Data breaches are becoming more and more common online with hackers and other cyber criminals becoming better equipped by the year. Once a data breach occurs, your personal and private data is then at risk of either being targeted directly by the hackers or being sold on to fraudsters.

Once this happens, you are potentially vulnerable to being financially impacted by the data breach as there will potentially be enough information gained to access banking information and your credit file. At best, you will become the target of phishing emails which aren’t always easy to spot, either.

To ensure you can continue using your mobile phone securely, we’re going to run through five ways to secure your personal data on mobile apps.

Securing your personal data on mobile apps: How to do it

Encryption

Encrypting your mobile phone is a fantastic way of protecting yourself from data leaks. Encryption is the process of making the data within your apps unreadable to hackers. So, while they may gain access to certain mobile apps on your phone, their efforts will be pointless as none of the back-end data will be readable.

To encrypt your iOS device, follow these steps:

Open your phone and make your way to the settings app.
Select Face ID & Passcode and enter your passcode when prompted.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen and look for ‘Data protection is enabled’.
If it is toggled green, then your device is already encrypted. If it isn’t, then press the toggle to encrypt it.

On an Android device:

Open your phone and head to the settings app.
Click on ‘Security’ and then ‘Encrypt Device’.
Follow the on-screen instructions to successfully encrypt it.

Permissions

Another good way to protect your mobile data is by properly setting up your permissions. When you download an app, you are often asked to give it permission to access other parts of your phone, such as your location or your contacts or your camera.

If you are looking at being conservative with your data then your best bet is to click no to all permissions other than the ones that you necessary for the running of the app. The more access you provide an app, the more vulnerable you will be if that app then gets breached by hackers.

Passwords

It may seem like an obvious one, but so many people still don’t use strong passwords for apps like Facebook, X, Snapchat and Instagram. When any app offers you the option of adding a password to your account, you should take it but creating a strong and impossible-to-guess one is equally as important.

Using a complex password that your phone suggests is often what many users do but if your data is breached, this is no good to you. Instead, use a strong password generator online and make a note of it somewhere (not on your phone). By doing this, you are adding a strong layer of protection to your app(s).

Multi-factor authentication

Many apps these days offer users the option to incorporate multi-factor authentication. This is where you are required to do more than just enter a password to gain access to an app. Sometimes, this will be a code sent to your email address or phone number that you are then required to enter into the app. Other times, you will be asked to download another app that is used as an authenticator.

These apps and codes are a great way of protecting your personal data as they are effectively secondary, temporary passwords. If someone knows your password, then it will no longer be enough to breach your data as they will then need the secondary authentication, too.

Minimal information

One final, and perhaps more basic way of protecting your personal data on mobile apps is to simply provide as little information as possible about yourself when prompted. It feels as if every app these days requires you to tell it your date of birth, address, phone number etc but often, most of these aren’t actually required.

All required fields usually have an asterisk next to them so get into the habit of only entering information when you see an asterisk. To protect yourself further, you could create secondary email accounts and/or use false information if you want to go incognito.