Top 5 Tips for protecting your mobile from phone hacking

Phone hacking can happen to anyone. Here's how to secure your phone.

As you've no doubt heard by now, phone hacking is the new ‘in' thing with newspapers and scrupulous media types.
But it's not just celebrities having affairs who need to worry; you too could be the victim of phone hacking. So it's time to tighten up security on your mobile phone and start protecting it in the same way you would protect your PC.
Here is PC Advisor's Top 5 Tips for protecting your mobile from phone hacking.
1. Change your voicemail pin 
If you have got an old phone or phone contract, then there's a good chance that your service provider originally set your voicemail up with their standard pin – 1234, 0000, 4444 etc. Therefore if a hacker called you when your phone was engaged, they would simply have to enter your service provider's standard pin and they would have free reign over your inbox. It's been suggested that this is how the majority of the celebrities' phones were hacked.

2. Turn your Bluetooth Off 
Apart from needlessly wasting your phone's battery when you're not using it, Bluetooth also gives potential hackers the opportunity to access your phone and its precious information.
If however, you do want to leave your Bluetooth on throughout the day, make sure you set your phone as 'not discoverable' and don't accept connections from phones you do not know.

3. Stop downloading untrusted Apps
It's reported that roughly one third of Apps will automatically obtain and send your phone number, device ID and sim card serial number back to the developers (along with lots of other data). Whereas iTunes Apps are thoroughly policed, the Google Android Apps have experienced some Trojan Horse attacks which are being used to send location and user information back to the hackers.

4. Take your Battery Out 
 
If you're convinced that your phone has been hacked then you should do this immediately. Taking out the battery won't stop hackers having access to your voicemails, but it will stop them gaining access to your phone (and what's stored on it). Without power to your phone, there is nothing to hack.
 
5. Don't lend your phone to people you don't know!
It takes a matter of seconds for somebody to send a SMS from your phone. From that one simple SMS a hacker can do all of the following things:
• Remotely access the phones microphone and use it as a listening device wherever you are.
• Intercept a call and listen in to it in complete secrecy.
• Automatically add a BCC to all emails and SMS messages sent from your phone.
• Use your GPS to locate where you are at all times (particularly nasty when used for organised robberies on your house.)

Posted in: Hardware Hacking,Security