advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

How to secure the digital footprint of your Android device

It has come to be an unfortunate fact of modern-day life that your data at any given time is up for grabs to whoever wants it thanks to the phone in your pocket. All the services, apps and games that come free to download usually scrape your data, share your location and log your activity for their profit at best, and more malicious intent at worse.

While you may have heard warnings about not logging into free public networks or not clicking on suspicious links, the problems stem far deeper than that when the security and privacy issues are actually features built into this software that is working as intended.

While you may be okay with Google asking you to rate a restaurant or with Facebook requesting that you check into a nearby location, are you really happy with other, smaller and less well-known websites and companies knowing where you are and where you’re going? Aside from location tracking using your phone’s GPS, every time you open an app or visit a webpage your IP address is recorded, which gives a rough estimate of where your physical address is.

And that’s just the physical stuff. Every time you tap, swipe or type those actions are usually indefinitely recorded onto a server somewhere, tied to you by some identifier. If it’s not your real name, its your user name, or even the aforementioned IP address.

Thankfully a Virtual Private Network – or VPN – is a simple workaround for these privacy and data issues. These services have become more and more necessary in recent years and they have been making the jump to the mobile devices so you can carry this security with you.

One comprehensive VPN on the market is Surfshark which works like a middleman between you and the rest of the internet to keep you secure.

Surfshark encrypts all the data coming to your device, and all the data leaving it. While doing this your IP address is also hidden by re-rerouting it through another country, completely masking who you are and what you’re doing.

At this point you may worry that Surfshark itself will be keeping tabs on you, but it has a strict no logs policy. That means whatever you do while using this VPN – be it browsing history, network traffic, bandwidth or anything else – is never collected or tracked. You don’t need to worry about outside forces watching what you do, and you don’t need to worry about your VPN watching either.

You can download Surfshark from the Google Play Store and, while have competitive pricing options with a 30 day money back guarantee, you can also try it Surfshark for free first.

All of the focus here has been on internet safety, but don’t forget that a VPN is also really handy when it comes to content consumption. If that favourite streaming service of yours doesn’t offer that one movie or series in your country, simply use Surfshark to hop onto a server in a different region where it is available. The same applies to music, videogames and more.

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement