How to protect your personal data on a smartphone ?

Cell phones can contain a lot of personal information (bank details, confidential documents, etc.).). In order to preserve privacy, every user is required to adopt measures that will help them secure their personal data.

How to control your personal data ?

Nowadays, access to a service offered on the Internet is often conditioned by the create an account. You will have to provide your name and several other personal information personal information. Most of the time, this data is collected to be used for commercial purposes.

By multiplying your online accounts, you facilitate the acquisition of your personal information. It is also possible that the password created is not strong enough or that you have chosen the same one you use for other accounts.

How to protect your personal data on a smartphone in this case ? The first step is to regain control of your private information. Start by listing all the sites you have registered with. Then sort out the ones that are no longer useful to you. Once you have identify the services that you still need, access it and update your passwords.

Also activate double authentication if possible. A password manager will simplify your task.

Also consider deleting accounts linked to sites you no longer use. The procedure has become easier since the adoption of the RGPD (General Data Protection Regulation).

In addition, make sure to protect your data on any social network. Does your presence on it continue to meet your privacy requirements ? If this is no longer the case, deleting your user account is the best solution.

How to protect my data on my cell phone ?

Of course, the anonymization of data aims at ensuring the privacy of their owners. However, you can further limit the risks involved in the collection and use of your personal information by taking action at your level.

The geolocation setting

How to protect your personal data on your smartphone and avoid that they are used without your knowledge ? The first thing to do is to set the geolocation. You should know that this feature is used by almost 30% of mobile applications. The use of encrypted messaging is a good way to identify the habits of smartphone users, such as their daily routes, the restaurant they prefer to go to, etc.

If you do not want your private data to be used for commercial purposes, you will need to disable geolocation whenever it is not needed. Here’s how to do it for Android:

In ” Settings “To do this, go to ” Security and confidentiality ” ;
Click on ” Location data ” ;
Slide the button ” Access to location information “to disable the functionality.

With a device that runs on the iOS mobile operating system:

Go to ” Settings ” ;
Click on ” iCloud ” ;
Press ” Locate my iPhone ” ;
Enter the password corresponding to your Apple ID;
Click on ” Disable “.

The use of encrypted messaging

To secure your private exchanges, the use of a secure messaging using end-to-end encryption is essential. In addition to WhatsApp, there are other options to help you protect your personal data:

Signal, a messaging application available on Android and iOS ;
Silence, an SMS encryption application available only for Android;
Wickr, that allows you to schedule the’self-destruction of sent messages ;
Wire, a solution mainly intended for companies, but which can also be used by individuals.

The adoption of a secure browser

Chrome is not your best ally to protect your personal data. Instead, turn to Firefox if you use a smartphone under Android. To optimize data security, add extensions to this browser.

For its part, iOS does not really offer any latitude in terms of navigation personalization. To remedy the impossibility of installing extensions, rely on the browser Brave.

On the other hand, the search engine must be well chosen. Qwant, DuckDuckGo and StartPage s are clearly differentiated from their counterparts in terms of user privacy protection.

How to make the Internet as secure as possible’access to your smartphone ?

Here are some recommendations of the CNIL (National’For anyone wondering how to protect their personal data and secure access to their smartphone, there is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

Do not save confidential information such as banking data, secret codes, etc. in his mobile ;
Keep the PIN code activated and replace the one proposed by default by avoiding choosing a sequence of numbers easy to guess;
Enable automatic device lock after a certain time;
Keep carefully the IMEI code to be able to block the phone in case it is stolen or lost;
Get an antivirus ;
Do not download any’applications from unknown sources;
Systematically check the data accessible to any new application installed ;
Carefully read the terms of use’use of’an application or a service before any installation or subscription.

You now know how to protect your personal data on a smartphone. Don’t hesitate to apply these tips !