Although it’s true that Android devices are a
little more susceptible to malware attacks than iOS, the situation
isn’t nearly as bad as Cook & Co. would have you believe. Yes, Android’s a wee bit insecure,
but using a little bit of nous and a healthy dollop of common sense, you can
make your device impervious to dastardly assaults on its dignity (and your bank
account).
1.) Set a Lock Screen
Yes, Android lock screens seem to be about as
secure as Sony’s Playstation Network. But still, a lock
screen of some description provides at least some security against casual
attacks.
You get a bunch of different options for your
lock screen security — pattern, pin, password and Face Unlock, on stock Android
at least. Of those, password is the most faff, but also the most secure. Pin is
technically more bits of entropy than pattern (theoretically, at least),
but let’s be honest, no one is really going to sit there are try
10^1234123413412124123 different possibilities for your pin, are they? Sadly,
pattern, while being quite cool, leaves you vulnerable to smudge attacks, which some very bored researchers proved
have a 68 per cent chance of working in ‘ideal’ conditions.
But no matter what security measure you
choose, it’s still gonna be better than no password at all, and it’ll stop most
casual attacks. It’s worth the one second of inconvenience 50 times a day,
honestly.
2. Install an Anti-Malware Program
Same as on a Windows machine, some kind of
anti-virus software is handy. You may have noticed that everyone’s been talking about Bad News recently, a fairly horrific piece of
malware that infested systems through an ad service, and sent premium-rate SMS
messages in order to gain its designers money. It was discovered by security firm Lookout, and (unsuprisingly)
according to them, users of its product would’ve been protected against the
malware.
There’s a fair few anti-malware apps out
there, many of them free; we’d recommend the aforementioned Lookout, AVG or Avast. Mostly, they’ll watch out for malicious code, check
installed apps against a database of naughtiness, and generally protect your
phone when you subject it to your dodgy taste in Russian fetish sites.
3. Don’t Cache Passwords
It’s annoying, but true. Caching passwords,
while incredibly handy, is also a godsend to nefarious phone-nicking youths.
Recently, we received a review device here at Giz that had a bunch of previous
passwords from an unnamed previous user — we had logins to his emails, social
media accounts, everything. For an identity thief (or dickhead who likes
screwing with people), that’s the jackpot. Of course, security measures like
lock screens help, but the only foolproof method of protecting those passwords
is not to save them. (Oh, and turn on two-factor authentication while you’re at it.)
Generally, the apps that save passwords most are you internet browser — Chrome,
in other words.
4. Check Your SuperUser Privileges
If you’ve made the (sensible) choice to root
your Android device, you’ll need to be extra-careful about security. Rooting a
phone allows apps to run with ‘root access’, outside the normal checks and
balances introduced by Android. A malicious app with root access would be
dangerous — able to do basically anything to your phone, without your knowledge
(and this, kiddies, is why phones don’t come rooted out of the box).
Now, that shouldn’t put you off rooting.
Rather, you need to be slightly more proactive about managing apps on your
phone. When you rooted, you probably installed SuperSU or Superuser, which
allows you to grant programs root access, and view which programs have been
actually using their root priviledge. Be extremely careful about which apps you
grant superuser permission to; only give it to trusted apps from trusted
sources. It’s also worth going back through the list every now and again, to
clear out any unnecessary guff.
5. Ensure You Only Install Apps from Trusted
Sources
One of the most common methods of infection
on Android is downloads of dodgy apps. An anti-malware program, as mentioned
above, will provide one layer of defence against dodgy apps, by flagging up
anything malicious-looking.
Of course, the best protection is common
sense. Thanks to Google, most apps in the Android app store are pretty clean,
and the danger comes from attacks like the BadNews exploit discovered by
Lookout, which infected otherwise-ok apps through the advertising system.
Either way, big-name apps are more likely to be secure; installing apps from
third-party sources will always be dangerous, and ultimately comes down to how
naive/trusting you are. [Source]
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