How to protect my phone

Cyber Security & Hacking
1

Hello! I just found out that my friend’s phone was hacked, and I’ve received messages from him on all my messengers. I’m really worried that my phone might get hacked too. What steps can I take to protect myself? Should I change all my passwords, or will running an antivirus be enough?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

2

Use good and unique password for every account and have 2FA.

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3

Don’t use the phone for anything that requires a password ! Use a laptop ! Have seen banks pushing clients to use their app, so if it’s good enough for a bank then …

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4

Thanks for your reply! I’ve made all my passwords more secure now.

5

Thanks for your answer! I try to avoid unfamiliar sites and not to download anything I’m unsure about on my phone. But sometimes I still use it to search for information since my laptop isn’t always with me. So, I’ve decided to install an antivirus on my smartphone, hoping it will reduce the risks.

6

Actually now I see your comment again, one thing I do is to VPN back home over my phone to access the internet, that exits to the internet having traffic filtered by pfBlocker (on pfSense) so that approach could be adopted with little effort, for a bit more protection.

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7

AV on smartphone won’t do much useful stuff, unfortunately.

Not clicking on URLs in chats and Emails is a good idea.
Not allowing apps to install that you have not wanted to install.
Restrict app access privileges to things the app should not need.

you cannot protect yourself against zero days used by spyware to install itself, but you can search for this malware using Mobile Verification Toolkit or SpyGuard.