Free Steps to Protect Smartphones from Online Fraud

Lock your phone with a password

A strong password should be the first port of call for securing your smartphone – If there is no password to compete with and your phone falls into the wrong hands, all your data and information is immediately available to anyone. 

Make sure that your device locks automatically

Following on from securing your phone with a password, it is important that you have the settings set so the phone locks within a short period of time. If your phone isn’t set to lock automatically within 10 minutes of misplacing your phone, an unlocking password isn’t even going to get the chance to deter anyone if picked up within those 10 minutes. It’s therefore advisable to have an automatic lock of your phone of 1 minute or lower.

Be cautious of links you receive via email or text

Simply clicking on a link sent to your phone through an email or text could be enough to allow unwanted items onto your phone – known as ‘SmiShing’ (or SMS phishing). This makes use of scammy text messages to infect your device or steal your data. Avoid this by being aware of whether you know the sender of the message and whether there are potentially threatening links in the message.

Turn off automatic Wi-Fi connection

For a lot us it is a force of habit – leaving the Wi-Fi setting set to automatically discover when leaving your home. However, this leaves your phone open to potential threats while it is looking for a Wi-Fi to connect to. The act of doing this from your phone can broadcast information of your phones preferred Wi-Fi network which in turn can be imitated to create a malicious wireless router that appears the same as your home network

Turn off Bluetooth when not in use

Much like Wi-Fi, we also tend to leave our mobile phones Bluetooth setting on, regularly leaving it active while roaming around. However, this is another route that can be used to access personal information stored on your phone. Ensure that this isn’t a way in for hackers by turning your Bluetooth off when you’re not using it.

Be careful of theft in public places

Following on from securing your phone with a password, it is important for you to have the settings set so the phone locks within a short period of time. If your phone isn’t set to lock automatically within 10 minutes of misplacing your phone, an unlocking password isn’t even going to get the chance to deter anyone if picked up within those 10 minutes. It’s therefore advisable to have an automatic lock of your phone of 1 minute or lower.

For more, please see our site at www.totaldigitalsecurity.com