Let Us Keep Our Phone Safe

Audio Version Given Below

Today we live in a “Smart” world. We are surrounded by smart devices like a smartwatch, smart speakers, smart TV and most importantly our smartphone. The phone keeps us connected to the world 24/7 through calls, messages, emails or social media etc. We store so much personal data on our phones. We need to make sure that the data is always safe.

In this article, I will share six tips to ensure the safety of our data stored on the phone.

Granting permissions while installing Apps

We install so many apps on a regular basis on the phone. These apps require permissions to access different features and functions of the phone like Camera, Contacts, Location, Phone’s calling function, Storage etc. We unknowingly grant all the permissions asked by the App so that we can start using the app soon. But this gives access to our phone and data even for those features that are not even required to run the app. The malicious developers can use this to gain unauthorised access to our device.

For example on my phone 63 Apps have asked for “Storage” permission but I have allowed access to only 37 Apps. I have not allowed storage access to those apps which would not require it for regular functioning. Cab-hailing app, food delivery app or a payments app doesn’t require storage permission for functioning. I have not allowed the same, still, they work fine on my phone.

We can also judge about permissions according to the features of the App we use.

For example, I don’t have a registered account on video streaming websites so I don’t download the videos to my phone, hence I don’t need to give it storage access even though it is otherwise legitimate permission.

SMS Access Permission

I have mentioned this point separately because this is the most common permission that is asked by the apps and it can be safely denied for all the third-party apps. Most of the apps genuinely ask this permission but still, this can be avoided. The purpose of SMS access is that the App can read the verification OTP that is sent for the App, that’s it. Even if we don’t give this permission, nothing happens to the functioning of the App. We can read the OTP on our own from the messages and enter it manually wherever required. The purpose is the same.

However, if we freely give the permission here we miss a point that the App then has open access to all our incoming SMS messages including the sensitive messages containing bank data.

For example, I have 18 apps asking for SMS access but I have not allowed access to any third party app. The SMS function is only accessible to the phone’s message app, contacts, antivirus and Android’s services. All the apps work fine on my phone.

Background Data Access

Background Data access gives access to mobile data to the apps so that they can run online even when they are not in active use on screen. This feature is on by default for most of the apps. All the apps don’t require this permission. We can selectively give access only to those apps that actually require the same, depending on the functions of the app. This will save the phone’s battery and data unknown data consumption.

This is not a regular “App permission”.  To turn off this permission we need to go to the Apps menu form settings and open the particular app from there to turn-off the background data option.

Accessing Unknown websites

We all access many websites daily. Some of them might be unknown to us. We might be accessing them in good faith but they may have malicious code in it or it can be a fake website, being a copy of a genuine one.

In order to safeguard ourselves, we should check whether the website is harmful.

I use the VirusTotal website to check unknown links. I enter the website address I want to check in the “URL” tab and  If the website in question is harmful, VirusTotal gives an alert. It is a trusted website to perform an online scan for malware. The company behind VirusTotal is owned by the same company that owns Google.

Accessing unknown Short-links

A short-link is a shortened website address (bit.ly links for example). It is convenient to remember and share a website address. Many short-links are shared across emails and messenger apps. The problem with short-links is that we cannot know the actual website address from a short-link. Unknowingly we may end up clicking on a short-link that takes us to a harmful website.

So I would advise checking short-links before accessing the website. It becomes more important to do so if it has come from an unknown source, for example in a message forwarded on a messenger platform.

I used Unfurlr earlier to check short-links (when I wrote this post) but it seems to not be working anymore. I have found another website Unshorten.it Through such websites, we can know the full website address hidden behind the short-link.

Till now I shared the tips to keep the data and device safe when the phone is in regular use. But the data should also remain safe even when the device is sold or given to someone else, to be used afresh.

Steps to secure data on the sold device

We all sell our old phone in exchange for a new one. When we hand over the same, we just perform a “Factory Reset” and feel assured that the new owner cannot have access to our data anymore. We are wrong here. The data can be recovered through official software with few clicks. To avoid this, I would suggest following the following steps before selling the device:

1.  Uninstall all your apps and remove other Google accounts (other than the backup Google/iCloud account) before performing a factory reset.

2.  Perform a factory reset.

3.  Start the phone again

4.  Fill atleast 95% of  PHONE MEMORY with dummy files: songs etc. that are useless for you.

5.  Factory reset the Phone again.

If you plan to sell the SD Card alongwith the phone, make sure to format it, refill with dummy files and format it again.

Performing Factory reset twice (similarly, formatting the SD Card twice) will make the data recovery by the new owner very difficult as the original data will be overwritten by dummy data. This will ensure the safety of the original data.

At the end, I would just want to say that I have not written this article to scare you all but to make you cautious about the phone’s safety.

Remember, the phone might be “Smart” but we are smarter!!

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I hope you all found this article informative and interesting. I will try to post interesting articles in an easy language in this blog. Please keep following and also do share your thoughts about the blog and suggestions for future posts. You can ask me questions in the comments section or mail them to me at: askme[at]aseemjavablogs[dot]com and I will try to answer them.

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