With the amount of SmartPhone use in today’s world, people are doing almost as much on their phones as they do on laptops and desktop computers. This includes email, web surfing as well as shopping and banking online. There are apps to even scan cheques with your smart phone and deposit into your bank account.
Some of you might think “Wow! Cool! I didn’t know you can do that!”, while others like me are saying “There’s another door for a hacker!”. Many ignorant people are thinking it’s safer to do banking on their phone than the computer. Wrong!
If you can understand and remember this basic principle, this will go a long way. Viruses are programs that tell the device it is running on to do something. When I say “Device”, a device can be your computer, laptop, Smartphone or tablet. Even the Smart Watches that are out now. Even Smart Cars which is the future. Someone already hacked Google’s smart car! Any computer type device that runs software of any kind can get a virus of some sort.
Now hopefully if you understand that, you now know that you need to have some sort of virus protection on your Smart Phone. Currently you wouldn’t be doing as much on a Smart Watch or even a Smart Car as you would on your Smart Phone, so you may have a hard time finding virus protection for those devices, but Smart Phones will have a few choices available in your App Store. Sign into your devices App Store, and do a search for antivirus.
The pictures in this article are for AVG’s FREE antivirus for the Android smart phone which is extremely popular. As you set it up for the first time and as you do the occasional manual update, you will see a screen like this showing you what you can get with the pro edition.
Camera Trap is very cool if someone steals your phone. You can get pictures sent to you of who has your phone.
App lock can lock down your apps with passwords.
Device lock can lock your phone if the SIM card is replaced.
App Backup allows you to backup your apps to your SD card.
As long as you at least have the free version of the virus protection, you can get free updates and automatic scans of your phone for any infections you may have gotten from an email you opened on your phone or websites you surfed.
So go to the App store now on your phone, install antivirus protection and run a scan. Also if you have tablets, do the same thing. Tell your friends, it’s free and it could protect you from identity theft or someone hacking your bank account if you bank online, or credit cards if you shop on your phone.