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If you’re one of those who’s addicted to downloading trending games and apps on app stores and not bothering about checking their permissions while installing, its time you gave a little thought to your phone’s security. How many layers of security sit between anyone with access to your phone, whether physical or through some remote method, which potentially carries your email, contact details, one half of two factor authentication, schedule, and so many other sections of your private life? Not to mention that Google’s Play Store is known to be quite vulnerable to malware apps.

So how do you ensure that your personal data is safe? If you are using a pin with the lowest requirements, thats 4 digits of safety. Maybe face unlock? That’s not terribly effective either. How about a real, high quality password? Now we are getting somewhere- though there’s a significant inconvenience in typing out a high quality password on a touchscreen. Here are some excellent apps that let you add either front line security or the ability to combat after the fact threats.

Uber Device Lock

Ever seen a movie where the main character uses a piece of nondescript plastic tapped on their phone to unlock it? This app brings that to reality. Now you can carry a physical token that unauthorized users need to have in addition to holding your phone in their hands. I would recommend the YubiKey NEO as Uber Lock has explicit support for it and the NEO has an aesthetic that is absolutely wonderful while remaining low profile. If you are worried about being locked out from your device if you lose the NFC token, you can still continue using a high quality but inconvenient password as a backup.

Just as a note, this is a paid app for longer-than-trial usage but is a one time cost well worth the money.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

Now that you have a way to prevent people from getting into your phone while its sitting in their hands, you should probably have a way to prevent malware that exploits your desire for cool stuff from getting control of your phone. Malwarebytes is a trusted provider of anti-malware solutions on the desktop that has extended their offerings to phones. Be assured that you won’t end up giving away all of your personal info the next time you install an unsigned APK from the web because it looked like an interesting game but turned out to be some nasty stuff.

OpenVPN for Android

Do you use unsecured wifi networks? I can pretend to be them and see whatever traffic you put across that network! So, how do you use the convenient, free networks present at every coffee shop while making sure you don’t leak important personal data to the man eating the scone three meters away with the Pineapple sitting in his bag? OpenVPN establishes a secure tunnel between you and your chosen VPN provider; people can trick you into using their network but you can use their bandwidth to no ill effect with this. Like Uber Device Lock, this does require a third party offering but at five euros a month, privacy is not getting any cheaper!

Many VPN providers, other than the linked, support OpenVPN on Android so feel free to shop around for prices, features, or exit locations of your choice.

Advanced Task Manager - Killer

Now that you can hand your phone to anyone, download shady, unsigned apps, and use the most frightening wifi networks, how else can you secure your phone? Well, short of rooting it, you can acquire some more control over whats running at any time with Advanced Task Manager. Just like on windows, this will tell you how much memory each app uses and leaves it to your discretion to kill the apps you feel you don’t need running. As far as features go, this lets you automate the death of apps as you desire in response to various events, such as the screen turning off.

ES File Explorer File Manager

You control what’s running, the only section of the phone that’s accessible with non-root-requiring apps left would be the filesystem. This file explorer, at its basest offering, gives you full access to the sections of your phone’s filesystem it can. That means you control what’s sitting on your sdcard when the phone is running without having to deal with a full desktop system. There are a ton of other features, but for controlling your phone, you don’t even need to look at them.