How to protect your smartphone and data on it in case of theft
Tuesday, June 01, 2021 - Tuesday, May 31, 2022
04:00 PM - 07:00 PM
How to protect your smartphone and data on it in case of theft
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Nobody is safe from antivirus theft. But it is in your power to make sure that the thief has a useless "brick" and not a byte of important information.
If your smartphone is stolen, the losses may not be limited to the device itself. The thief will cause much more damage if he gets to bank applications, important documents, personal photos, and videos. To prevent this from happening, it is better to take care of reliable protection in advance, so that the thief has only a useless "brick" in his hands, from which it is impossible to get your personal information. We will tell you how to do it correctly.
What a thief can do with a phone
First, let's figure out what can happen to a stolen phone and why it's worth taking any additional actions at all.
Sell for parts
The most common scenario is that a smartphone is simply sold for spare parts, especially if it got blocked by a thief. If the purpose of the attacker was precisely to steal the phone, and not harm a specific person, then there is a fairly high chance that he will not deliberately engage in hacking. Any manipulations with the switched-on device increase the risk of getting caught and going to court.
Withdraw money from a bank card
However, there are situations in which the temptation to gain additional value for the pickpocket outweighs caution. First of all, this concerns phones that got to the criminal unlocked, for example, snatched from the hands or left unattended. If a banking application is also open on them, a thief can hit the jackpot and withdraw all available money from your accounts in a few minutes, or even take a loan in your name.
Some banks allow transferring funds via SMS with commands to a short number. In this case, it is even easier to steal money, because the confirmation code will be sent to the same stolen device.
Format and resell
If a thief in one way or another - usually with the help of social engineering - manages to log into a Google account or Apple ID and change the password, you will lose the ability to remotely lock the device, and the thief can reset to factory settings and get a working smartphone that can be sold in its entirety - it is much more profitable than selling for parts.
Use personal information for blackmail and extortion - or simply leak it onto the Internet
If an important data breach is stored on your smartphone, the perpetrator may threaten to delete them or, conversely, send them to the contact list - and demand a ransom from you. The same goes for personal files that can compromise you or someone else. A thief can copy and analyze information from the Files application on the iPhone (first of all, this is all iCloud content), all the memory of an Android smartphone, or cloud drives that are open on your device.
Another thief can look for something interesting in your correspondence - primarily in instant messengers. Or try to hack your Facebook or Instagram accounts and go begging for money from friends and acquaintances. Also, in theory, he may try to link your bank account to another device, but this is already unlikely. In addition, he will have to keep the phone on, that is, expose himself to the risk of being caught.
Our tips will help you make sure that a thief could hand over your phone for spare parts as much as possible, and everything else would not work for him.
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