Bitcoin Forum

We all know that a typical smartphone contains personal informations like passwords, email address, crypto wallet details, etc.

It is much better that our personal mobile phone  is secured for the hackers and scammers not to easily access our mobile phones.
I know these are simple tips but really useful and make us more aware about protecting our phone most importantly if we have bitcoin and other crypto coins in our wallets.

Here are the top 10 tips for us to remember:


Feel free to add some tips, even if it is usual, it is better to still remind those people who are forgetting those things.

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Remember:
The art of common sense is applying the best wisdom we know today based on all our yesterdays.
                                                                        -Wilfred Peterson

Read here (https://amp-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.businessinsider.com/how-to-make-phone-safe-security-tips-2019-9?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fhow-to-make-phone-safe-security-tips-2019-9) to further understand.

I believe you forgot to mention one of the most important security features, which is to encrypt your phone.

If you lose it and it is encrypt, nobody can see your photos, personal data, etc, even if they manage to get through your lock screen.
When your mobile phone is encrypted, your personal data is unreadable, so it is useless.

This is a guide telling how to encrypt your mobile phone, android and ios.
Those steps are pretty simple, like going to Settings > Security > Encrypt Device.

https://www.lifewire.com/encrypt-the-data-on-your-android-phone-or-iphone-2377707
https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-encrypt-android-device-326700/

How does the point 3 applicable. Charging portals, seriously? Also, can you please suggest the apps for point 2.

Additional is avoid using some public wifi, and also if someone will borrow your phone make sure you have your attention because some people may try to open some of the applications in your phone that are private or some confidential such as your email accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, etc.

Avoid trusting anyone with your phone especially if you know that there are important inside of your phone and avoid sharing your lockscreen/phone password or patterns to anyone.

And also if your phone (especially android) has micro sd card, avoid storing some important files here because it's easy to steal it and access your files there especially if they are not encrypted.

When you plug your device in to a public USB port, cable, adapter, etc., to charge it, you have no idea what you are connecting to. The USB can be modified to attempt to either steal data from your device, or deposit malware on your device. A microchip to achieve this is small enough to be hidden inside a USB cable, let alone an entire adapter or socket. This is known as "juice jacking".

You should avoid this by not using public charging ports, and using your own portable battery pack. If you must plug in somewhere, then use your own USB cable with the data pins removed.

It is important to emphasize that if you want to have secured smartphone you need to update it on a regular basis, but this is not something a user can just do like that, it depends on your OS/manufacturer. For example, I have the latest Android OS in my smartphone, and every month I get security/critical updates, but my old phone did not have any of them for years. The conclusion is that if you want security, you need to follow the technology.

Security software is as essential on a smartphone as it is on a desktop computer, but to run them without slowing down phone newer generation processors are needed as well as more RAM (you need to buy a new phone from time to time).

Most modern smartphones have fingerprint lock, facial recognition, and 4-6 number password lock. All this together is very useful for average protection, but fingerprint lock or facial recognition can be abused in at least two situations.

- When you sleep, anyone can unlock your phone with your face or by using your finger.
- You may be forced to do that by attackers or authorities.

In case you have confidential information on your smartphone, the only way to protect them is to encrypt your phone (see a post by bitmover), but it is not something that should be done unprepared.

Of course, none of the above is fool-proof if we fall for one of the classical traps (phishing et al). As an example, a Spanish politician (Albert Rivera – leader of Ciudadanos) got his WhatsApp messenger account “hacked” recently by means of a fake phishing security alert.

To cut a long(er) story short, the outcome was that the politician ended up providing an authorization code to the hackers (through a phishing site), allowing them to install the politician’s WhatApp account on another phone, thus gaining full control over his account, and being able to change the associated password, gain access to his contacts, and seeing the content of his last messages, besides impersonating him.

Being careful with your browsing habits is also a very important thing. If you're visiting shady sites or downloading apps from third-party websites, your device is probably infected already and the tips mentioned above wouldn't be that useful.

A very simple way to secure your device(s), either your phone or your laptop would just be to avoid using public wifi. It's pretty tempting at times, but it's really not worth the trouble at the end of the day. I'm lucky enough to be able to afford an unlimited 4G data plan and so I almost never use public wifi, but I'd only use public wifi if you absolutely must. Common sense is usually good enough to avoid any potential malware or viruses you might encounter on websites; avoid downloading anything that's 'cracked' as well, because even though you might be getting a piece of software for free or for less than retail, you risk getting malware from that software.

I would like to add this from Bitmover for mobile encryption but this is only for Samsung devices.

3 weeks ago I bought a new phone which is Samsung Galaxy A10 it comes with Samsung Knox it's a pretty cheap phone that is why I decided to buy it I have a thread about this here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5179426.0)
The Good thing about Samsung Knox it has a secured folder and all files and data are encrypted if someone trying to root the phone the Samsung Knox will not work and you can't able to access the encrypted data unlike the methods provided by Bitmover this one will be much more secure than that.

So if you have a Samsung phone check this list of supported devices (https://www.samsungknox.com/en/knox-platform/supported-devices) and maybe your phone is listed. If you found that your phone is listed update the device to the latest version and latest security patch to obtain the secured folder and put all wallet and important files inside of this folder.

4. This works both ways. You can make more or less secure by rooting. Depends on user.
5. General advice, always use 2FA anywhere possible.
2. I would say, you can get infected by that, better to use only popular (so verified) apps.

Samsung Knox encryption is poorly secured. Whilst it's better than nothing, don't rely on it for any truly sensitive data.

Why do I say this? The encryption key it uses is not derived from your password or PIN, but is a preset key on the device itself since time of manufacture. If you forget your PIN to Samsung Knox, you can reset it by logging in to your Samsung account. All your data inside the secure folder persists through this reset, and you can still access it all afterwards using your new PIN. This means although the data is encrypted, it is only as secure as your Samsung account login. If you want to encrypt it properly, you'll need a third party app to do so.

Although the process itself is not complicated for the user himself, nevertheless one has to understand what it is about. Encryption of phone data is not same as set screen lock, so it is important to highlight some things. Paper, pen, full battery and charger, time.

Good point but i wanted to add one way to avoid  being scam.

- Don’t click on strange links

To be exact Phishing is one method of hackers and this has been around as long as we have internet.

What they do is to  send email as their trick to e-mail recipient into downloading the attachment (exposing their PC or phone to  the malware), or clicking the link to a website that may be infected with malware, or asks for confidential data and worst even enter and access your phone datas.

So we must be conscious on what links we ate clicking to secure privacy of datas.

I didn't know that  there were such thing as stealing data from a device through USB ports. Wow. Just by reading the tip from the op, I didn't understand that well. But I'm glad you made an explanation about it. That's additional knowledge for me. :)

Anyway, I do five out of those 10 tips mentioned. Good thing my smartphone provides good security. But it's also good that I gained information here on how to secure my phone.

Never enter your email passwords to login to random sites.

Never store your card details while purchasing on 3rd party sites.

Don't ever install unknown apps or apps from 3rd party sites.

Keep checking your application manager for App with no name and no logo from time to time,which is some kind of spying app.

#3 Avoid Charging your phones in public ports
Uh.. what? Common sense should tell that if you're charging your phone in public, you should be attending to it, not walk away.

#4 Stop jailbraiking or rooting your phones
This doesn't always secure the phone since manufacturers tend to discontinue updates after like 1 year or so, so your device lacks security updates. Also, jailbreaking or rooting your device allows you to manually disable bloated or intrusive apps.

Rooting has lot of advantages but if it was done by the person without much technical knowledge then they are breaking the security of their mobile.When our software gets too old and no updates from the manufacturer then its better to upgrade the device in my opinion.

True that. But with some rooting experience, I'd rather root than buy a new device

Public charging ports?? What is that?

Do not root? So we should rather trust the devs and creators who love hiding bloatware in their phones? Rooting gives you more control of your phone. If anything it makes it safer. You can block so many things your phone automatically does without you knowing if you root your phone. Look at DNS66 it blocks annoying pop-up ads especially ebooks that normally happen in the background. There other things you can block too that is just one example. Having more control is never a bad thing. Obviously, if you don't know what you doing you have no business in rooting phones to begin with and probably will brick it or worse.

There's stuff very difficult to fight like pegasus and all your encryption and 2fa won't matter if your device gets infected.
First and foremost don't open linke, don't click on random things you're not sure of, don't open email attachments and media files from people you don't trust!

Viruses can access core files, parameters and features on rooted phones while in "jailed" ones they can't access anything critical, I would not recommend anyone to store big amounts of cryptos on a rooted phone.

This is a very helpful list. Actually I'm avoiding/doing some of it and so far i can say that my phone is secured.
Always do this keep your phone privater against other people or even from your prankster friends. Just a tip, much better to a password or fingerprint scanner (if your phone have one) to unlock your phone instead of pattern because others can decrypt it by just looking on the dirt/moist remain on the screen of your phone.
I did this before for deleting my data usage but I stop doing this already. Is there really bad effects of rooting your phone in terms of privacy?
I never did this because I believe that updating softwares are best for the latest phone models of a particular brand. I thought that your phone becomes slower once you do it on a phone which is a little bit low tech. Is that true or a hoax?

I would also adjust Privacy Settings in Preference/settings and in Google settings.
Don't send any extra data you don't need to send.

Also consider using private mobile browser or vpn for your phone.  

I feel point number 3 as something that is too paranoid, so far I have never heard the news that our phones can be infected with a virus because of this.

Number 2 is important but many one don't aware about this, especially when they don't find trusted app they need, they installed because they think need that app.

Read this https://www.gearbest.com/blog/how-to/how-to-protect-your-cell-phone-number-and-why-you-should-care-3519 some have not been mentioned in the OP.