If you think of your smartphone as
just a phone, rather than a very
powerful mini-computer that
happens to make phone calls, you
may be cruising for a world of
pain.
That’s because the amount of sensitive
data many of us store on our phones is
truly staggering. A smartphone
provides us direct access to our savings
and checking accounts. It may store our
passwords to Facebook, Twitter,
Pinterest, even our email accounts. The
phone numbers and email addresses of
all our friends and colleagues are easy
to find in our contacts directory.
What chaos could ensue if a thief
happens to get his hands on all that
data? And it probably isn’t especially
hard to steal. Any security system is
only as good as its weakest link, and
humans are the weakest link of all.
Despite our best intentions, how many
of us have left our phones — or come
dangerously close to leaving them — in
the backseat of a taxi, sitting on top of
the toilet paper dispenser at our
favorite restaurant, in the seatpocket
of an airliner, on the bar of a tavern, by
the hotel pool, or on a conference table
after a meeting?
Equally unpleasant, your phone could be
hacked or compromised by a virus
while you are doing online banking —
or browsing the Internet at your
favorite Starbucks, at the airport, in a
hotel lobby, or sitting at a table waiting
for your date to arrive.
If you’ve taken the right steps to
protect yourself, losing your phone will
be just an annoyance. But if you’ve
failed to safeguard your phone with a
password, backing up all your data and
installing a program that can wipe the
phone’s data remotely, you are setting
yourself up for a seriously traumatic
event.
To help you prepare your defenses,
here are the 10 dumbest things that
people do (or fail to do) with their
smartphones.
1) No password protection.
If you could “lock” your wallet,
wouldn’t you? Well, why don’t more
folks lock their iPhone or Android
phone? While it is nowhere CLOSE to
being foolproof, a phone password
works like the theory of the burglar
and the dog: If you take that extra step
to protect yourself, most bad guys will
simply move on to the next (easier)
target. It’s a lot easier for a thief to
steal a smartphone with no password
than it is to work on cracking your
phone.
2) Shop online with an Internet
browser instead of a shopping app.
If you have the choice between
shopping at Amazon.com using your
phone’s browser versus Amazon’s app,
use the app! Ditto for eBay, Overstock,
and any big retailer that gives you the
option of using their app. Unlike
browsers, dedicated shopping apps are
designed to ward off phishing and
other kinds of scams. (Before you
download it, just make sure it’s really
their official app!)
3) Remain logged into banking,
PayPal, eBay, and other sensitive
apps.
Would you keep your Macy’s credit
card, Wells Fargo debit card or AmEx on
top of your desk at work? How about
the front seat of your car? I think not.
Then why would you keep your phone
permanently logged into those same
accounts? When you finish banking or
shopping, make sure to log out. And
NEVER click the box asking the app to
save your user ID or password. Yes, it’s
a pain in the b*tt to log in every time.
We all tend to value convenience over
security. But if a thief gets a hold of a
phone that is already logged into
sensitive accounts — especially if that
phone has no password — it could spell
financial disaster. And remember,
turning off your devices every now
and then can be a good idea.
4) Automatically connect to any
available WiFi connections
.
Whether you are using your laptop,
tablet or smartphone, switch off the
feature that connects to nearby WiFi
networks automatically. Otherwise,
hackers with the right software can
easily hack your phone, as security
experts have warned us for more than
a decade.
5) Leave Bluetooth connections
open.
Bluejacking, Bluesnarfing, Bluebugging.
These are all words that describe a
hacker exploiting the open Bluetooth
connection on your phone. While this
type of hack requires the intruder to be
relatively close to you (less than 30 feet
away), the intrusion can occur
undetected in a busy airport, hotel
lobby, restaurant, or at a conference.
6) Fail to properly purge data from
old smartphones.
This is a very common mistake. Many
people fail to remove sensitive,
personal data from their smartphone
before taking it out of service,
donating it or selling it. Short of
physically shredding your device
(which is the only surefire way to
delete all your data in an irretrievable
manner). Deleting data before getting
rid of your phone is simple common
sense.
7) Download “free” apps that aren’t
actually free.
Some Apps that call themselves “free”
are actually little more than thinly-
disguised data thieve

Good info!