Lock Down Your Phone

By Chapin Mower on October 3, 2022

In today’s world, data is highly sought after.  Advertisers want to know what products you’ve purchased and what products you’re thinking about purchasing.  Hackers want access to your accounts to steal your money.  Just this week, the boss man of HMA (Grove) was a victim of this.  A man in Tennessee went to buy a $9,000 diamond ring and used all of Grove’s credit information – he even had a fake ID with Grove’s info.  Luckily for Grove, red flags were raised by his bank, and the thief was caught before Grove found out what was happening.  Not everyone can be so lucky.  As I was brought up to speed of this incident earlier this week, I couldn’t help but wonder where, or how, this thief was able to access all of Grove’s information.  I requested he perform an “audit” of all of his apps and told him to delete the ones he no longer uses.  As we were going through this exercise, we realized this would be a valuable reminder to share with all of our clients: be careful with your sensitive information! We’ve sketched out some important steps to help prevent leaks of your own information. Enjoy the read!

Perform an App Audit

Put simply: delete any downloaded apps you no longer regularly use, especially the free ones, since they earn revenue from selling your data.[1]  If you have an iPhone: press and hold the app icon and select “Remove App” from the options displayed. 

If you do not want to delete an app that you use frequently, there are additional measures you can take to protect yourself.

Review Access to Data

When installing a new app, be careful and cautious about providing access to other data points within your phone.  Does this app really need access to your photos, Bluetooth, contacts, or your location?  Most do not.  By granting apps access, they are able to not only profit off your information, but actively use it against you via targeted advertisements. 

For iPhone users: In order to review which apps have access to your information, open the Settings app, scroll until you see Privacy (blue with a white hand) and click that.  From there, you will be able to see all of the apps that hold private data.  For instance, if you select “Location Services” you will then see which apps are tracking your location and how they’re doing it (while using the app, never or all the time). 

Limit Ad Tracking

Apple is the first large corporation to begin limiting ad trackers on their devices and Google is beginning the same.[1]  If you have an iPhone, you may have noticed a new notification after downloading an app for the first time. This is a pop-up that asks you to “Allow” or “Ask App Not to Track”, permitting you to determine how actively an app tracks your activity and history. Always select “Ask App Not to Track.”  If you choose to “Allow”, you are not only rewarding the company behind the app to profit off you for free, but you’re also putting your private information at risk, especially if said company were to be hacked.  If you’re unsure about which option you selected (“Allow” or “Ask App Not To Track”) you can always check and change your option. 

For iPhone users, open Settings –> Privacy –> Tracking.  Make sure “Allow Apps to Request to Track” is off. 

Lastly, similar to phishing attempts within emails, it’s important to remember to NOT click on any links that are sent to you via text message from an unknown number.  This has become a new, and more recent, way for hackers to steal sensitive information.  Keeping your data private and secure – that’s HMA!

For those that have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, there was a good article posted referencing the above.  You can read it here:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/worried-about-personal-data-leaks-heres-how-to-lock-down-your-phone-11656799748

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/worried-about-personal-data-leaks-heres-how-to-lock-down-your-phone-11656799748