Smartphones have become ubiquitous in our digital society. These powerful little devices take our computers out of our homes, stick them in our pockets, and clip them to our belts. As a result, the same hexes and banes of the PC universe will begin to follow us into our daily lives. Save yourself a lot of grief by developing a series of sanitary habits when dealing with your smartphone. You wash your hands after using the restroom, look both ways before crossing the street; it’s time to start making sure you use a strong password, and double-check downloads on your smartphone as well.
The smartphone security company, Lookout Mobile Security, released this list of tips recently to educate users on how to begin to be more security conscious about their mobile experience:
1. Set a password. One of the most common challenges for smart phone owners is losing the phone and all the personal data on it. Setting a strong password for your phone and enabling the screen auto-lock time to be five minutes is the simplest way to keep your personal information private during this busy season.
2. Download the updates for your phone. Always take the extra time to download software updates. Often, they include patches to security flaws recently found in the software. Just like a desktop or laptop computer, staying up to date is your first line of defense from hackers and viruses.
3. Treat your phone like your PC. As phones become more powerful and consumers do more with them, they become more attractive targets for malicious attacks. Protect yourself and your private data from malware, spyware and malicious apps by downloading a security app.
4. Use discretion when downloading apps. One of the most exciting things to do with a new smart phone is explore all the great applications you can download onto it. As you begin to explore, make sure you download responsibly. Only download apps from sites you trust, check the app’s rating and read the reviews to make sure they’re widely used and respected.
5. Pay attention to the private data accessed by apps. Applications have the capability to access a lot of information about you. When you install an app, take the time to read the data and personal information that it needs to access. Whether it is access to your location, your personal information or text messages, it should make sense that the application needs access to those capabilities.
6. Download a "find your phone" app. No matter how diligent you are about keeping your phone on you at all times, you’re bound to lose it once, or it may even get stolen at some point. Download an app that helps you find your phone in case it is lost or stolen. Make sure you can remotely lock your phone if it is lost or stolen.
7. Exercise caution with links in SMS messages. Smishing, or a combination of SMS texting and phishing, is when scammers send you a text to a malicious website or ask you to enter sensitive information. Don’t click on links in text messages or emails if you don’t know the sender or they look suspicious. Trust your instincts.
8. On Public WiFi, limit email, social networking and only window shop. Public WiFi networks have become ubiquitous, but unfortunately securing the websites you may access haven’t. Many websites, e-mail programs, instant messaging programs and social networking sites are not entirely safe to browse or access from a public Wifi network.
9. If a website ever asks you to enter your credit card information, you should automatically look to see if the web address begins with "https". On unsecured networks (those that begin with only "http") … a hacker could easily steal information like usernames, passwords and credit card numbers.
10. Enable a Wipe feature on your phone. If you find yourself (or your phone) in a difficult situation, and you won’t be able to get your phone back, a Wipe application will clear all the data so your private information won’t fall into the wrong hands. If you can, try to download an app where you can wipe your SD card too.
[...] Worse, a lot of smartphone owners still look at these mobile devices as phones and not miniature computers. The average smartphone is a very powerful little computer with a lot of capability behind it and a lot of us store a great deal of personal information in them that could readily ruin us if it were to suddenly become public. Malware for smartphones is going to come out of the app ecology, after all, the best place for viruses to proliferate is going to be in the jungle of social interaction between phones. For those so interested, here’s a short list of tips for keeping your smartphone more secure. [...]
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