In the quest to gain more data to drive decisions in marketing, user experience, and more, companies are now gathering more data from consumers. However, data may not have to be stored in their servers to achieve this. Instead, it may be stored in the smart devices of consumers, influencing their experience. Besides this, consumers and businesses alike are now known to store their valuable information in smart devices as it’s more convenient.
Unfortunately, on the other hand, this also means that cybercriminals are more motivated to gain this data. As a result, hacking and cybercrime has become more prevalent. They may use methods such as malware, ransomware, phishing, and others. When they do succeed, businesses lose money and reputation while consumers risk fraud incidents, fraud, and violation of privacy.
As such, learning how to protect yourself online has become especially important now. This means being a smarter technology user, especially when using your smartphone. As such, if you wish to be safer online, consider reading the following to learn how to browse safely on your mobile phone:
Use A VPN
The first step to browsing safely online on your mobile phone would be to consider getting a VPN application. A VPN is a virtual private network, and it’s a tool that helps you hide your real location when you’re online. It does this by masking your IP address and acting as an intermediary and rerouting your traffic. If this interests you, then consider this article to learn more about VPN for Android devices.
In doing so, you can convince platforms online along with others trying to track you down that you’re in a different city or even country. In fact, aside from being safer online, others use this to access geo-restricted content. An example would be online streaming platforms where you may have limited options for movies and shows to watch.
Fortunately, there are plenty of VPN service providers available online. If you want to learn more about these services to see which is best for you, consider reading articles such as an overview of NordVPN.
Beware Of Suspicious Links And Sites
To compromise your mobile phone’s security, sometimes all it takes is a single click on a link. As such, it’s important that you learn how to detect suspicious links and sites to avoid being scammed or hacked.
The first way to detect these suspicious sites and links would be to utilize anti-virus applications, secure browsers, and VPNs. This is a great method because you’ll be automating the process of detecting these suspicious sites. The apps will simply notify and warn you that the site appears to be potentially dangerous.
However, there’s also the possibility that technology may fail or you’d rather learn how to identify these on your own. As such, consider looking at aspects such as the URL before clicking. Reliable and secure sites often have an ‘s’ after the ‘http’ in the link address. Basically, you should see ‘https’ instead of ‘http’ as this indicates that it has an SSL certificate, which means it’s secure.
Aside from this, consider checking the domain name of the URL as anything different may indicate that it’s a replica of the site that you’re trying to reach. If it’s not the correct domain name yet the interface appears to be the same, a cyberhacker may be using this to commit a phishing attack. A phishing attack refers to a method used by cybercriminals to steal your account information. They can make it look like you’re logging into the official site when you’re just actually giving them your username and password. Even worse, these details that you’re giving may be your credit card details and more.
Know The Signs Of An Infected Device
That said, given the value of consumers’ sensitive data, hackers are continually trying to find smarter ways to get into your devices and steal your information. Furthermore, there’s no full-proof way to prevent hacking on your devices. Therefore, consider having a plan for when your phone does get hacked to mitigate the consequences of being a victim to cyberattacks.
In devising a plan, the first step would be to recognize when your device has been infiltrated. Consider looking for the following signs that you’ve been hacked:
- Apps appear that you never downloaded
- Intrusive pop-ups
- Battery draining faster than usual
- Increase in data usage
- Phone’s performance has degraded
- Overheating
Besides this, consider having a backup of your files. This is so that in the event of a breach, you can format and reset your device to get rid of the malware without worrying about data loss.
Conclusion
Data security has become important for both consumers and businesses over the years as they use digital devices more frequently. In these devices, you may store financial information, account passwords and usernames, and more. As such, you’ll want to protect these to prevent possible cases of theft, fraud, and violation of privacy. Fortunately, as cybercriminals have gotten smarter, so have users and cybersecurity technology. That said, hopefully the guide above has helped you become a smarter tech user and protect yourself better online.
