Protect Smartphone From Hackers

As we are living in well developed world of technology, we see how from all the sides the new innovations are being subjected to our lives eventually. Small things make big differences. We all know out of all the smart devices that were introduced, smart phones are one factor that took a lead in the world market and is number one among the users. 

We can see everyone now has literally turned to use a smart phone for all their needs. As a smart phone can be used in various ways, we not only use it for communication or to kill out boredom by using the social media or capturing pictures, but we have also updated ourselves to earn something using our phones. We also have so saved in so many important data of ours, especially band details, account user name and passwords, official letters and emails, etc.

So, this way when a smart phone has turned out to fulfill so many needs of ours to make life easier, there is something else that we should start considering about too. It is not always the good ones that develop but initially along with it, we will have to see a lot of negativity too. So like that, we know how some hackers and intruders find ways to enter into your phones and grab personal details of yours. Which is not going to be something small? Your personal, official or any valuable data can be taken by them and even before you realize they are been stolen or lost, the hackers would use it against you. So we should always find ways to protect our phones from hackers or intruders. And that’s why today I am going to give you some tips and methods on how to safeguard your phones from such hacks.

How To Secure Smartphone From Hackers

Always Update The OS And Apps

We usually see our phones will have new updates to get done and even the apps will ask you to update them. These updates are released not just with little extra features added in but they will also have software updates and other updates like bug fix and so on, that will literally protect your phones from threats. So when you see any new updates available in your smart phone make sure you do update it so that you can protect your phone from any kind of breaches or intrusions and safe from dangers.

Avoiding Public WiFi Networks

We would always do to free WiFi without considering any others factors. When we find any free WiFi connections in malls, shopping centers, public areas or any such place, we should also realize that the WiFi is free not only for you but for the hackers too. They will find ways to make you get into your trap using the simplest way through a free WiFi connection. So the next time you find any free connection make sure you think before you connect.

Use Two-Factor Authentication

This is a method which will work as another wall towards the security of your phone and apps. So in that case you can eventually add the two factor authentication and thereby when you try to enter in to the particular app then you will get a onetime code, and only with that you can log in to any of your accounts. So this way, you will be saved if anyone tries to enter into your personal accounts and thereby try hacking.

Always Go With Strong Passwords

We all hate the fact that we have to enter a long password to open up our phones or accounts. But that’s the best thing you can actually to do avoid from a hacker trying to easily crack your password and enter in. Your password should be strong and have numerals, upper case or lower case letters or symbols, which will make it very difficult to find out. And if possible change your password twice a year. So this way you can protect your phone from any illegal activists entering in.

Do Not Open Spam Or Phishing Emails 

The easiest way the hackers have found is by entering into your phones using the emails, where they send you spam or phishing emails, which will have links in them for your click, and when you do so, your phone will fall a prey to the hackers. So avoid opening or clicking on any links in any promotional, advertising or any emails with some unknown attachments or even running updates that are prompted through emails.

Use Anti-virus Protection

The most important thing that you should do to protect your phone from hackers is to use an Anti-virus app. These apps will detect virus or any malware and alert you and at the same time it will protect the phone from any miscellaneous threats entering. Even in case your phone already has any virus in them, installing an Anti-virus app can help you clear them out. So get an Anti-virus and make it a shield of protection to your phone.

Check What You Are Installing To Your Phone

We all might have experienced where when we click the download button, the particular app before installing would give you a big page contained of several factors asking for you to grant permission. Those contents may include asking permission to get the ability to read all your files, to access your camera, to browse your gallery or even to listen over your microphone. Most of the time these options that we grant permission to can be illegitimate, it can open up space to different other negative aspects. There are so many malicious apps found in the Google playstore that exists for longer time before they are found inappropriate and get removed.

So you should be very careful of what you are installing and find out whether it is a genuine app. And also before providing permanent to everything that the app ask you for, read the terms and conditions. Do not install anything from websites that aren’t familiar.

Check For What Is Already There In Your Phone

Sometimes, an app could have been safe and good when you installed it, but then with time and many updates it could have got menacing. So if you find it a habit to check on your installed apps and look at what permission you have granted it for and what other features in your phone it is using.

If you are using an iOS smartphone then there you will find a lot of relevant information under the ‘Settings’ in ‘Privacy’ section.

But in Android it is not easy to find out information about an app that is installed in your phone. But to find it out you can use some of the security apps that is available in the Google playstore. It will help you out with the overview. Such apps will also give you alert when you try to install apps that are malicious and it would warn you if a phishing attack is trying to trick you enter your password in un-trusted websites or apps.

Do Not Leave Online Services Unlocked

We are all used to save our password to auto login the next time, because it is very convenient. This makes a hacker open your browser and easily get access to all your accounts that are left unlocked. So it is highly recommended not to use auto login features. And also make sure you don’t use the same password to more than one app, because if an intruder finds a way to login to a specific account he literally gets the ability to access all the other accounts which has the same password.

Thereby to safeguard confidential data and accounts can also use a Password Manager app which requires you to re-enter master passwords.

Prevention Tips: If Someone Steals Your Phone To Hack Data

How To Make It Hard To Get Access: If in case a thief or some hackers stole your phone, then it would be easy for them to get in and steal all your important data. There are some preventive measures that can be taken in advance so you have not to worry about all the data that can be leaked out.

Make sure your lock your phones after every use. This should be done both in Android and iOS by setting up a pass-code of at least 6 digits. Some phones even require fingerprint or face recognition abilities and they aren’t very safe as the hacker can easily trick your phone with a picture or other methods. And be careful with updating smart unlock option which automatically unlocks when you are home or when your smart watch is close by. These simple factors can be an easy answer for the hackers.

Be Prepared On How To Track And Lock Your Phone When Lost: If you have got things pre-planned and know how to track your phone and lock it when it is lost, would make things easier. If you haven’t had any backup plans then finding your phone would be harder and take time, and in that moment the hackers will be able to get the full access of your phone.

You have settings which makes your phone automatically erase itself when a certain amount of incorrect password attempts passes. There is also another option as ‘Find My device’ both in Apple and Google, this will locate your phone and reveal it in the map and you can also remotely erase or lock your phone from the website.

The Apple users can get this done from the iCloud website. To get this done in your phone you should have enabled the feature by going to the ‘Settings’>‘iCloud’> ‘Find My Phone’.

The Android users can do this by accessing the google service at ‘google.com/android/devicemanager’.

That’s it, now we have checked on a few ways in which we can protect our phones from hackers and maintain our personal and official data along with our privacy from any threats. Following all the steps given above will definitely help us from any kind’s malware of virus attacks too. Get all the security measure done and have a threat less phone.

Tips To Secure PCs From Identity Thieves

Along with the improvement in the technology, so many things came up to light. The world got a new side to look at. Things became easier, so many tools got stuck into one small device that’s light in weight and small in size. Difficult things were made simple and long distance became behind one screen. With all of these things there also came some negativity. Wondering what?

Technology improved human mind working power not only in the good things but also a dark side started forming.We all use our PC now to not only get browse internet or play games, but now it’s possible to do online bank transactions, manage credit card accounts, buy things by doing online payments and also we send private details using mail. With all of this, there came up hackers who started earning too easily by hacking accounts of others and stealing their account details and accessing it. Which will end up to be a disaster to the actual owner who later turns out to be the victim.

These types of hackers are called as 'Identity thieves', who hack account details, identities and of others using the hardware like computer HDD or memory cards. By doing this, these identity thieves can get access to the bank accounts and get the money from it. These hackers use various types of techniques to get access to your computers. We should always be safe from these types of attacks that can happen to our PC. Before we move ahead let first see who the identity thieves are and who are the victims of them. 

Who Are The Identity Thieves?

Identity thieves are those who use others identity and do all the possible fraudulent activities. The fraud activities includes opening credit card accounts using the identity of others, getting a new lease to buy expensive car, would use the credit card to go shopping and buy whatever they want. These are a few examples on what an identity thief can actually do using the stolen identity of someone. There are 3 categories of identity thieves.

1. Unauthorized or attempted use of an existing account. 
2. Unauthorized or attempted use of personal information to open up a new account. 
3. Misusing the information for a fraudulent purpose.

These types of thieves would do anything from hacking your emails or even would break into the online banking accounts and get all the important personal information that are confidential. So as the attempts of the hackers are increasing every day, we should find ways to stay safe and secure our personal and confidential information. Along with this you should also know what is at risk with the identity thief? 

We can’t ignore a fact thinking the hacker would only break into your email accounts and hack details. No, they can even break into your computer systems and hold all your data as a hostage and wait for ransoms from you. So it is very important to seriously think about this factor and protect your data from thieves.

Who Are The Victims Of Identity Thieves?

As we see, it’s not only those who are always on technology or use the technology for everything become victims, but also those who don’t frequently use too get in trouble. Along with that, we also noticed how people who use unique or difficult passwords for different accounts are also fall into the trap by getting hacked. When we use extra precautions online but don’t follow basic security protocols can be in trouble.

How Identity Thieves Commit Fraudulent Acts?

Hackers normally use plenty of methods and ways to grab the personal information of others and use it for their own advantage to commit fraud. Let’s see a few of them.

• The hackers would obtain the personal information of a particular person online and then they will use those info and open credit card accounts using the name, banking login, email and password.
• They can even clone and create duplicate credit cards and use them to purchase goods online.
• There are powerful malware computer programs which the hackers would use to record the keyboard strokes and all the sites that you visit on the internet. Later they would use the malware to unlock your password and use your online accounts.
• They would also obtain your social security number, they can impersonate you to apply for and get insurance, even apply for a rental property and then you will have to pay for them.
• Some thieves would use your debit card details and shop online. As the debit cards are not backed like the credit card companies for fraudulent charges.
• The hackers can also use a ransomware virus which would encrypt your computer files and then they will ask you to pay ransom if you want them to decrypt the files.
• Another simple method the hackers use is the public WiFi networks. They will easily connect to your phone when you are connected to an unsecured network. Even if the home WiFi doesn’t have a proper security, then hacker would gain access through the connected device. 

These are a few ways the thieves would try to commit fraud acts through, so we have to always be secured and safeguard our data from the hackers. There are a few methods that can be done to protect ourselves from identity thieves, let’s take a look at them.

Android How to Secure PC From Thieves

HDD Encryption

One of the easiest and the safest thing that everyone can do to safeguard and protect your personal information from your PC is by using a password to protect it. We can encrypt the hard drive and all the files and folders in a PC by password protection so that no one else other than the one who knows the password can open up. So this password protection will give a small relief that your personal data is saved even in case of missed PC or someone else trying to use it without your awareness.

Browser Changes

We all should know that there are some particular browser which will save the password and details of some accounts, so that we can easily login the next time. But by doing so, our personal account can get into trouble. So it is always better to disable auto password saving in the browsers for the purpose of security. And also we should always see if the browser saves cache for the accounts you open or any other important sites you visited. So it’s always better to use the browser in incognito mode so that it will not save any cache for the visited sites.

Antivirus Software

We all should definitely have antivirus programs installed in our PC. And it’s better to run the antivirus program live whenever you use the PC. So that this will make the antivirus program scan for spam links or address and malware that will be cause hacking or any other types of insecurity to the PC. Make sure to check and set the antivirus program correctly so that it scan all the links, sites, browsers and apps.

Network Protection

In case you are using a shared network connection, then you should be more aware of all the possible security that you can provide with for your PC. As it’s easy to steel data from a PC when in shared network connection.
If the PC is not encrypted strongly. The firewall defending strength should be increased and at the same time the antivirus programs should work accurately to protect from any kind of data loss that can happen in a shared data network.

Spyware Blocking Apps

Spyware programs are used to collect information about the users. Well in that case most of the time spyware can contain malware but if it doesn’t have then spyware are not dangerous. But we never know if its malware free or its malware affected. So we should have an antivirus that can block the spyware and will not allow spyware to get information from your PC. Protect your PC with a best antivirus software.

Don't Open Suspicious Email

We see so many emails fill the junk folders. Those emails can be one threat to the PC if opened. There are many emails that are created with attachments with virus and Trojan horses that can spread if opened. Sometimes these emails can come to the inbox directly without moving to the junk folders. So we should always be aware of opening unknown or suspicious emails that we receive.

Always Install Updates

Updates are created for various reasons. With every new updates there can be a bug fixing agents or patches that help solve problems that can be found in the PC. so make sure not to close updates that we get very often.

So that’s it. We have come across some important things that we should be aware of to protect our PC from Identity thieves. So never ignore any of the above given facts which are very effective and easy to stay updated. Following them can secure all your important and private data from being stolen.

How To Encrypt Your Keyboard And Avoid Keylogger Attacks

As the world is all about the technology today, we see how cyber crime happens in many ways. Everyday, we do see about cyber crime news over the internet somewhere in the news or blogs. In this article, I'm going to discuss something related to cyber crime. As I've already mentioned, cyber crimes happens in many ways, it could be major or minor ones.

So in today's article lets have a look on a minor level cyber crime which can happen through your computer using a simple tool. Have you ever heard about the work 'Keylogger'. It is an insidious form of spyware, which is a hacking method where a tool can track whatever the usernames and passwords you type in your computer to login any sites and send them to a third party. In short they are activity monitoring software programs that gives hackers access to your personal information and data that you use in your device.

For example, if this tool has been installed into your system, then when you're logging into your online bank account as usual by going to the site and entering username/ password, then all what you typed in including your bank account details, login username and password will be sent to a third party person through this tool. Yes..! 'Keylogger' tool captures whatever you type in your computer to access any sites, it also record all the chat messages that you type and send all those details and files to a server, where all the cyber criminals collect all those sensitive data.

There are two types of 'Keyloggers', one is the hardware device embedded within your internal PC hardware and the other type of the 'Keyloggers' are the software that can be easily installed in the victims device. This software is a type of malware, which doesn't harm the host but records all the keystrokes and send it to the relevant place. Mostly this kind of a tool is un-detectable in computers even if they are installed in it. There are some antivirus tools that are smart enough to catch such 'Keylogger' attacks and alert you but most of the non-updated antiviruses cannot detect these types of tools. Also some types of 'Keylogger' tool comes with a few crack software we do use in our computer. The tactics like phishing and social engineering are the common ways the 'Keyloggers' are installed in. Whatever form it is in, 'Keylogger' is always a big headache. Let's have a look on how to protect our computer and online account logins from 'Keylogger'.

To protect our self from these types of attacks we can encrypt the keyboard. Which means, if our keyboard is encrypted and if we type a word 'Apple' it will detect as something similar to this '12f4d' in encrypted keystrokes. So whatever we type, system will detect it in encrypted keystrokes.

How To Encrypt Your Keyboard

You have to get the app named 'Keyscrambler' to your Windows computer or laptop.

Let's move on to know how to encrypt your keyboard to avoid 'Keylogger' attacks.
Firstly you have to reboot your operating system once to start with it.

Now go to system stay and you will find the icon of installed tool. Right click on it.

Select option and you will see a screen which is similar to the one shown below.

Now you can adjust the setting as per your requirement and click on OK button.

That's it. Your encrypted keyboard is ready to use. Now open any browser and login to any of your online account such as Facebook or Twitter and you will see that the keys are being encrypted at top of the browser screen.

So this is one of easiest way to encrypt your entire keyboard in computer and protect yourself from 'Keylogger' attack. You can download 'Keyscrambler' tool by Clicking here.

Other Alternative Apps

Guarded ID: You can use the app 'Guarded ID' to protect yourself from being vulnerable to the data theft that can take place due to the 'Keylogger' attack. This cyber crime is one most concerned factor around, so this app will help protect you from both the known and unknown 'Keylogger' threats. Guarded ID would secure your personal and financial information by encrypting every keystroke when you type.

There are a few features in this app that you should know about, so let us check on them.

• It is very easy to install the app and access it, most importantly it will not slow down the performance of the PC. 

• This program will protect against the kernel and the desktop based 'Keyloggers'.

• This will secure all your sensitive personal data and financial information by proactively encrypting every keystroke.

• Also provides advanced anti-click jacking and anti-screen capture technology.

• Has a multiple layers of protections against the cyber attack.

Zemana Anti-Logger: One of the best alternative app to use. It is has very user friendly interface which tracks all what is being done on your system. This software would monitor your computer from hackers and prevent all the types of attempts taken to record or steal data from the device by blocking the suspicious activities. It will allow you to camouflage all your daily online activities  where the intruder will never be able to get the genuine data.

• This app would be securely transmit all your credit card numbers, login credentials and the social security numbers by blocking the attackers.

• Provides reliable ransomware protection.

• Would detect and clean all the browser's add-ons, unwanted apps or toolbars and adware infections.

• A lightweight and effective online malware scanner.

• Each unknown files would be analyzed carefully in the cloud. 

Oxynger KeyShield: This is a virtual keyboard that is secure and anti-screenshot. It will protect passwords and other sensitive information that you type in from malicious programs and hacking that can take place. One of the best software that would secure the keystrokes from the keystroke logging, screen logging, mouse logging, clipboard logging and shoulder surfing. It is free to use and effective too.

NextGen Anti-Keylogger: If you are looking for a program that would protect and secure your PC from all sorts of key-logging programs both known and unknown along with the with the ones that are currently being developed, then you can go with the 'NextGen Antilogger' software which will do it's best job in this. It uses some unique methods for the protection purpose.

Some of the noteworthy features of this software are-

• Uses a unique level of protection by intercepting the keystrokes at the lowest level possible.

• It encrypts all the keystroke and send then through it's own protected path straight into the protected app.

• It has the ability to defeat all types of software 'Keyloggers'.

• This software doesn't require any additional configurations.

• Has a very easy user friendly interface.

• Has the ability to protect web browsers, IM clients,editors, password managers and so on.

• Protects the overall privacy.

SpyShelter: Another trustworthy and a great anti-keylogger software that is available with the free keystroke encryption security tool. It has the ability to protect the device from any types of 'Keylogger' and malicious activities. There are many features that are available in this 'SpyShelter' software, so let us take a look at them.

• It would detect and delete any 'Keylogger' hacking tools that you might have installed in your system.

• The software continually would monitor the PC for malicious activities.

• It would encrypt all your keystroke and protect your vital data.

• Malware will not be able to have access to your passwords.

• It provides financial malware protection.

• It also provides a powerful HIPS system protection.

• The software is fast and lightweight.

• It also works without a signature database.

• It provides extremely solid protection from known and unknown zero day spy.

• Would protect your system from monitoring software such as the 'Keylogger', 'Screen logger', 'Webcam loggers' and so on.

So that is it, we have now checked on a few methods on how we can encrypt the keyboard and avoid 'Keylogger' attack using different software with different features and capability. You can now choose the right one for your computer and start securing it with a better shield of protection. 

We highly recommend you to have a 'Keylogger' protector in your computer to protect all your online accounts or personal chats from being stolen by any 'Keylogger' attacks.