Smartphones, tablets, and other smart devices we use today are small computers themselves. This has its advantages: you can have the office on your mobile, be connected at all times with your friends and family, or check your bank accounts whenever and wherever you want.
But, on the other hand, it carries the dangers of adding third-party applications and programs with the risk of making devices more vulnerable. Thus, if we neglect security to protect the smart devices, there is the possibility of malware and intrusions appearing on our devices.
The term malware is widely used in the technology community to refer to a variety of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software, such as viruses, Trojans, worms, most rootkits, scareware, spyware, intrusive adware, and all kinds of programs malicious and undesirable.
In recent years, with the development of mobile phones and application markets, malware has multiplied exponentially. From permission confirmation on dubious apps to a phishing scam sent via email, to a virus infecting your device, there are plenty of threats that can put your devices and the sensitive data it stores at risk.
We constantly worry about keeping our mobile and smart devices safe from any screen breakage, but do we protect the data stored on our devices in the same way?
Next, we give you some recommendations to protect your devices and keep your personal information safe and protect your mobile from spies. They are very easy, take notes!
How to know your device has a virus?
When you install any malicious apps, the virus or malware can keep a low profile before starting to take action and infect your devices. Following are some of the common things to notice to know if your device has malware or virus.
– The bill for your mobile phone is expensive and unusually high
– Increased data usage
– The device heats up or slows down quickly
– The battery of your device lasts less time
– Some apps start crashing frequently
Tips to protect devices from malware and viruses:
-
Be aware of phishing:
One of the security gaps that cybercriminals take advantage of the most is the “false” authentication screens of online services, mainly banking, that we use from the web browser of our mobile. This practice, known as phishing, seeks to capture our usernames and passwords to impersonate our identity later.
To avoid falling for this practice, pay attention and only access the official websites and apps of your banks, insurers, and, in general, any other service that stores our bank accounts, credit cards, and personal data.
Avoid clicking on untrustworthy links that come from emails or private messages from Twitter, Facebook, or any other environment that can be hacked. Also, do not pay attention to wonderful promotions that promise you impossible prizes on behalf of a third party just for providing your data.
Besides, do not accept invitations or friend requests from unknown persons. Before accepting such requests from someone you have never met in real life, it is advisable to check his/her identity on Nuwber.
-
Use only trusted apps:
In the case of Android mobiles, it is important that you only install apps that are in the Google Play store. In this sense, Google works every day to offer us tested and reliable applications that do not contain any type of malicious code.
The option to only install apps from trusted sources is enabled by default on our Android phones. To check if it is correctly activated on your smartphone, go to ‘Settings’ > ‘Security’ from its menu and verify that you have unchecked the “Unknown sources” option.
-
Install an antivirus:
Although there are experts who tell us that it is not necessary to install an antivirus for mobile phones, it is worth installing protection on our Android to add another layer of security against external threats in the form of phishing, malware, and telephone spam or spyware.
To install a reliable antivirus solution on your mobile, go to the Google Play or Apple Store, and enter the text “free antivirus” in the search engine. Among all the options that appear, choose the one that is most popular and with the most downloads and the one that is best rated (4.5 stars and above).
-
Control the permissions of your apps:
Each application that we install on our Android has personalized access permissions to certain functions of our smartphone: access to the camera, microphone, GPS, contact list, etc. When we install an app, in a pop-up window we will see what permissions are requested for the application in question.
At this point, to protect the mobile, it is important to spend a few seconds assessing whether or not we grant access permissions, and if any specific one does not really need those permissions. For example, if a photo retouching application requests permission to access your images, it would be “normal”, but you may not like it to access your contact list, so you could block this point during the installation of the app.
-
Make backups:
If you make backup copies of the contents of your mobile frequently, it may be easier for you to recover your personal information, photos, videos, and contacts in case of loss, theft, or contamination by malware.
Use Google’s automatic tool to back up your personal information and files (‘Settings’ > ‘Accounts’ > ‘Google’) and Google Photos to sync your photos.
-
Don’t be fooled by fake security apps:
Do not trust websites that try to convince you to install a security app because your phone is infected. If you click, you will most likely download a malicious file or app that is actually a fake antivirus.
-
Lock the mobile screen:
Don’t forget to protect your phone by locking the screen with a PIN, pattern, facial recognition, fingerprint, etc. So you’ll prevent anyone from accessing the information you save on your phone if you lose it or it’s stolen.
Although there are many threats, there is one thing you should not forget: the security of your device is mainly in your hands. Follow the above-given easy tips and you will be able to protect your devices from malware and viruses easily and efficiently!
