It’s no secret that some apps can eat up your phone`s storage or battery, or that some automatically charge money, collect credit card data, or share your personal information.
It’s no secret that some apps can eat up your phone`s storage or battery, or that some automatically charge money, collect credit card data, or share your personal information. Dozens of hazardous apps appear on the market every day, so many that not even Google Play or the App Store can track them down immediately. So, the safety of your devices and private information is mostly in your hands!!
The popularity of weather apps is declining now. It’s much easier and faster to check weather forecasts through a browser.
Built-in browsers
Built-in browsers are often pre-installed and they sometimes open automatically when you click a link. These programs do not guarantee personal data protection or protection against viruses and they significantly slow down your phone’s operating system.Defragmentation apps
Defragmentation apps became very popular right at their inception because they are similar to the same programs on computers. But there are no hard drives on smartphones for these apps to defragment, they can only analyze how much space certain programs take up. Besides, defragmentation apps also use your phone’s resources and can collect your personal data.Optimizers
Clean Master, and other optimizers like that take care of clearing your cache and deleting unnecessary programs. However, most modern phones have this function in their system already which makes these apps useless. They also make the battery life shorter. You won’t make the system faster, you will only slow it down and get ads as a “bonus.”Free games
Game development costs a lot in terms of money and effort, so if you find a free game, keep in mind that developers either added a lot of advertising to the app (which is usually saved to cache and eats up your device’s storage) or there’s a chance that they might steal and then sell your personal information. So if you really want to download a game app, make sure it’s well-known or read the user agreement.Weather apps
Weather apps became extremely popular at first, but it was discovered that there were a lot of viruses in them. For example, there was a case when a weather app had an in-built trojan that collected the data from the owner’s phone and sent it to the attackers. For the most part, they were interested in credit card data.The popularity of weather apps is declining now. It’s much easier and faster to check weather forecasts through a browser.
Social media
These apps also became very popular and then lost popularity very quickly. In this case, hackers have nothing to do with them, it’s just that the apps take a lot of energy and kill the battery so the smartphone itself starts lagging. For example, many Facebook users find the mobile version in the browser much easier to use than the official app.Fast charge apps
There are countless apps that promise you they can speed up the process of charging your phone. The fact is: nothing (including the apps) can charge your phone faster than the default setting allows. These apps are just trickery, with an endless stream of ads that sometimes appear even if the screen is locked.
Wi-Fi apps
Be careful with free Wi-Fi apps that claim to provide you with a map of Wi-Fi hotspots, free Wi-Fi keys and network protection — it was discovered that some of them can be stealing your personal data, including credit card information.
Antivirus programs from unknown developers
When people started hacking phones and stealing data, mobile antivirus applications started appearing. And then, hackers had a great idea and created their own antivirus apps. These apps can steal user personal data and even completely block the phone.
Location trackers
Apps that ask to access your location not only significantly shorten your phone’s battery life, but might also use or sell your personal data. Navigation apps, delivery apps, games like Pokémon Go, and even some social media apps track your location. Take a moment to look through the apps that access your location and remove the unnecessary ones. And for those apps that you use, you can check the terms of use in the application settings and prohibit access to your location, as it’s shown below.
