With all the advances in technology, it’s now easier than ever to do almost anything with your smartphone, including making purchases and managing your finances. However, just because this is easy to do doesn’t mean you should go about these transactions flippantly. Your phone can still be vulnerable to attacks by hackers who’d like nothing more than to steal your money or other financial information and ruin your financial future. So to help ensure that this doesn’t happen to you, here are three tips for safely making payments from your smartphone.
Strengthen Your Passwords
Not only should you have strong passwords when signing into different financial apps on your smartphone, but you should also have a strong password for unlocking your phone in general. If your phone were to fall into the wrong hands, you don’t want to make it an easy task to tap into all your sensitive financial information. When creating strong passwords, Laurie L. Dove, a contributor to How Stuff Works, recommends having your passwords be eight or more characters long and have a mixture of numbers, letters, and symbols. Also, if any of your financial apps give you the option to remember your password for a more convenient sign in procedure, opt out of this so that you’re always required to put your password in in order to access your account.
Use The Right Apps
Depending on how many financial tasks you do using your phone, you likely keep quite a few financial apps on your phone. And although these apps can make transactions a lot easier, downloading the wrong apps can put you at risk. According to Natasha Stokes, a contributor to Techlicious.com, you should only download financial apps from the source and from reputable app stores. Also, if an update is available to the financial apps you’re using, make sure you download those updates as soon as you can to best protect your app from potential vulnerabilities. And if you ever think that something’s fishy about an app, don’t use it.
Know How To Remotely Lock Your Phone
Because most people keep at least some sensitive financial information on their phone, you want to be able to protect that information if your phone were to fall into the wrong hands. For this reason, LaTroy Irby, a contributor to The Balance, suggests knowing how to remotely lock your phone so no one other than you can unlock it and see your information. Most phone manufacturers have made some kind of remote locking system just for reasons of security, so learn how to use this feature as a form of protection for your personal financial information.
If you make payments on your smartphone, use the tips mentioned above to ensure you’re doing so in the safest way possible.
