Smartphones have been an essential part of your daily life. Everything such as calling, chatting, banking, sending emails, social media, or daily schedule is now handy with a phone. At the same time, fraudsters can target your phone to steal your identity.
The hacking of a phone is a nightmare. Today fraudsters are attempting different methods to hack a phone and it’s kind of frustrating if you have confidential data on it. When your phone becomes vulnerable to cyber theft, the first thing that comes to mind is how to remove a hacker from my phone.
How to Know If your Phone is Hacked
These are some common indications that help to know if your phone is hacked. So, you must keep attention to your phone’s behavior.
Unfamiliar Call Logs & Messages
If there are call logs or unfamiliar messages on your phone, it indicates that hackers are tapping your phone with an SMS trojan or impersonating you to gain personal information from family and friends.
Suspicious Activities in the Online Accounts
If you receive an unusual login or new user verification alert, it means hackers get access to your phone and they have tried to steal sensitive information from your online accounts like social media and modify it.
Phone Battery is Dying so Fast
The phone battery is dying fast, indicating that someone hacked your phone. It means someone else is accessing the apps and data of your phone. Also, if you’ve any malicious application installed in your phone, it uses malicious code that draws the battery fast.
Receiving Unusual Popups
Unusual popups might be a hint that some malware or adware is in your device. For example, if you receive messages like you’ve won a prize or have a virus on your device, just close all browsers and restart the phone instead of tapping these popups. Otherwise, you can choose antivirus software like Avast.
Unwanted Apps that you didn’t download
There may be some preinstalled apps on your device. In that case, check all the apps daily and uninstall the unwanted apps from your device. This will help to keep your phone away from hackers. Here are some ways to find out hidden apps on your phone.
Abnormal Changes of Data Usage
Installed malicious applications prevent apps from closing. So, they constantly run in the background and increase battery usage. Also, if your phone transfers all personal information to another device, you may notice abnormal changes in data usage.
Unexpected Crashes, Screen Freezing or Restart
These are also some indications to know that someone is hacking your phone.
How to Remove a Hacker from Your Phone
There’re several ways you can secure your phone from being compromised. If you’re wondering how to remove a hacker from my phone, here’s the complete answer to your question.
Uninstall Malicious Apps
The first step to protecting your phone from hackers is to uninstall the malicious app you didn’t download. Hackers may try to steal your confidential information like bank details, passcodes, addresses etc., through such malware.
Remove App Permission
Some apps require permission to access contacts, media or location to function. So, it’s better to check for app permission if you’re suspicious of the phone being hacked.
For this, go to Settings > App Manager/Applications and Permissions and individually check each app’s permission. If any app has access irrelevant to its task, remove the permission.
Install Anti-Virus
The best tip to remove hackers from your phone is to install an anti-virus application. It runs security scans, detects unwanted activities and removes malware to keep your phone safe from cyberattacks.
Change All Passcodes
Changing all passcodes of your phone, including internet banking, social media accounts, emails, Google account, Apple, ID etc. is the smart way to remove hackers. Additionally, check if there’re suspicious transactions in the account or online shopping services where you’ve saved banking or card details.
Remove Jailbreak
Jailbreaking the phone gives total control of the device, increases processing speed etc. At the same time, it causes loss of warranty, device protection and unable to update OS that makes the phone vulnerable to hacking. So, you need to remove and avoid jailbreaking the device.
Clear Cache
Clearing cache is the quickest way to remove hackers. This is because your device temporally stores all previous cache files and data. Removing these data from the browser protects your device from being hacked.
Update the OS of your phone
If you want to prevent hackers from accessing your phone, update the operating system. This process helps to fix temporary bugs and remove spyware. Once you update the OS to its latest version, it will secure your phone.
Factory Reset Your Phone
You can perform a factory reset to remove hackers from the phone.
To factory reset an Android phone, open Settings > System Management > Backup & Reset > Erase all data / Factory Reset.
For iPhone users, select Settings > General > Reset > Erase all content.
How to Protect Your Phone from Hackers
Now you’re aware of all the tricks of removing hackers from your phone. But you never skip the procedure of protecting your phone for security purposes. Here we listed all the possible ways to protect your phone from hackers.
Do not install shady apps
It’s wise to check for the reviews before you download any app. Also, make sure to download them from a trusted source.
Protect your phone and apps with strong passwords and phone locks
It’s a good way to protect your phone from being hacked again. However, avoid using easy passwords like your phone number or birthdate. Instead, you need to set strong passwords difficult to crack and change them more often.
Always keep your phone with you.
Physical access is the best way hackers can access your data. So, don’t leave your phone in a public place and always try to keep it with you. Therefore, no one can steal or access the phone physically and breaches your security.
Do not save important passwords on the device.
Instead of saving important passwords on the device, you can use a password manager as it’s difficult to remember the passwords. Some trusted password managers to save your personal credentials are LastPass, NordPass, Kaspersky Password Manager, 1Password etc.
Do not jailbreak the phone
Though it allows downloading apps from unofficial sources, the phone loses security patches causing data theft, unauthorized access etc. You can’t even update the phone. So, it’s always safe to install apps from reliable sources without jailbreaking.
Avoid phone phishing
Scammers use VoIP technology to impersonate different companies to get your personal details, including bank credentials. Also, sometimes you may receive emails from an anonymous sender or try to enter login information at a site, which isn’t reliable.
So, if you’re unsure, do not click unfamiliar links on email or SMS, open attachments or suspicious webpages.
Clear browsing history and cache regularly.
It’s quite easy to pry into your personal details from the browsing history. Therefore, make sure to clear it as well as cache data to protect your phone from hackers.
Update your phone and apps.
Some trusted applications even encounter technical glitches and hackers take advantage of it to steal data. The same goes for your phone OS. Hence, you need to update the phone and apps timely to fix bugs or glitches.
Enable two-factor authentication (2FA)
Google accounts and Apple ID offer 2FA for your device so that it can’t be accessed by any third party. Similarly, biometric authentication like face ID or fingerprint verification is the best trick to prevent the phone from hacking.
Download and enable the lost device tracking app
Download a lost device tracking app from Google Play Store or App Store. If your phone gets stolen, such apps will help to track it.
Avoid using public WiFi and connect to secure internet
As public WiFi is not secured, it’s easy to access your personal details. So, always connect your phone to a secure network or use a VPN while using unsecured WiFi. VPN hides your IP address and masks your location to keep away the unwanted viewers from the phone.
Do not turn on the hotspot in a crowded area
In such cases, hackers can easily track your IP and hack the device. So, make sure to turn off the hotspot in a crowded area or set a complex password if it’s on.
Do not turn on autofill
While it’s a convenient feature to enter a name, address, and other personal details automatically, it has significant risks. If the phone falls into the wrong hands, they can use the autofill feature to fill in the information and causes identity theft.
That’s all. Try out the above suggestions so you can remove a hacker from the phone and keep it safe.