6 Ways to Protect Your Smartphone from Data Theft

 

Confidential information on your phone – be it phone calls, notes or photos – if fallen into the wrong hands, can cause considerable financial loss. Besides being misused for making expensive calls on your behalf, your data can also be put to work by registering you for unwanted services. So, how do you prevent data theft? Let’s look at a few ways by which you can do this:

1. Use your phone’s security features
   Take the time to explore your phone’s settings, specifically its security features. Select the option to instantly lock your phone at the tap of a button – usually the power button. This will give you a step up over potential intruders used to preying on users who only set their phone to lock after 10-30 seconds, which is enough time to steal your personal data. Go to Settings > Security > Automatically lock and set it to 5 seconds. Also, as soon as you get a new phone, set a hard-to-guess pattern, PIN or password. A tool like ‘LastPass’ will help you come up with safe passwords containing just the right mix of alpha-numerics and characters.   
   

   
   
   2.    Lock everything
   Set passwords for each and every app, so that nothing can be accessed without a password. Even for an app as simple as Google Play store (Remember that it holds your profile information for all of Google's other properties such as Gmail as well). ‘App Lock’ on Android can help you manage your passwords for each app fluidly without having to exit its UI. This app lets you add a lock on each of your apps.
   
   
   3.    Install security apps (but prudently)
   Besides App Lock, a number of other apps on Google Play such as Find My Lost Phone or Find My iPhone on the Apple store get to work in the event of you losing your phone. These apps will help remotely locate, lock or erase your phone and even trigger an alarm. Being always connected to the internet will be extremely helpful in locating your phone. Warning: Be careful not to download dubious or untrustworthy apps that could actually steal your data on the pretext of protecting it. Be wary of any links embedded in text messages or emails, just as you would on a desktop.
   
   
   4.    Encrypt data
   This is important especially if you have an SD card. Once encrypted, each time you power on your phone, you’ll need a numeric PIN or password to decrypt it. Accounts, settings, downloaded apps and their data, media and other files can be encrypted. Your data is safe this way, because if you don’t have a password, the only way you can decrypt it is by performing a factory reset, which erases all your data.  Go to Settings > Security > Encrypt phone. Tap the 'Encrypt phone' button. This will take about an hour or more to do, so set aside some time to do this.
   

   

   Since encrypting your phone will take more than hour, it needs to be on a charging point

   
   

   5.   Regularly back up your data

   Make sure your valuable photos, emails, contacts, videos, etc are backed up on a USB drive, external hard drive like Western Digital's or synced on a cloud like Dropbox.

   
   

   6.   Protect your phone itself from theft

   The easiest way to sabotage your data is by being careless with your phone. Even if it’s locked, the thief could see the name on your screen and find out about you through social media platforms, which could help them guess your password/lock code. Most people use their birth years - that’s how easy it is to break into your stolen phone. It’s best to keep the phone in your pocket or bag at all times.