"If after installing an app, you notice your battery life decreasing faster than usual, that may be a tell-tale sign that the app is up to no good and is likely operating in the background," Liberow said. Shlomie Liberow, a technical program manager and security guru at HackerOne, said that drastic changes in your device's battery life are another red flag, since malicious apps can constantly run in the background. In addition to paying attention to permissions that you grant to an app, it's also important to monitor how your phone behaves after you download it. "Why would a calculator need to see your contact list and location? Requests like that should ring some alarm bells." " you're downloading a simple app for a pocket calculator for instance and the app is requesting access to your contact list and location," said Stephen Hart, CEO of Cardswitcher. An app asking for access to data that isn't relevant to its function is a major warning sign. You should also ask yourself whether it makes sense for an app to ask for certain permissions. One tip that almost all of the experts mentioned was double checking which permissions the app asks for. Regardless of how frequently you plan to use a VPN, it's important to read through the service agreement so you know what data might be collected and where it will be stored. The Apple App Store and the Google Play Store have dozens of VPN apps that are free, but some have questionable practices, so take care. When looking for a provider, it's important to research the company to find out if it's well-known and trustworthy. Here's everything to know about VPNs.įor our purposes, it can shield you from having to get on a free public network that others can use to gain access to your phone. They can also mask your data transmissions, avoid filtering and censorship on the internet and allow you to access a wider variety of content around the world. A virtual private network can keep your data from being snooped on by other people lurking on the same public network. If you're going to get on a public Wi-Fi network while on your phone instead of using your mobile data, experts suggest using a VPN. We recommend one called Bitwarden, but there are many other password managers to choose from. Some will even generate passwords for you. With a password manager, each one of your accounts can have a different, complex and hard-to-crack password. If one account is compromised in a data breach, all the accounts are compromised. It's also best to avoid using the same password for multiple accounts. While apps like Google Chrome and Samsung's proprietary phone app will offer to save passwords for you, security experts always go to the password manager. They also generate and remember strong passwords. Password managers keep all your passwords in one encrypted and password-protected app. This is where a password manager app comes in handy. The downside is that these complex passwords are much harder to remember. A series of letters, numbers and symbols in no particular order is less likely to be found in the dictionary and harder for a computer to crack with brute force. The strongest passwords are random strings of characters. This Privacy-Focused Browser Stops Websites Tracking You Even Better Than Chrome Does.Apple AirTags Can Be Used to Track You.How to Turn Off Find My iPhone in 4 Quick Steps (and When You Should Do It).We talked to digital security experts about the data privacy and security steps they wish more people would take when using smartphone apps. But there's more you can do to protect your data privacy and improve your smartphone security. There are ways to find and delete the data Google has saved about you, along with some new privacy settings in Android and iOS to stop apps from tracking you. With that in mind, it's far past time to heighten your protection. An app that behaves well today could turn into a bad actor tomorrow if the company behind the app is sold, changes its direction or winds up compromised because of a flaw. There's no way to tell at face value if an app is tracking you ( even when you say stop), and no protection is foolproof in today's world of ever-evolving technology. Many of us rely on iPhone or Android apps for entertainment, navigation, exercise and social networking, but these apps are notoriously tough to trust. Each year, digital security becomes more important.
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