How To Protect Your Privacy On An Android Smartphone

The latest Android phones treat you to a smooth user experience thanks to their Android operating system. Although this operating system brings along a wide range of fun and useful features, it is not fully capable of protecting your privacy in an efficient manner in case you’re not being careful. Therefore, it is important to keep a healthy degree of caution when using your Android phone for everyday activities. Throughout this article, Chinavasion will share with you some basic yet crucial tips on how to protect your privacy on your new Android smartphone.

The first thing to keep in mind is that, when you open up your Android smartphone for the first time, you always should enable its Lock Screen feature. Even though you might not find it a big problem if familiar people and relatives read your messages, internet history, and e-mails – it is important to realize that an unlocked device is every thief’s dream. Therefore, it is highly recommended to enable your lock screen so that, in the case of the unfortunate event of getting your phone stolen, the criminal can not access your personal data.

Source: Popsci

There are plenty different ways to unlock your phone ranging from regular passwords to unlocking patterns. For those of you that find these more traditional methods bothersome, the latest smartphones are packing fingerprint scanners and even iris scanners. These state of the art features make sure that only you can enter your phone and allow you to unlock your Android device in the blink of an eye.

Source: mspoweruser

A second useful method to increase your phone’s security is by granting or revoking service permissions to certain Apps installed on your Android phone. This might sound complicated but luckily it can be achieved by following some simple steps. When installing an Application for the first time, this program will request permission to certain parts of your smartphone that may include your camera or contact list. In case you have blindly granted permission to some previously installed Apps, this can be easily changed back by navigating to the Apps menu of your ‘’Settings’’ App.

It is important to understand, however, that most if not all mobile Apps require at least some permission to personal data in order to work. Therefore, it is highly advised to carefully read the privacy policies before simply pressing ‘’accept’’. This is especially important when you are installing Apps that have been created by unknown developers. It is a well-known fact that App developers love to sell our personal data to third parties such as advertising agencies. Therefore, in case an App from an unknown developer requires access to (for instance) your contacts, it might be worthwhile to find out first what this particular App is planning to do with this information.

Source: iubenda

Finally, it is important to know that protecting your privacy on your Android smartphone is nearly impossible when you have filled up your cell phone with pirated Applications. Not only is the use of pirated Apps illegal and morally wrong, they also often come packed with all types of different malware. This malware that can be found in pirated Applications can be used to steal your private information or to make money off you in any other way.

Source: AndroidCentral

Because of the above-mentioned reasons, it is highly advised to only download and install mobile Apps via legitimate Android App Stores such as Google Play. Although also these App Stores are not completely immune to infect software, downloading through them does immensely decrease your overall risks. Therefore, we would like to urge everybody that is about to install a pirated App or any other unknown app available at an unofficial source to think twice about the possible consequences for your privacy. If you care about protecting your mobile data, the smartest thing to do is to stay away from pirating Apps and installing APKs from unknown sources.