7 Smart Ways to Secure your Phone Data and Privacy

Violet Smith — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 07:27:45 +0000

Living in a highly digital world, your smartphone is perhaps one of the things that you can't live without it. It's a powerful tool that brings a wealth of information just right at your fingertips.

However, with it comes security and privacy risks. Whether you like it or not, you will be affected by things that are far out of your control such as the data breach that affects your private information. The good news is, there are a few steps that you can take to secure your phone and to maintain its privacy.

Use a Secure Passcode

All smartphones usually allow you to lock it with a PIN code, password, pattern or a biometrics log-in such as your fingerprint to confirm that it's you. As long as you close and secure your device, no one else can access your device and information should it be lost or stolen. Also, a fingerprint scan is convenient if your phone has this feature.

Password Safes

Coming up with a separate password every time for your email address, social media accounts, and e-card site can be exhausting. You'll end up recycling passwords which you wouldn't want. Scammers can easily hack one of your accounts and expose every account on sites where you use those passwords. Password managers can help secure them, releasing them only through a fingerprint scan or a master password. That way, you can store unique randomized combinations.

Hardware Level Encryption

iOS is supported by hardware-level encryption. Also, it's updated continuously adding more features. Android also encrypts your phone's storage by default ever since the version 5.0 Marshmallow came up. Either way, they function to encrypt your data, and can only be unlocked through your phone's hardware. However, these are usually not as strong as your lock codes. Therefore, setting up a strong password is still one of the best ways to secure your device.

Limit Location Settings

Your smartphone has its way of knowing where your current location is. It's crucial at times especially during emergencies because a dispatcher can quickly pinpoint your location. Unfortunately, the apps in your phone can also relay your location to untrustworthy sources. As a precaution, try switching off the location settings for all your apps, unless you have a good enough reason to use them.

Use Two-Factor Authentication

Another way to secure your phone is using the two-factor authentication of Google. Directly log-in to your Google account, then head off to the settings page where you would see "Using 2-step verification" on the menu. Just follow the prompts ‒ you'll also be asked for your phone number. Then, the verification codes are sent to you through text. Enter this code on the data entry box of your web browser and your 2-step verification will be turned on.

To make it simpler, you can opt to use Google Prompt. Doing so authorizes Google apps by clicking the "yes" prompt on your phone.

Don’t Be Gullible

As soon as you receive suspicious text messages especially from people you hardly know, don't call unknown phone numbers and embedded web links. Both scammers and spammers will get every chance they'll get, and as a smartphone user, you're a target. Chances are, they'll be sending emails, texts, or even call you and pretend to be different people altogether. It's dangerous because they can potentially lock you out of your device. Some will even resort to extorting money from you before you can unlock your phone.

Install a VPN

A Virtual Private Network, also known as a VPN, creates a secure and encrypted connection over a less secure one. It functioned to keep your information private and secured each time you visit websites, and VPN can be used to bypass internet censorship in countries such as China.But most importantly, it encrypts your data transfer.

As much as possible, try to avoid having free VPNs. If you want quality service, set aside a few bucks a month to avail of a quality VPN. A service like VPNdada secures and transports all your connections and data in and out of your smartphone safely and securely.

7 UX Design Pitfalls That Hinders Your E-commerce Website Success

Violet Smith — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 10:32:03 +0000

Website design has evolved from just being a superficial element of web site, but to something more functional, playing a huge role in the user experience. That is why site owners now design for UX.
However, not all site owners and their respective designers, are able to pull it off. Not being able to come up with a site design that is geared for providing a great user experience often leads to the inability of the site to reap succeed in meetings its goal.
It is therefore important for you to know what these mistakes are, and how you can counter them. And on that note, here are 7 UX design pitfalls that you should avoid in order to improve your site’s conversion rate and to help you succeed:

1. Failing to Use Responsive Design

One of the first element of UX that should be kept in mind is responsiveness. Your site should be responsive from whatever device it is accessed from. This is especially true now that larger traffic is coming from handheld devices more than desktops.
Despite being a crucial UX element, a lot of sites fail to give priority on improving their site’s design responsiveness – even for their desktop sites! A lot of sites are still heavy, and still riddled with unnecessary site elements. All these are contributing to responsiveness limitations. Furthermore, a large number of sites still do not heed the call to optimizing for mobile devices despites its great importance.
These being said, make sure that you prioritize improving your site’s responsiveness, may this be for your main desktop site, as well as for your mobile site.

2. Poor Readability and Legibility

Another important factor for UX is your site’s readability. Your site would be full of textual content so it is fundamental that your text is readable.
No matter how basic this sounds like, a lot of sites fail to choose easily-readable typefaces for their sites. Most of the time, this is a consequence of choosing what seems to be aesthetic typefaces. But what was done for the purpose of beautifying the site ends up defeating the primary purpose of conveying the message in the site.
With that in mind, make sure to practice the basic rule of typography: make sure that the text is readable. Otherwise, your content is useless as it will not be read.

3. Not Keeping a Website Updated

One of the biggest mistakes you can do is failing to update your website. Doing this exposes your site to a bunch of vulnerabilities and risks. And this is not something that will affect just your business, but also your customers.
With all the cybersecurity breaches going on out there, make sure you don’t fall victim by ensuring that your site is updated. This is a basic step that will help increase your security. Updating your site will help equip with the latest security measures, making it a lot more difficult for cybercriminals to infiltrate your site.
Of course, site security is more than just updating your site. It is, however, a very big help, so make sure that you routinely check if your site is running in its latest version.

4. Disabling Zoom on Mobile Sites

Working with mobile devices is really challenging. There are lots of issues that need to be addressed such as how to make your site load fast despite a phone’s limited hardware, as well as how you can provide a total user experience for mobile users considering that there is a minimal digital real estate to do that. There’s also this challenge of having a screen that may be difficult to be seen for some people. Being able to zoom should then be the answer.
However, some do not provide zoom capabilities for their mobile sites. This then gives the users a truly disappointing experience especially when facing items that need to be seen at a closer look.
With that, make sure that your site does not have a disabled zoom functionality. Make sure that your users would be able to zoom as needed.

5. Dealing with Broken and Poorly Optimized Pages

A frustrating mistake that some sites have is providing links that direct users to an error page. This leads to a lot of negative reactions from users. Another shortcoming is not being able to optimize sites, failing to direct traffic to an otherwise worthy page. These mistakes make your site conversion rate lower that can affect sales and lost lead. Ensure your site is free from broken links, and that your pages are optimized.

6. Unfriendly Screen Resolution

There are also designers who fail to consider how their screen resolution would impact their site’s overall appeal, as well at its compatibility with various devices. While it is a basic knowledge that most computers in the world use 1024 x 768 as resolution, not all sites are designed with the same resolution, but make sure you do. This makes you compatible to almost all the computers out there.

7. Not Paying Attention to Analytics

The last mistake that a lot of site owners are doing is failing to pay attention to analytics. Analytics has helped businesses make better decisions than ever, and investing on tools that can help you make better sense of data is one of the best decisions you can make. Not doing so, or failing to listen to what your tools say just because it’s against your own belief, is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.

So make sure to invest on analytics, and heed on what the numbers say. To help you with that, here’s a helpful guide on e-commerce analytics to help you find out what metrics you need to focus on to establish and grow your online business.

Conclusion

As humans, committing mistakes is commonplace. However, if we do not learn from our mistakes, and those from others, we will never be able to do the right thing. The 7 UX design pitfalls above are some of the most common mistakes committee by site owners and designers, and these cause their inability to succeed. So make sure that you learn from these pitfalls so that unlike their sites, yours can succeed.

DEV Community: Violet Smith