Remember These 6 Simple Things To Keep Hackers Away From Your Phone

A new loophole has recently been found in Android, which allows attackers to take over a phone simply with a physical tap. It took advantage of a bug in the NFC file sharing tech of the operating system called Android Beam. Google has already fixed this flaw, so get the update as fast as possible to protect yourself.

There are a bunch of ways for a hacker to take over your smartphone and sometimes you can’t do anything to stop that from happening. However, by taking some simple precautions, you can likely save yourself from those hacks.

1. Don’t give your phone to a person you can’t trust

Clear as day, you cannot trust everyone, but sometimes you let your guard down and put your trust in the wrong people. And installing an app on your phone then hiding it from your sight is a piece of cake once someone has it in their hands. So apart from acquaintances, you should be careful when having your handset repaired too. Unless you bring it to dedicated customer care, you should stick around while it’s being fixed. And after getting the phone back, you should check immediately for suspicious programs or apps that run in the background.

2. Stay updated

Keep your smartphone update automatically as these often include important security patches and bug fixes. Also, if you read news about a newly discovered hack, it’s likely that companies have fixed it or will be able to fix it, which means you should manually scan for updates.

3. Don’t trust a message from a stranger

The most common scams involve emails and messages, in which attackers trick you into clicking a link attached in a message or email, giving you some important reason to do so. Such attackers may pretend to come from your bank, a contest you won, or the Income Tax Department.

4. Don’t buy weird messages from your friends

If you get a message from a friend and find it odd, hold back and don’t click on any links included in it immediately. In this case, your friend’s account may have been manipulated to send you that message.

Do everything you can to verify that’s truly your friend sending that message and that the link is safe.

5. Check shortened links before clicking on them

Normally, you can get some idea about a link buy reading what’s in it, hence you can decide whether you want to click on it or not. But shortened links prevent you from doing this. In this case, you can use tools for expanding the URL or checking the link for malware.

6. Protect your passwords

You should have a different password for each site you sign up for regardless of how hard it is to remember all of them. If you use one password for all of your accounts and attackers get that password, you’re done.

And never, ever use simple passwords like 123456, which are too easy to guess with a couple of trials. This causes damages just as much as using one password for all accounts.