With the advent of smartphones, human lives have become a whole lot simpler. Nowadays, people carry their whole world in their smartphones — be it their pictures, music, or contacts, and with the adoption of applications, their bank accounts and money as well. Carrying so much in such a small device is certainly ingenious, but has a long list of security issues to it — issues related to personal information, bank account information, monetary transaction details, personal photographs, documents and so on. So, losing a smartphone means jeopardising all of this data.
Many security service providers have developed special software that helps you remotely wipe your smartphone in case it is lost. Application providers and developers claim that software requires Password authentication before it is activated, but since it’s inconvenient to remember passwords, people usually choose the ‘Remember me’ option while signing into an app.,
If stolen, your smartphone can be used to make purchases using your application account as most App stores today charge the mobile number rather than a credit card. Some banking applications can compromise your bank account and transactions too. Even in the case of mpay and mwallet, which require PIN authentication, there is a big chance that the details might be among your SMS messages, which can easily be hacked.
There are many applications available in the market that claim to safeguard your data or even remotely wipe your phone clean of data in case of loss or theft, but the only downside to those applications is that they don’t work without a SIM since they require network connectivity.
So, the only way out of all this is that you keep a check on what all information is stored on your smartphone because if it is not there, then you cannot lose it. So, while storing data on your phone, always make sure that you don’t save anything that is confidential. Many applications prompt users to remember login details on the smartphone, which should be avoided. And, one must remember to delete all transaction SMSs, particularly those that contain personal identification numbers.