Compromised accounts, phone info tracking, reports of major breaches – the news of risks in digital security and privacy emerge all the time.  The goal may be identity theft, financial gain, account hacking, or any unknown intents for ill-gained information.  The average computer user has some idea of how to protect their computers by now, but that doesn’t apply everywhere. The fact is with more and more information going to web-based environments and new means of access that includes smartphones and tablets, users have to learn and often re-learn some basic protection skills.  It is arguable that due to convenience, that smartphones in general may be configured by a user towards this and actually have more personal information on it than your average computer – everything from bank accounts, email, personal pics, contact information and more.

First things first – there is no way to prevent your account from being attacked by a hacker if that account is sitting say at Yahoo or iTunes or something.  What we’re talking about are common sense steps that the average person can do to protect their device from someone that may happen upon the device or has social hacking skills and can get to your information starting with just a little bit of knowledge.

Email passwords – within your email lies the portal through which you can reset most of your other account passwords – think of EBay, LinkedIn, Facebook, banking accounts and more.  So the tale here is make that password as complicated as you can think and not something you have to reset.  Most security constructs won’t let you use your username as the password or common words, along with other security requirements.  If you have lost or misplaced your device, probably one of the first things you should think about is changing the password for your main email account from another system.  Change your password occasionally.  Use common sense and don’t use your dog’s name as your password.  Don’t use the same password for all your accounts, while doing so may make your life a bit easier, in the wrong hands it makes theirs easier, not yours.

Practice sensible app behaviors.  That free app sure sounded good didn’t it – until you started getting strange emails, texts, and strange phone behavior, the list of issues this introduces could be quite long.  Not to pick on free applications per se’, the bottom line is that you have to be careful on what you are installing by considering the source, consider what the application does, what the application accesses, and don’t just install things and forget that they’re on the phone – do an routine inventory of what is installed on your phone.

Prepare for the inevitable- tablets and smartphones are by nature easy to lose, and targets for theft.  There are a number of applications that cover both malware and theft recovery.  Lookout for Android is an early example of such a device protection app.  Many apps have remote lock capability, remote wipe, remote device mapping, some even can be set to take and quietly send pictures of the perpetrator of a stolen device from a front-facing camera.  If you are returning a phone or passing it on, donating it – whatever, be sure to wipe your device of everything you can think of.

In all, with a little work and awareness of our interactions online and from our personal devices, users can reduce the risk of identity exposure, account hijacking, malware and so on.