Smartphone Safe Keeping Tips

This guest article is by James of mobistealth.

In the recent past smartphone’s have grown in popularity and an increasing number of people are shifting to smartphone’s to meet their daily needs. These devices have now become a lot more functional, more powerful and much handier than having to rely on your regular computer to do the same tasks. Though as the functionality of these devices has increased, with it has increased the risk and danger of using these devices.

For example people are generally very cautious when throwing away old or unneeded paperwork which has important or sensitive information on it such as bank letters, statements, personal information and things of that sort.

Using shredders and many a time burning the material, though these techniques cannot be applied to smartphone’s though many a time they too will hold such information. Information pertaining to your online accounts you have accessed from your smartphone and the information inside those accounts you have accessed together with information about which sites you have visited from the phone is all stored on the device.

Furthermore people who employ apps such as Google maps and other application provide mapping functionalities, can also be used to gather information about where you have been or where you generally are, which can mean that strangers can find out where you are or where you live.

This information can be retrieved not just be using and browsing the phone itself physically, but also through spyware and malware which can be remotely deployed on to your hand set and be programmed to forward such sort of information.

Smartphone Safe Keeping Tips

Hackers and those looking to do harm can even control your smartphone from a distance and this fact is evident in the matter of silent activation, where by your phone is discretely calling premium numbers without your knowledge, and you only find out at the end of the month when you receive your monumental phone bill.

It is still difficult to say which is the safer smartphone to own, each operating system has its own weak points and strengths, for example Blackberry is the only platform around which offers a data encryption feature. With this you can encrypt and secure nearly everything there is on your phone, this is one major reason for Blackberry’s popularity amongst business consumers whose priority is in keeping their data safe. Encryption will to a great extent reduce the chances of information being leaked or stolen, but will not guarantee complete safety.

On the other hand iPhone’s are running the iOS system which maintains the sand box feature. This sand box allows for programs to be run separately from the rest of the OS and in theory will make the iPhone experience far more secure. Though the recent developments in multitasking technologies have shown that this sand box feature may render no increases in safety, rather might be doing quite the opposite.

The other big competitor in the smartphone market is Android, which is notorious for its security loopholes and problems. The Android platform is very similar to the operating systems on computers, and so makes it a slightly easier target.

Though the main problem and biggest security laps that there is when it comes to Android based phones is the Android market place, and not the phones themselves. Android is an open operating system which means that anyone can develop an app for the device and throw it into the Android market place, once in the market; there are very few quality checks or security measures that are taken before the app is made available for millions of users to download. Here developers implant spyware and as the app spreads to consumers together with it goes the malware, infecting everyone who downloads it.

Author Bio: James Clark has been in the business of providing quality information on Mobile phone Spy software for a while now. He’s an expert at all things spyware, but his main forte is iPhone spyware which has captured the interest of many.