobile phone security is lacking you run the risk of having your sensitive information stolen. Things such as passwords for different websites such as social media, email or banking could be at risk. If you are financially impacted by a digital scam you should contact investment fraud lawyers who will be able to help you maximise the chances of you getting your money back.
In fact, unauthorised users are more likely to access mobile devices over other larger devices that you may have; this is because we tend to take our mobile devices everywhere we go which means we have a greater chance of losing our mobiles. This means that your mobile phone may be found by an unscrupulous person who may attempt to steal important information from your phone, ensuring that your mobile phone has security procedures in place such as passwords, pattern lock, fingerprint or facial recognition.
Different Ways To Secure Your Phone
- Password: Passwords are the most common way to secure your mobile phone, you may have heard it is a good idea to add a combination of letters and numbers to your password, but whilst this approach may be difficult to guess it still leaves your phone vulnerable towards brute force attacks. Instead, you should consider a password phrase such as “can’t hack me” or “readysaltedcrisps”.
- Pattern Lock: Most commonly people use either an E or an F pattern or a star or square which can be easily guessed leaving your phone vulnerable to being hacked. Pattern locks are not the most secure in general, but if you insist on picking a pattern lock you should connect dots that are not immediately next to each other and cross the pattern over several times.
- Fingerprint: Fingerprints are relatively secure as they cannot be guessed or used by another person other than the person who registered their fingerprint. However, fingerprints are not completely secure as the fingerprint data is still secured on your mobile phone which means that hackers may still gain access to it. But the good news is that your phone encrypts the fingerprint data meaning that even if hackers get access to the data it will be unreadable for most unless they are exceptionally sophisticated at hacking. This whole process would take a long time so they would really need to have a reason to get into your phone.
- Facial Recognition: Conventionally facial recognition uses the mobile phone camera to recognise distinguishable features of a person’s facial features, such as nose and eye placement; from this, the mobile phone can decide if the person that is holding the phone has a facial structure that matches, if this is the case the phone will allow the person to access the content within the phone. Another way your phone can recognise your face is through infrared based detection which takes a photo of your face through infrared light, an advantage to this method over camera recognition is the fact that you can unlock your phone in low light settings.
- Encrypt Your Phone: You can encrypt the files on your phone to protect their confidentiality if they fall into the wrong hands, as any encrypted files will be unreadable to anyone who does not have the encryption password or key. You can encrypt your phone by searching for it in the security settings of your phone.
- Use A VPN: If you ever connect your phone to unsecured wifi such as the wifi that is available in restaurants, pubs and transport hubs you run the risk of the data traffic between your phone and the wireless network being breached. Hackers can use this to access sensitive information on your phone and even cause damage to your phone. Using a VPN can prevent this by masking your phone IP address from outside intrusion.
Social Engineering
Social engineering in information security is where an individual uses deception or manipulation to encourage individuals to divulge confidential personal information. Using this information a person with bad intentions can gain access to a computer or mobile device and steal information or cause damage to the device. Worryingly the individual who is doing this does not even have to communicate with you, as you could download a dodgy app from your phone app store which asks for lots of permissions it really has no business having; but since people often accept and allow apps to have whatever permissions they want just so that they can access their new app quicker, hackers are able to exploit and gain access to peoples mobile phones. Make sure you check what permissions apps are requesting to help avoid this happening to you.
Additionally, some apps you can download from your phone app store are actually fake apps, that pretend to be fully functioning and useful apps but instead of installing an extra piece of useful functionality onto your phone, they download a harmful dose of malware, which could allow hackers to gain access to your mobile phone. To spot fake apps you should look for:
- Apps With Bad Reviews: Apps with bad reviews may signify more than just a bad app, they may show that the app doesn’t do what it had promised. This means it should be avoided anyway, but this is a clear sign that shows that it could be a fake app.
- Apps With Spelling Mistakes: Apps with spelling mistakes either on the app itself or on the promotional material on the app store should be avoided as professional and legitimate app developers almost always ensure that they proofread their content, hackers can be more careless.
Conclusion
There are multiple ways you can protect your personal information on your phone, but ensuring that you have some sort of screen lock to help prevent people from accessing sensitive information on your phone should be at the top of your list.
