The amount of Android devices on the market right now is astonishing, it’s a clear indication of how sought after the Android platform is, and how useful and flexible it can be for both new and old users. We’re no longer looking at phone releases on yearly basis, you could say we’re almost getting some new ultra-smartphone release every quarter now, and Android Authority is one of the best places to visit for learning more about this smartphone releases.

Three years ago, Chrome for Android was released, today — the application has seen more than a billion unique downloads, that’s a staggering number. A number that is like chocolate icing on an ice-cream for all the security enthusiasts out there. Such a large market provides an immense amount of potential targets, targets just like you and me. So it’s time to work on our Android security, to make it work.

Explore: Tools for Mobile Android Developers

A few months ago, we published an article that discussed security tools and apps for Android devices, helping you both protect your phone, but also to penetrate the networks around you yourself. It was a successful post, so today we’re going to take a look at the more basic aspects of how we can protect our Android devices from unwelcome intruders. We are eager to hear your own success stories of patching up your device to keep it nice and secure.

1. App credibility & permissions

The first thing to do when receiving your Android device is to check whether it has enabled automatic updates from Google, a trusted and verified merchant. Whenever you’re downloading new apps, pay at least a couple of moments inspecting the type of permission that you’re giving to the application, be aware of what kind of activities you allow your apps to do on your behalf. In the same fashion, try to limit your purchases from sites such as Google Play, Amazon and merchant oriented stores — places that are verified and can be trusted for new app installs.

2. Passwords, passwords

These days, every time a database of a website goes public, someone is analyzing the number of weak passwords being used by any number of users within that database; and to this day, those numbers are staggeringly high, of how many people use passwords such as “YourName321” or “P4ssword123” — these are the most easy to decipher passwords on the planet, be wise and use something that a machine robot won’t be able to guess within the next ten years. Same goes for individual passwords on individual sites.

3. Malware apps

Big publishers such as Kaspersky have also entered the mobile market and provide internet security solutions for Android devices. Believe it or not, but smartphones are increasingly fast becoming like small and portable computers, a place where you will soon be storing majority of your digital life — and as this trend continues to increase, so will the amount of spyware out there. Be ready for anything. Get a legitimate malware app today.

4. Virtual Private Networks

Are a great way to keep you out of reach of potential intruders! We wrote a post about the best VPN solutions with hardened security a little while ago, and highly recommend for you to check it out. A VPN for mobile is basically a way of making sure that all your connections are private, no matter what. This includes public WiFi hotspots and the like. The amount of sensitive data being transmitted between devices at any given time is not a joke.

5. Shady services

Mobile security is still a fragile thing, there is a lot of learning to be done still, but so far some of the most popular trends include to avoid using shady services (or services that you don’t use frequently), optimizing your browser settings for security purposes (all modern browsers should have some sort of features of this nature), and it’s also a great idea to limit your use of GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth whenever possible; these are just more triggers for entering the wrong network and losing control of your device.

Keeping Your Android Devices Safe and Secure

As the number of publicly available security issues for Android continue to unfold themselves, we will be keeping you updated about the ways to keep yourself safe and protected over the inception of many more Android versions. Sometimes the simple things can seem like not worth doing, yet as soon as we fall in the trap of a hacker; all hell breaks loose.