We come across news of ransomware attacks, data leaks and privacy breaches every other day, so it is not surprising that people are always looking for ways to secure their android devices. The good news is that you can tighten up the security of your android phone by taking a few simple steps.
To secure your device against malware or ransomware attacks, Google offers a few security features on android itself. It recently rolled out the Google Play protect feature for all android devices running Google play services version 11 and above. This is the latest security feature on android; available by going to settings, google and selecting security. It scans the apps on your device to make sure that there aren’t any security threats. If you want to improve your security further, you should enable the improved app detection feature because it lets play protect scan unknown apps downloaded from sources other than the play store for better detection of any malicious code.
Also make sure you do not open any suspicious links or emails and don’t download apps or any other content from unreliable sources. If you follow this. You should have no problems at all.
Make sure to install the latest software updates available for your device because it might feature a security badge for the latest malware or ransomware out there.
Secure your data: You are wrong if you think that you are a casual user and do not have any sensitive data on your phone. Everyone has important data on their phone, and for this reason, android allows you to encrypt your device so make sure you enable the encryption on your phone by going to settings, security and tapping the encrypt phone option. This action encrypts your accounts, settings, downloaded apps, app data, media and other files. Once your device is encrypted and you have set up a screen lock on your phone, your data will only be decrypted when you enter the pin or passcode. You must be thinking how is that different from your regular pin or passcode protection? Well, the data saved on an android device can still be accessed through various tools even if you have set up a lock. On the other hand, if you have encrypted your android device, your data will only be accessed if you enter a pin or passcode. Before you encrypt your device, please note that this action might slow down your phone just a bit and you cannot disable encryption without doing a factory reset. Another thing you can do is to make sure to store important data in the internal storage of your device. This is because external storage drives use a mixture of EXD and other system. So when you can connect your device to a PC, the applications on the PC have blocked level access to files on the SD card.
While securing your android device against malware is important, securing your privacy is also very important. Make sure you lock your phone properly by using the fingerprint scanner or pattern lock option on your device. It is also advisable to disable smart lock. Because even though it is a handy feature, it unlocks your phone automatically in some situations which might result in someone accessing your phone and getting through your privacy. If you plan to hand your phone over to other people to use sometimes, then make sure you create a separate user account to switch to. Also, enable two step verifications on all your social media accounts.
Go to Google security check up page ( https://myaccount.google.com/
Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson
