With the advancement in technology, the security and privacy risks are becoming greater and greater. The latest privacy issue has emerged in the form of spying. Spying in the digital age, unlike the archaic concept, has become much more serious than what we may like to believe. A phone hack can now result into watching what the victim is doing by turning on his camera, listening to the victim’s conversations or even reading their text messages.
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There are many ways your smartphone can get hacked. Two of them are listed below:
Through Physical Access
The first method is easier. If a person has physical access to your smartphone i.e. knows your passcode, he/she can easily install a third party app on your phone without letting you know. There are a number of applications available in the application market for only a few hundred bucks. With these applications, a person can spy on almost everything the other person is doing through their phone.
One of the websites that provides such spying software is FlexiSpy.com. With the help of this application, you can spy on a person by turning his camera on, reading his text messages, or listening to the conversations he is having through his phone. Furthermore, not only can you read the text messages, you can also read the messages that the person has deleted and you can also interject yourself into a phone call the person is having. Another spying feature this software has is as scary as it sounds; the hacker can even see your location, like a GPS.
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However, this method of hacking requires the physical access of the victim’s phone. This type of hacking is usually done by your friends or maybe the better-half suspecting one of cheating. This might sound funny but that is actually the truth.
Remote Exploitation
The second method of smartphone hacking is through remote exploitation. This requires a team of experts as all the hacking is done remotely. This kind of hacking is mostly done by government and intelligence agencies. There are several ways to exploit a smartphone through vulnerabilities in the phone’s software. However, due to the advanced security system implemented by Apple in its iPhones, their devices are less vulnerable than android phones. Security breech methods for android cost about $200,000, while the price for iPhones goes as high as $1.5 million. However, money has never been a problem for the government and if they decide to compromise your privacy, they can do it and you wouldn’t even see it coming.
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There’s not much you can do to detect if your device has this type of malware. However, if you’re an iPhone user, you can always count on Apple for handling the security sector of your phone. All you have to do is keep your phone updated to the latest iOS. Moreover, you should also use a strong passcode on your smartphone and keep it a secret. Even if you have the slightest of doubt that your phone is infected with malware, just perform a factory reset and everything will go back to normal. Although there are security measures for you to adopt if you’re an iPhone user, the same cannot be said for Android users.
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