Three Apps to Protect your Smartphone

Today, many peo­ple use their Android, iOS, and Win­dows smart­phones and tablets to accom­plish the same things they used their PCs for. They use their mobile devices for social net­work­ing, research, bank­ing, and every­thing in between, which means that a lot of their per­son­al and finan­cial infor­ma­tion is stored in those devices.

Just like there are many pro­grams to keep your per­son­al infor­ma­tion safe on PCs, there are also cer­tain apps that can help you pro­tect your gad­gets from thieves and hack­ers. Top secu­ri­ty apps for your smart­phone include:

1. Snap Secure

Avail­able on iOS, Android, and Win­dows plat­forms, this app can auto­mat­i­cal­ly and secure­ly back up your phone data to your online account so you can access it when you need to restore or trans­fer your data to a new device. The app comes equipped with anti-virus and anti-spy­ware pro­tec­tion, so you can scan all new appli­ca­tions for mal­ware before instal­la­tion.

The app also offers a call-block­ing fea­ture so you can block unknown num­bers, unwant­ed SMS mes­sages on Android and unwant­ed emails on Black­Ber­ry devices. The Pri­va­cy Man­ag­er has an anti-theft and loca­tion track­er, as well as a Per­son­al Guardian fea­ture that lets you silent­ly send an SMS mes­sage, tweet, or email along with your loca­tion in the event of an emer­gency. Most of the bet­ter fea­tures are pre­mi­um for $3.99/month or $17.99/year.

2. McAfee WaveSe­cure

A renowned PC pro­gram, McAfee has also cre­at­ed a fan­tas­tic mobile secu­ri­ty app for Android, iOS, Win­dows, Black­Ber­ry, Java, and Sym­bian devices. It includes the stan­dard fea­tures of a secu­ri­ty app, includ­ing data back­up and restora­tion, remote wip­ing and lock­ing, and SIM and loca­tion track­ing.

This app lets you back­up your con­tacts, pho­tos, and videos, plus the track­ing fea­tures plots sev­er­al loca­tions on a map so you can see the vicin­i­ty of your lost device. The track­ing fea­ture is not depen­dent on GPS. For this app, you must part with $19.99/year for all devices.

3. Look­out

This is a free app for both Android and iOS plat­forms. It pro­vides 24/7 pro­tec­tion from mobile threats such as mali­cious apps, unse­cured Wi-Fi net­works, fraud­u­lent links, and oth­er such issues. The app has oth­er fea­tures that allow you to back­up your con­tacts fre­quent­ly (sched­uled auto­mat­ic update), which you can access online in the event of data loss or a crash and you need to restore your device.

If you lose your phone, you can acti­vate an alarm even if the phone is silent, and locate it on Google maps, even if GPS is not acti­vat­ed. The pre­mi­um option goes for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year.

These are just some of the top apps that you can use to pro­tect your smart­phone. There are much more, though some are spe­cif­ic to the oper­at­ing device, so you need to find one that is com­pat­i­ble with your phone. In any case, you can have peace of mind wher­ev­er you go that your data is pro­tect­ed.