TECH

6 steps to prevent photos from your cell phone falling on the internet

How many pictures are on your cell phone? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?Each time you take a picture, it is recorded in the phone memory. They are often automatically stored in the virtual cloud.This ensures that you keep guards, but it does create some risks.For example, what happens if a hacker accesses them? There is a possibility that the person tries to expose - especially a photo to your budget email -As hacker techniques modernize, the chances of you becoming the victim of a virtual attack increase.Incidentally, it came with Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst and other famous Hollywood actresses. It was the case of the "Celebgate," a scandal that affected more than a hundred celebrities.Are not you able to take the risk? At least get more protected - by spelling out some advice that you can put into practice.

1. Turn off automatic sync
Many phones are programmed to sync automatically with clouds from iCloud, Google, and other services like Flickr or Dropbox.This allows you to save images easily, have a backup and not rely solely on the memory of the phone.But you can prevent photos from loading automatically and conduct the process manually, ensuring that only the content you want is stored.To do so, you must change the setting in Google+ (in the case of an Android) or iCloud (for iPhones)."If you do not want something to be shared on the internet, you have to be extremely careful with automatic syncing," explains Digital Spy.

2. Enable 2-step verification
Having a secure password is important, but sometimes it is not enough.The easiest way for hackers to access your files is by stealing your password (so it is better that it has uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and is not very obvious).2-step verification allows you to install additional code to make it harder for hackers.On Google, you can do so under the "My account" option (in the main menu, top right). At Apple, the change is made by iCloud, and you can also activate the mechanism on other photo storage services, such as Facebook and Microsoft.

3. Control the activity of your apps

Apps you have on your phone can also access your photos. Some of the most popular ones are Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.To find out if this happens, if you have an iPhone, search your phone for privacy options, go to "Photos" and select the apps you'd like to block. This will prevent your photos from being shared with the servers of these applications.If you use an Android device, you should make the change in each application, one by one.It is not a difficult task, although it can be laborious.

4. Hide your photos
There are options for hiding files from your phone or tablet by means of the so-called "photo hide". Picture Safe and Private Photo Vault (for iOS), Hide Something and KeepSafe (Android) are some examples.These systems allow you to create a tactile or PIN code to access some photos and strengthen your privacy.The downside is that you will not be able to see the photo collections in the order you want.

5. Delete the metadata from your photos
Your photos include hidden data that indicates when and where they were taken, or the model of camera used. These metadata reveal information that is not always evidentIf you do not want this data to be known, you can use apps like Image Privacy (Android) or GeoGone (iOS) to delete them.The process takes a few seconds and can be applied to multiple images at the same time.

6. Lock your phone's screen
Another way to protect files is to lock the screen with your password, face recognition systems or other mechanisms.It may seem obvious, but this method will not only serve to protect your photos and videos, but also so that everything stored on the phone does not fall into the wrong hands.



Source:bbc.com