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Lost or stolen smart phones is more than just an in inconvenience, it can lead to identity fraud or corporate espionage and even compromise the integrity of your medical records, 24 percent of cell phone owners store PINs and password on a handset, 11 percent store personal identification info, and 10 percent store credit card numbers. If your mobile phone is stolen, the thief can do a reverse lookup of your cell number to obtain of your cell number to obtain your name and address, that and a stored credit card number can lead to “account take over”, where the thief changes an existing account’s billing address and unless your card issuer call you, the absence of your monthly statement might go unnoticed.

With such info, a thief could also open new account using your name, as you often wouldn’t know these accounts are being opened, this problem can take much longer to resolve, and if you use your phone to access e-mail, a thief might too.

Lockdown your phone
The best way to keep your email accounts secure is to lock your mobile phone when you’re not using, a password lock, and 40 percent of users didn’t employ a password to lock their phones, for iPhone, arguably the most popular mobile phone today, you’ll want to combine auto-lock, enable by default to turn off the screen based keypad after a preset amount of time, with passcode lock, to turn the phone on manually, to enable the latter, tap Setting, then General, then Passcode Lock.

Tap Turn Passcode on, and then enter a secure password, for other phones, check the tools or setting section, on LG Dare, it’s under Tools and Setting, then security, practice looking and unlocking the phone until it become second nature.

Protect Company info
Many people also use mobile phones for remote access to their workplaces, since nearly half of mobile phones users don’t lock or otherwise restrict access, thieves may use such a vulnerable stolen phone to gain access to an employer’s internal network, security vendor offer business an application, that allows your employer to lock a lost phone or erase sensitive data remotely.
Another step to protect stored data is to disable Bluetooth, although it’s a short range signal, some malware uses Bluetooth to suck data from your phone surreptitiously, also while most mobile phones use cellular connections to access the internet, the iPhone has a Wi-Fi option for faster high-bandwidth like streaming video, that opens up the possibility of connection to rogue Wi-Fi networks full of key logging malware, to turn-on off Wi-Fi or set prompt for each new connection, touch iPhone Setting – Wi-Fi, then select accordingly.

Stop Mobile Bank Heists
Have you recently started using mobile banking, the good news is that generally no personal banking data such as your account information, is kept on the phones itself, however, a criminal can still use your phone to access your bank account directly, mobile banking session occur in one of three ways, you can download an app to your phone, the bank exchange encrypted SMS messages with your phone or the bank uses your phone’s mobile browser to show account information. In any case, notify your bank, shortly after you notify your cellular carrier of any lost stolen phone, if the bank uses a client side application, it can remotely disable it, if the bank uses the interchange of SMS or mobile browser connection, its device ID service block contact from the stolen phone.

Protect your health records
same safeguards apply to personal health information accessed via mobile, some hospitals are experimenting with providing patient information over a mobile phones, and the number doing should grow by the end of this year, if you have such a service and your phone is lost or stolen, contact your health care provider right away so it can block fraudulent access, mobile phones are now miniature computer that manage our lives in ways we might not fully realize, think of your cell phone as an electronic wallet, if you lose it, take the appropriate steps to contact your carries and all of the parties that may be affected.