8 common-sense tips to keep your smartphone secure

From locking your smartphone with a pin to installing a security app, these common-sense tips will help keep you and your information protected.

Here are eight tips to boost the security of your smartphone and what you store on it:

1. Protect your investment

Losing your smartphone can be pretty stressful. Each day, 200,000 devices are lost, stolen or damaged. You might be surprised by the high out-of-contract price of replacing a lost smartphone with an equivalent make and model.

To prevent this from happening, consider Total Mobile Protection. You’ll get a replacement device—as soon as the next day—if yours is lost, stolen, damaged, or has a mechanical or electrical defect after the manufacturer’s warranty expires.

Part of Total Mobile Protection is Verizon Support & Protection, an app powered by McAfee® to help protect your device against viruses, malware and other digital threats. Other useful features include lock, locate, alarm, and the ability to wipe your device if it is lost.

2. Use a pin, password or pattern to lock your phone

Setting this up is easy. For most Android™ devices, go to your Location & Security Settingsfor instructions. iOS users can find these functions in the General options of their settings.

3. Download apps only from trusted stores

If you’re browsing for a new game or something more productive, use places such as Google Play™. Make sure you check ratings and reviews if they are available, and read the app’s privacy policy to see exactly what phone features it will have access to if you download.

4. Back up your data

This is more about protecting and restoring your information should disaster strike. With Backup Assistant Plus and Verizon Cloud, you can save your contacts, music, pictures, videos and documents to the cloud.

5. Keep your operating system and apps updated

There are typically periodic updates to both of these that not only add new features, but also offer tightened security.

6. Log out of sites after you make a payment

If you bank or shop from your smartphone, log out of those sites once your transactions are complete. Other tips include not storing your usernames and passwords on your phone and avoiding transactions while you are on public Wi-Fi.

7. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® when not in use

You think of them as ways to connect to something, but thieves can use them to connect to your device and access files.

8. Avoid giving out personal information

That text message that looks to be from your bank may not be. If you get requests via email or text for account information from any business, contact the business directly to confirm the request. The same advice goes for tapping links in unsolicited emails or texts.

12 Things Everyone Wishes They Could Change About Their iPhone

We're going to start off the post by saying this—iPhones are awesome and we can't really imagine life without them, as ridiculous as that is to say in writing. But because these devices are attached to our hip at all times, we tend to notice some not-so-desirable qualities that Apple seems to have overlooked. And these are the struggles that we know all too well:

1. How Autocorrect almost ALWAYS changes words to something absolutely, off-the-wall ridiculous.

 2.  Those apps on your iPhone you literally CAN'T delete.

    3. Your earphones getting so tangled you'd swear you're working on a rubix cube.

    4.  The screens are SUPER sensitive so if you accidentally drop your phone on the sidewalk you can expect the glass to be completely destroyed. Yes, even with a case on.  

    5.  Batteries that die in like, AN HOUR.  

    6.  When you're on the phone with someone and try turning up the volume as much as possible and STILL can't hear them, so you end up saying OK to everything they say. 

    7.  There's an easy way to turn your phone onto vibrate (side switch), yet no easy way to turn off sounds AND vibrate altogether, so you have to go alllll the way into settings and sounds to turn them both off. First world problems, we know. 

8.  How water is what sustains us as humans but is our iPhone's kryptonite. 

9.  When you want to turn up the volume on your music by using your headphone cord and instead it turns it off completely. 

10.  When you "butt-dial" the voice text message option and send some weird noises to your friend, to which they automatically respond WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?!

 

5 Brilliant Tricks To Improve Your Cell Phone Service Fast

There are only a few things more frustrating than having an important phone call abruptly drop because of poor service. Despite cell phones getting more advanced by the day, even brand-new smartphones can fall subject to subpar call signals. At last, here are five brilliant hacks you can try to avoid bad reception:

1. Turn your phone off and on.

Simply restarting your device will reboot the phone, leading to a better signal. Turning your phone's airplane mode on then off for a few seconds will also do the trick. 

2. Charge your battery. 

If your text messages are getting delayed, there is a good chance that is due to low battery level. Your phone uses more power to detect cell towers when you are constantly using it. Flipping your phone to airplane mode will charge your phone nearly twice as fast. 

3. Roll down your windows when you are in the car.

Vehicles act as a metal box that can block good cell reception. When you're on the road, rolling down your windows can be a simple solution to better service. 

4. Note the areas in your home with the strongest and weakest signal.

Take a few minutes to walk around your house, and map out where you get the best service. It will help you avoid future dropped calls. By doing this, you will know where in your home to go to have long quality phone conversations without interruption. 

5. Use WiFi whenever you can.

If you're in a public area, free WiFi is often available. Try to switch your phone over to WiFi mode to make calls instead of using your phone's data plan. If you have an iPhone and you're connected to WiFi, you can call other iPhone users by using FaceTime or FaceTime audio. In that way, you will be able to have a clear, quality conversation using WiFi even if you're in a dead zone.