With all the data that we now store on our smartphones, it is obvious that we must also protect them, not only from home spies, but also from people who can find the lost cell phone, from those who steal it and from those who try, through external attacks and attempts (now on the agenda) to steal data from our phone. Privacy is more and more a luxury that must be preserved and protected if you don't want to be caught up in every marketing campaign on the internet and also in real life.
Anyone who has a Samsung, Asus, LG, Nexus, Huawei or any other Android phone must know and must use all the options and tools for protecting the privacy of data saved on the mobile phone and the apps used .
READ ALSO: Securing the data of an Android mobile phone in 10 ways
1) Lock screen
The lock screen is the first line of defense to protect your phone.
To prevent anyone from picking up the phone and reading our messages or looking at our photos, we must always set up a lock screen with password or PIN or sequence to draw.
To set up screen lock protection, just go to Settings -> Security -> Screen lock and choose to protect your device with a password, PIN code, face recognition or by activating the fingerprint scanner if it is integrated in the phone.
All the options of the Android screen lock and their effectiveness have been explained in another article.
2) Encrypt the phone
Encryption makes the information and data of the phone illegible, if the phone is locked, by whoever has the password.
Even when it is lost or stolen, the cell phone memory is absolutely protected and almost impossible to read even for the best hacker.
As already explained, it is convenient to enable Android encryption from the Settings menu -> Security -> Encryption .
Encryption also forces you to set up a lock screen.
3) Don't share the location
One of the most useful tools of a smartphone is the ability to recognize our position, so as to use it on apps such as the GPS navigator.
However, the location is also used by other apps, for example, to provide us with localized search results, for weather information, for the day's news and other things.
We know well now, as written some time ago, that the places we go to are registered on Android which saves all the movements
To disable this feature, you need to go to Settings> Google and disable location history in the Geolocation options.
In addition, in Android Settings -> Geolocation, always change and keep the low-power mode to save battery, using the High precision mode only if you use Google Maps or another navigator app.
4) Ads settings
Advertising displayed on the internet or in free apps is customized according to the interests shown by the person.
For example, if you search for machines, your cell phone stores this information and uses it to display appropriate advertisements for machines and cars.
This monitoring of the use that is made of the mobile phone can be disabled, for privacy, in Settings> Google> Ads .
5) Data collected by Google
Android belongs to Google and the use of each smartphone is linked to a Google account.
To check the Google account settings from your mobile phone and know what data is stored and shared, there is a set of options in Settings -> Google> Personal info and Privacy .
If there is no Google section in the settings, on smartphones with a version earlier than Android 6, search for Google Settings among the installed apps.
NOTE: As seen in another article, there are also other Android settings hidden in the Google app that have to do with user privacy.
6) Do not install applications externally from the Play Store
The Google Play Store is the official application store, where there are only controlled and approved apps, theoretically safe (although some exceptions can escape).
There are also other app stores for Android, some regular like the Amazon one, others illegal with pirated apps.
The advice is not to use these stores because they can monitor the user in a very invasive way on the mobile phone and install viruses that steal data and send them to Chinese or Russian companies.
In Settings -> Security you can activate or deactivate the installation of applications from unknown sources, i.e. from outside the Google Play app store.
7) Check the permissions that the Apps want
For a long time Android has had a gap compared to iOS on the iPhone due to the too much freedom that the apps had to change the permissions to access the mobile data.
For example, because a Weather app should be allowed to read our section "> Android 6.0 Marshmallow, it is now possible to check the permissions of each app from the Settings -> Applications menu.
You can then touch the gear icon to configure the permissions of the applications, from a list of permissions that can also be changed.
This menu is very important, but if you don't have specific reasons there is nothing to change otherwise the apps can stop working properly.
8) Checking installed apps
Even if you use the Google Play store, there are applications that may not be respectful of privacy.
We saw some examples in the article on the 10 apps to avoid and not install on Android, where we reported the monitoring done by popular browsers such as UC Browser or Dolphin.
Before installing a new application, you should therefore check it in these ways:
- The number of installations and comments can be indicative of the popularity of an app and it can therefore be assumed that it is not a scam or dangerous app.
- With the Privacy Advisor app you can instead have a judgment on the privacy protection of the already installed apps and know if everything is fine or there are some too intrusive.
READ ALSO: Google account privacy control, searches and personal data
