Four Tips to Deal with A Virus on Your Phone

These days, phones are basically mini-computers. That means that they are targets for malware creators. That means everyone who uses a phone (so basically everyone) needs to know how to deal with a virus on their phone. With that in mind, here are four tips.

Be sensible with how you use your phone

You’ll cut down your chances of getting a virus on your phone in the first place if you apply a bit of common sense when you use your phone. Here are some quick tips.

Avoid charging your phone at public charging ports or on public computers

Both of these can be hacked and used to put malware on your phone. If you think you’re likely to need to use these then invest in a “power-only” charging cable. If at all possible, however, just avoid it. Invest in a mobile power bank instead and, if need be, charge that up at a public station and then use it to charge your phone.

Put a PIN on your phone

It’s a minor hassle for you, but it goes a long way to preventing opportunistic tampering.

Be careful with your connections

As a rule of thumb, it’s safer to use mobile data than public WiFi. If you must use public WiFi, make sure you can have confidence in the people who are running it and make absolutely sure that you are connecting to the right network. Hackers often try to trick people into thinking that they’re connecting to a legitimate public WiFi network, when they’re actually not.

Likewise, make sure that your Bluetooth settings require you to confirm any pairing. In other words, do not allow automatic pairing.

Think before you click

Think before you click on a link and, above all, think before you click to make a download. Only download apps from either one of the main app stores (Apple or Google) or directly from the website of known, reputable brands.

Check your phone regularly for any symptoms of a virus

In particular, look for any outgoing calls or texts you don’t recognize and for high data-usage and/or signs that your phone is connecting to the internet when you don’t think it should be. These are strong pointers to a virus. Also look out for excessive adverts and any apps you don’t recognize. These can also be pointers to a virus. Lastly, watch your phone’s general performance and battery life. These can be impacted by a virus, but they can also be caused by other issues such as overload and age, so do a bit of troubleshooting before deciding whether or not you have a virus.

Learn how to treat a virus on your phone

You can try downloading an antivirus app and having it treat your phone but if you do have a virus, then you may well find it blocks you from doing so. If this is the case, then you basically have two options. One is to go for a full factory-reset, basically start all over again. The other is to go through your phone, especially your browser and apps, and see if you can find and uninstall the culprit. Be aware that malware may prevent you from uninstalling it so you could end up doing a factory-reset in any case.

On that note, malware will also often try to prevent you from doing a factory-reset by disabling it in the software. That’s why phone manufacturers make sure that there is a way to reset your phone using hardware. If you don’t know what it is, look up your specific model of phone on the internet.

Use a robust antivirus from a reputable brand

Here’s the harsh truth of the matter. This article only touches the surface of the main ways you can pick up a virus on your phone. There are others, such as spam calls and text and USSD attacks (attacks which exploit security weaknesses in your cell network).

Basically at this point in time, the number of security checks needed to keep a phone safe is way beyond anything the ordinary person can reasonably manage. This is even before you get to the fact that we all make mistakes from time to time and in security one mistake is all it can take to compromise your personal data and the personal data of all the contacts in your phone.

Fortunately, there are now antivirus apps to do all the work for you. Head to this page right now and download Comodo antivirus. It’s all the protection you need to keep your phone safe!