Because our phones are at the core of our everyday lives for most of us, they hold a wealth of personal information, ranging from banking information to messaging and email accounts. This sensitive information can appeal to a wide spectrum of crooks, from cybercriminals to people you may know.
Phone hacking can include the unwitting download of spyware that relays information on your activity – such as logging keystrokes to scrape passwords – spy apps downloaded by someone with access to your device; or other malware that exploits your phone, such as using its internet bandwidth in a botnet, as was the case with malware that infected nearly 20 million Android devices.
“Infecting the device with malware is the most typical way for cellphones to be hacked,” says Victor Chebyshev, a security expert at Kaspersky Lab. This malware can infect a device by hiding in apps that the user has downloaded – and the risk of a malicious app increases when downloading away from the official app store.
9 steps to figuring out who hacked your phone
1. Check your phone bill
2. Go through your apps list
3. Look up your flashlight and battery-saver apps
4. Double-check your favorite popular games
5. Scroll through your call list
6. Did you click that link?
7. Consider the last time you used public WiFi
8. Is your iCloud safe?
9. Run a security scan
3 steps to take if your phone has been hacked
1. Delete any apps or messages that may be malicious
If removing them resolves any performance difficulties, that's fantastic. Even if you don't, it's a good idea to delete your device of any apps that were identified during the security scan.
2. Do a factory reset
If your phone is still acting strangely after removing the suspicious app(s), this nuclear option is a quick way to purge your device of any dangerous – or sluggish – software that may have been left behind.
3. Check if your information is out there
Unfortunately, many breaches and viruses have few to no symptoms, and consumers are often only aware of a breach when their digital services are hijacked, or, worse, when they are victims of identity theft, in which hackers use their stolen information to open accounts or lines of credit.