How to make your smartphone private

Whether itā€™s an Apple iPhone or an Android device there is always a snooping threat looming on the users as firms like Google or Facebook refuse to give ownership to their users over data share.

Although Apple Inc promotes that it sells products and services as per its consumerā€™s privacy, there is no guarantee that the tech giant has and will keep its word.

Technically speaking, smartphone makers, app developers; social media firms should first take the permission of their users before accessing their user content. But in practice that doesnā€™t seem to be happening- as per a recent report of New York Times titled ā€œYour apps know where you were last night and theyā€™re not keeping it as a secretā€.

1.) Security experts say that the best way to keep your smartphone private is to turn off location services on your iPhone or Android Device and ensure that you are allowing an app to use your location only if it clearly needs the info to function, like Google maps.

2.) Better to avoid apps such as Facebook mobile, which dig deeply into your phone for as much personal information as possible.

3.) Start using a browser which has an incognito mode like Firefox instead of Chrome

4.) Keep a tab on your phoneā€™s default settings and ensure that they never reveal more info about you than you prefer

What happens if companies start accessing more data than needed?

Its common senseā€¦.they sell that data to 3rd party firms like marketing companies. For example, by collecting your location details through your mobile phoneā€™s GPS feature, tech companies like Apple, Google and Facebook can sell that info to 3rd parties which then bombard you with ads of their products and services based on your location. Sometimes, the location feature can send you into deep trouble if a government starts to do invasive surveillance by tracking down your activities like how China is doing in real time these days.

Hope this articles helps the privacy seekers..!

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Naveen Goud
Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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