Privacy is currently a benefit. The times in which it was a right seem to have remained in the past since both advertising agencies and government entities are on the lookout for our data. They have no qualms about paying thousands of dollars to learn about our online habits.
Mobile phones being the devices we use most to do basically everything; from checking our social networks to buy with our credit cards, we must begin to take their privacy more seriously.
In this article, we will teach you to make your Android mobile a real private strength in which you will have total control over your data. We will show you the main vulnerabilities of the system and also how to deal with them so that your mobile phone is a complete bunker.
Why is it important to maintain our privacy online?
Most people have the mistaken belief that «No one would be interested in my information» because they don’t believe enough «Important» so someone wants to pay for it.
There is nothing further from reality. The Internet has gradually become one of the largest business platforms in the world, moving an impressive amount of money.
In the current scenario, everything is valuable online; from the person who spends the most to the one who simply uses it to view their Instagram or Facebook profiles. This makes every one of us who connect be “important”, much more if we do it from an Android.
The reality is that in most cases companies and government entities are not interested in our identities, that is a fact. However, our online habits are very interesting to them.
Have you thought about how interesting it is for a pharmaceutical company to know what diseases you have searched online to find out if you have them? or How interesting is it for a clothing brand the type of shoes you are looking for?
All this can be very valuable for them because it is very important information to determine if you are a potential buyer for your products or not.
All this information is being known right now while you read this from your smartphone and there is nothing you can do to avoid it while you have that poor configuration and data protection on your device.
Identifying the problems What are the main privacy vulnerabilities in Android?
If you have already understood how important it is to have control over your data on your mobile device, we will mention you all and each of the vulnerabilities of your Android operating system.
The operating system
The Android system is one of the safest on mobile phones to some extent, but it has some problems. The first one is that it basically comes configured to record each of your movements while you use it.
Applications to organize your routine leave a history of your activities that are registered in an online database. That is the main problem that you will have to deal with in your Google mobile operating system, so you will have to get down to work to solve it.
IP addresses
The Internet is wonderful, but we must not forget that it was a technology created by the military, so it has features that are still designed to track and monitor people.
A clear example of this is IP addresses. An IP address is a number divided into octets that are used to identify a computer within a network.
While this may seem harmless, the reality is that there is more risk than you think because anyone who has access to that address,
It has the ability to identify your computer and track it to know exactly from which part of the world you are connecting.
The IP addresses are visible to the portals you visit and also to anyone who has sufficient ability to intercept communication between your computer and that website.
The latter is unlikely, but we will already give you an example that can compromise your privacy.
An internet domain costs less than € 5, and a cheap hosting service can cost even less than € 10. This means that anyone with less than € 50 can create a web page.
A person with intentions to blackmail others creates a website like tallow, and when someone connects to it, they get their IP address, and therefore also their home address.
The address of your home and that of your loved ones (father, mother, or children) will be available to a person who could threaten you, blackmail, and put thousands of ideas in your head without even being really close to hurt you, but with the simple idea of it, it can scare you enough to get you money.
The Navigator
The browser we use stores a lot of information about our habits online, so it is an important aspect that we must optimize to guarantee privacy in every way.
The problem with most browsers is that they have a lot of information leaks and their browsing history is very easy to violate.
The cookies
Cookies are certainly not a big problem for the privacy of your data, but they can be used to create a history of your online browsing habits to later create a complete fingerprint to identify your device. Also, think about it Why would the portals warn of its use if they were so good?
Obviously, there is a latent risk and therefore your authorization is required to install them on your computer.
Scripts
Scripts are a real problem since it is known that they can be used to track and identify your browsing habits. These in that sense resemble cookies but are much more powerful.
The problem with them is that they are used by basically 80% of the portals on the Internet, so to dispense with them would be to stop visualizing a large part of these websites.
The histories
Finally, there are records. On Android, the vast majority of Google applications keep a complete history of your activities. All of them are very useful to improve your user experience, but some abuse this and can be a real problem for the privacy of your data.
The two histories that you should take care of the most are; the browsing history, which records every one of the portals you visit on the Internet, and the location history, which records all the places you travel through your city in real-time while you have the GPS of your computer activated.
Steps to increase our online privacy and protect our personal information on Android
Once all the vulnerabilities of your Android system have been detected, It’s time to teach you how to solve them all and even apply other configuration tips to make your device a real private strength.
Operating System Configuration
As we mentioned above, Google’s mobile system has certain vulnerabilities that we must face and solve. The good news is that you do not need to be an expert to apply them all and that we will show you below. The screen lock method comes first.
Currently, fingerprint sensors are very popular, but these have their risks as well. The main one is that once the mobile is unlocked, anyone can register their fingerprint on the device, and I can assure them because my girlfriend has one in mine.
Also, another curious thing is that if you can not enter with the sensor, just enter a 4-digit code (security PIN) to unlock it. For this reason, the best thing you can do is simply disable the fingerprint lock. Which you can do as follows:
- Enter the configuration of your smartphone and position yourself in the section of “Privacy Y Location” and once there you must touch on “Fingerprint”.
- In this section you will see all the fingerprints registered on the device, what you should do is simply Touch in the bin to the right of each fingerprint to delete it and the job will be finished.
Now, what is the safest blocking method? Well, it is certainly an alphanumeric password that combines all kinds of characters to make it more difficult to decipher.
The next step is to encrypt or verify that your phone is encrypted so that communications on it are also encrypted. To do this you simply follow these steps:
- Enter the configuration of your mobile and go to the section “Privacy and location ». Once in it go down to the end and touch on “Advanced”.
- After that, you should look for the option «Encryption and credentials». If under it says «Encrypted» It means that the mobile is encrypted. Otherwise, you must enter it and tap on “Encrypt” for the process to take place.
Already at this point, you have solved the most serious security problems of an Android, at the operating system level of course. But the mission is not over yet. The next thing is to get rid of Google activity control, which is a colossus consumer of data and basically saves everything you do on your mobile.
Therefore you must go to Google My Activity and disable it for all your devices:
- Enter this link from your mobile or computer.
- Go into «Activity checks on your account» and in this section, you can disable all the crawlers that Google has on your device.
Encrypt the IP address
Now that you understand all the information they can obtain through your IP address, you should proceed to take care of the portals that you browse online from now on. In this step, we will teach you how to encrypt your Internet protocol address.
For this, you will have to set up a VPN on your device The first will obviously be to choose a good provider. We choose Vypr VPN which is one of the best, but in general, you can choose any other provider of your choice. Without further ado,
What you need to do to set up a private virtual network on Android is the following:
- Go to your Android settings and enter the section of “Internet and network » then go down to the end and touch on “Advanced”.
- At this point, you must enter «VPN» and then touch on the sign of «+» which is in the upper right corner of the interface.
- A registration form will appear in which you must put the name, the server (below we leave the complete list), the username and password of your account VyprVPN.
- Lugo to save the new VPN simply activate it and all your communications will be encrypted online.
The VyprVPN service has multiple servers and You can choose the one you like from the following list that we share below:
| VyprVPN server | Hostname |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles, CA | us1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Washington, DC | us2.vpn.giganews.com |
| Austin, TX | us3.vpn.giganews.com |
| Miami, FL | us4.vpn.giganews.com |
| New York City, NY | us5.vpn.giganews.com |
| Chicago, IL | us6.vpn.giganews.com |
| San Francisco, CA | us7.vpn.giganews.com |
| Seattle, WA | us8.vpn.giganews.com |
| Toronto | ca1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Amsterdam | eu1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Stockholm | se1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Hong Kong | hk1.vpn.giganews.com |
| London | uk1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Paris | fr1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Frankfurt | from1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Copenhagen | dk1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Zurich | ch1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Moscow | ru1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Luxembourg | lu1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Bucharest | ro1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Singapore | sg1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Dublin | ie1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Kuala Lumpur | my1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Rome | it1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Madrid | en1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Tokyo | jp1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Seoul | kr1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Oslo | no1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Istanbul | tr1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Helsinki | fi1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Warsaw | pl1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Lisbon | pt1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Prague | cz1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Vienna | at1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Brussels | be1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Vilnius | lt1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Sydney | au1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Melbourne | au2.vpn.giganews.com |
| Perth | au3.vpn.giganews.com |
| Jakarta | id1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Auckland | nz1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Hanoi | vn1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Bangkok | th1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Reykjavik | is1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Manila | ph1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Saint Paul | br1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Mexico City | mx1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Buenos Aires | ar1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Bogota | co1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Saint Joseph | cr1.vpn.giganews.com |
| City of Panama | pa1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Taipei | tw1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Manama | bh1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Doha | qa1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Riad | sa1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Mumbai | in1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Dubai | ae1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Tel Aviv | il1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Sofia | bg1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Schaan | li1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Algiers | dz1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Cairo | eg1.vpn.giganews.com |
| San Salvador | sv1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Athens | gr1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Riga | lv1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Male | mv1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Majuro | mh1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Macau | mo1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Karachi | pk1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Bratislava | sk1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Ljubljana | si1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Kiev | ua1.vpn.giganews.com |
| Montevideo | uy1.vpn.giganews.com |
Choose a secure browser
The next mission is to get rid of your few secure browsers and start using one that really guarantees data encryption and does not leak IP.
In this sense, you have two options little known by most users. But ideally, you should use one of the following browsers:
- Tor Browser: The Tor project is one of the few that focus on ensuring the security of user data and has an excellent browser that comes with a configuration that makes it a real safe. If you want to install it you must download the Tor APK for Android and disable unknown sources on your mobile.
- Brave: This is a new project that last year generated very good impressions due to the speed of navigation, the level of privacy, and the savings in data consumption obtained with a browser that blocks all ads. You can download it directly from the Google Play Store here.
By choosing one of these two browsers you will have solved three other details such as cookies, third-party scripts, and advertisements, which also represent a threat to your privacy.
Delete histories
Finally, you must get rid of the records stored on your mobile. The browsing history cannot be deactivated, but it can be deleted regularly in all browsers. So this is a habit you will have to take to do it yourself manually.
On the other hand, location history can easily be deleted and deactivated. to deactivate it you must go to the section «Location History» from your Google account. Once there you simply deactivate the option in the relevant switch and go.
List of the best applications to keep our privacy to the maximum on Android
Following the steps we have taught you can increase the privacy of your Android device to the fullest. Now, to make your life easier in this regard, we present a list of applications that will help you increase the security of your smartphone:
Lastpass
A password manager likes no other you’ve known so far. It is multi-platform (used for mobile and desktop), which means that you can manage every one of the access codes to all your accounts. With a nice sober design and interface, this app will undoubtedly become your best ally.
Author
This is an excellent option to manage your accounts with two-factor authentication. You can link to its services such as Up Hold or PayPal digital wallets, investment brokers or cryptocurrencies, and other digital services in which you have invested money or very important data.
Further, All-access codes will be encrypted with high-level techniques and you can protect them with fingerprint or password.
CM Security
This is one of the most powerful applications in terms of security. It is an authentic Swiss knife from which you can block applications with secret code, manage your passwords, and optimize the performance of your mobile and battery life. Easy to handle and officially available on Google Play Store.
Intra
This is an application that many require to be factory installed on all Android devices since in some ways their developers are closely related to Google. This is a simple switch that you activate to prevent government institutions from manipulating your server’s DNS to track you and get information about your online consumption habits.
Outline
This is a sister application of the previous one, which also offers effective data protection and digital security solutions. To start, with it you can surf the internet and your browsing data will never be registered in any virtual memory.
In addition to this, we can be sure of its high-level data encryption techniques. With these applications and following the advice mentioned throughout the article, you can turn your Android smartphone into a secure ecosystem for your data.
