Do you want to prevent your phone from being tracked by hackers?

Well, the activities you carry out on your mobile phone are private or at least should remain so – no encroaching allowed. However, are you aware that this so-called personal handheld device can be tracked despite being screen-locked and password enabled?

In other words, pieces of information your share and your location data can be retrieved when you become a target of hackers, security agencies, and even companies – though for marketing purposes only.

Some of us are even tracked unknowingly when we ‘set permissions’ to ‘allow’, directly allowing access to our contacts lists, storage and other private areas of our phones by some mobile apps we download.

This is why we need to exercise caution when downloading some apps as some of them are malicious.

Malicious apps are developed by fraudsters and hackers to steal your personal information and wreck havoc.

Do you want to prevent and stop further activities of criminal elements from invading your privacy? Check out these useful tips!

Switch to Airplane mode

If you feel insecure at anytime, your trackers can lose you when you turn off your Wireless Fidelity ( Wi-Fi) and switch phone to “Airplane Mode”. When these are shut down, the link between your phone and the tracking machine is broken.

Disable GPS

You can also disable your GPS so that data is not shared your installed apps. At any rate, ensure your GPS location is turned off once an app is closed.

It is best for you to check your location settings and turn it off. This way, you stop the activation of the GPS and cuts off communication with the approximate location of your phone.

Although, turning off your location settings may affect Google maps and your Uber, Bolt ride requests, it depends on what privacy means to you. If you can turn off after each successful ride, it should still be okay.

Completely shut down smart phone

This may seem totally impossible as you need your phone to connect with friends and families. Well, in extreme life threatening situations, your best bet might just be to switch off the phone and remove its battery.

Before doing this anyway, ensure the phone’s data is backed up on a storage device.

Virtual Private Network to the Rescue

When you use VPN, tracking cookies are blocked and your real IP address is concealed. Some entities use IP addresses to track targets. If your IP address is masked, they will be led astray through the wrong path.

For your security privacy, you should determine the best VPN app by highest positive user rating.

*Please note that VPN coverage is not extended to your GPS data.*

Reduce the activity of Ads and re-targeting trackers

Have you noticed that you get hundreds of Ads on your Android phones especially if you are a user that downloads a lot of apps?

To turn off this feature and limit the number of ads you are exposed to, please follow these steps.

For Android:

Visit Settings, Click Google then Ads and Toggle “Opt out of Ads Personalization”

For iOS users:

Visit settings, click privacy then location services, scroll all the way down to system services then disable location-based Ads.

On a final note, you cannot be too careful!

Always do the needful, stay safe and out of trouble with the law  otherwise, the law will still track you and get you as you really prevent your phone from being tracked by the law