The 7 best Android apps to improve online safety

What are the best Android apps to improve the online security of our smartphones? Let’s find out in this article

Smartphones often contain very important data, and it is therefore questionable how secure they are. Being constantly connected to the Internet, it is easy to imagine being vulnerable to cyber attacks.

In general, iOS smartphones are considered safer than Android ones. Due to its open source nature, in fact, the Google home system is more prone to problems and vulnerabilities, even if the latter are resolved rather promptly.

The 7 best Android apps to improve online safety

To be sure that no one can take possession of the data contained in your Android smartphone, therefore, it is essential to add an additional level of security. here it is some apps that can be very useful.

Bouncer

Each app that is installed on your device needs certain permissions in order to function. For example, an app to make video calls must have permission to use the camera, and a car navigator must be able to access the device’s GPS.

As long as legitimate apps are obtaining these permissions, there is no problem: however, if you were to accidentally install a malicious app, it could have access to all the data on the device. With Bouncer you can manage all these permissions in more detail: for example, it is possible to grant them only for a limited period or to have them revoked after a certain period of time.

NordVPN

An online VPN (https://nordvpn.com/it/) is a great way to protect your privacy and data. NordVPN is a cutting-edge solution that allows you to encrypt all data traffic that passes through your smartphone and to mask your IP address. This is especially useful when you are away from home and connecting to public WiFi, where hackers are always on the prowl.

Furthermore, NordVPN offers complete solutions that allow you not only to protect your smartphone but also your entire home network. With a single service it is in fact possible to install NordVPN both on your home router and on all your devices.

Firefox Focus

Android uses Google Chrome as its default browser. It is undoubtedly a very intuitive and easy to use app, but it can present several security problems. Google collects a lot of information when you use its default apps, and so do other browsers. One option to protect your privacy is to use incognito mode, but the simplest solution is to use Firefox Focus.

This is a browser that, by default, it is always in incognito mode; Furthermore, it does not record user activities and also allows you to remove advertisements, which often contain malware or spyware.

Signal

Among the most popular messaging apps, Signal is the one that has made security its workhorse. Even if all the most used apps now guarantee end-to-end encryption for all messages exchanged, Signal is the only one that allows you to have secure conversations even via SMS.

Furthermore, Signal is an open source app, so its code is constantly monitored by the entire community and it is much more difficult for it to hide potentially dangerous secrets. WhatsApp, for example, is instead managed directly by Facebook, which is certainly not a guarantee of security: this is why a solution like Signal is preferable.

Secure Call

Secure Call allows you to make calls protected by end-to-end encryption, much like Signal does for messaging. Its operation is very simple: thanks to a peer-to-peer architecture, it is able to put two users in communication without intermediaries, thus making the secure calls and virtually impossible to intercept.

LastPass

One of the most important cybersecurity rules is to use strong and unique passwords. You must therefore use long passwords that contain both numbers and special characters, but you must also make sure that you never use the same password for multiple services. However, this creates a big problem: it becomes impossible to remember all the passwords used by heart.

It is therefore very useful to have a password manager like LastPass, which allows you to create and store passwords and PINs to always have them at hand. Passwords are stored in an encrypted online archive, which can only be accessed if you have a pre-set general password. That way it is enough remember a single password to have access to all the others.

Find My Device

A surprisingly popular method of obtaining personal information about someone is to have physical access to their smartphone. If you usually forget your phone in places frequented by strangers, it may be useful to use Find My Device, the Google app that allows you to locate the smartphone on which it is installed using another device or computer. Furthermore, in the most extreme cases, it also allows you to completely lock the phone remotely, or even to delete its content.