If you lose phone

Rich1976

Or just don’t have all your banking/ saving apps on your mobile if you’re that worried and just have those on a separate device at home such as an iPad/tablet.

Also I would suggest the people who have the wallet type phone cases full of credit and debit cards and their driving licence are at a higher risk because if someone steals the phone not only have they got potential access to all the apps but all their physical cards too.

if you want to keep yourself safe just leave your phone in your pocket or bag and not walk down the street holding it .

Sea_Shell

sausage_time said:

Be sure to hide notification content on your lock screen in settings.  That way bad people can't see SMS 2FA codes, etc, without your security details.

I've just checked my phone, and it gives 2 options.   Hide "sensitive" notifications, or hide all.

I'm assuming OTP codes are classed as "sensitive", but what about email, other texts and WhatsApp??   

I'm I better to just hide everything?   


ETA - Just realised that it hides the sensitive CONTENT, not the notification itself.   So you still get a notification, but not the detail of the text itself.  

Decided to choose that.    

GeoffTF

There is a simple answer. Do not store any personal information on your phone and do not use it for banking. If you do use it for banking, keep only a small amount of money in the account (and make sure that money cannot be borrowed from that account). Only use a cheap phone and keep it well hidden away. That all may seem inconvenient, but security and convenience do not go together.

gadget88

wmb194 said:

gadget88 said:

I recently read someone was done out of money with one of the smaller online banks. If your phone is stolen and someone gets is your money protected? Had mine stolen this summer but was luckily I blocked my card quickly but I worry any savings could be at risk if they guess your password?

If you're really worried about it have two phones: one for going out that doesn't have any/many bank apps on it and another that doesn't leave the house with all your bank apps and 2FA authenticators on it.

Thanks yeah that’s the route I may go down as I read someone lost £50 grand savings. Think it was the online only banks. I have heard many get phones stolen in London and it’s getting worse. I have a chase bank but that should be fine without savings there. I think these days the risks are too high. 

gadget88

Rich1976 said:

Or just don’t have all your banking/ saving apps on your mobile if you’re that worried and just have those on a separate device at home such as an iPad/tablet.

Also I would suggest the people who have the wallet type phone cases full of credit and debit cards and their driving licence are at a higher risk because if someone steals the phone not only have they got potential access to all the apps but all their physical cards too.

if you want to keep yourself safe just leave your phone in your pocket or bag and not walk down the street holding it .

Yes I mean I have a rail card too and ring door bell. These days they all have your data but atleast it’s not a driving license or money they can get. 

gadget88

GeoffTF said:

There is a simple answer. Do not store any personal information on your phone and do not use it for banking. If you do use it for banking, keep only a small amount of money in the account (and make sure that money cannot be borrowed from that account). Only use a cheap phone and keep it well hidden away. That all may seem inconvenient, but security and convenience do not go together.

I use a cheap phone at work. I was going to do this going on holiday but I feel I can’t take decent photos so I feel maybe take the risk as I was able to replace the phone anyway. Perhaps a cheaper phone is better it’s hard to get balance right. I also buy my phones upfront so it seems a waste if I don’t use them outside the house. 

gadget88

I have messages on Twitter from bank and emails but I doubt this will matter. Only shows card ending in last three numbers. When my phone was stolen I had screen shots of my sort code and mortgage accounts and new mortgage ect but bank says they can’t do anything with these details anyway. I know if you guess the pin on the app you can send money so not having all is safest way. I can also access the website via the desktop one with my customer number worst case anyway? 

masonic

Another factor that is quite important is to ensure a mobile device you use for sensitive things like banking is still receiving security updates. If you are walking around with a device with months of unpatched vulnerabilities, then there is the potential for these to be used to bypass the security features you have set up. They may not even need physical possession of your device to compromise it, as some vulnerabilities can be leveraged over wifi and bluetooth.

km1500

the main things to do are 

put a PIN on your SIM so that if it is taken out and put in a different phone it cannot be used 

use biometrics on your screen lock rather than a pin or pattern because this means you can't be shoulder surfed 

obviously use a different unique pin for your banking apps although again most banking apps allow biometrics 

as above make sure sensitive notification content (eg otps) is not displayed on your lock screen

have a serious think about if you need to have all those banking apps etc on your mobile maybe just one will do. access the other via mobile that never leaves the house or desktop or whatever if possible. 

the weak point is your email as this cannot be protected by a pin or biometrics - I'm talking about Gmail and outlook here. There may be of course other ones that can be. my recommendation is to turn off 2fa and use a very strong password that cannot be broken. the reason is if you lose your phone for example then you have lost the 2fa device and cannot login to email on your laptop or replacement phone without a lot of hassle

finally when you use the phone to, take photos then open the camera by double pressing the power button or whatever so the phone is not unlocked if anyone grabs it

GeoffTF

km1500 said:

the weak point is your email as this cannot be protected by a pin or biometrics - I'm talking about Gmail and outlook here. There may be of course other ones that can be. my recommendation is to turn off 2fa and use a very strong password that cannot be broken. the reason is if you lose your phone for example then you have lost the 2fa device and cannot login to email on your laptop or replacement phone without a lot of hassle

With gmail, you can use hardware security keys ("advanced protection"), but that does not help much if you are permanently logged into the account on a mobile phone.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/46526?hl=en