What to do if your phone has been hacked?

Last Updated on 2 years by Touhid

A hacker can compromise your identity and privacy by hacking your phone without your acknowledgement. Anyone in the world can be vulnerable to phone hacking who is using a smart phone. In this article we will discuss on “What to do if your phone has been hacked” by phone hacker.

In modern times, phone hackers are very much smart to hacking a phone; they are continuously improving hacking technology and methods. When a phone has been hacked, hacker getting access to your phone as well as your important data, photos, videos, files, text messages and contact information.

What to do if your phone has been hacked?

What to do if your phone has been hacked? If you think that your phone has been hacked by hacker then you should immediately take some necessary action to address it. So, you can follow the following tips in order to recover your phone from hacker.

1. Factory reset your Phone
2. Change accounts passwords
3. Run antivirus Software on Phone
4. Delete suspicious apps from Phone
5. Keep your Phone Up to date

1. Factory Reset your Phone

What you will do if your phone has been hacked? First, factory reset your phone because most of the malware can be removed from your phone when you apply this step. Typically, factory reset will help to remove hacking programs or malicious codes from your phone. This process will also clear your all data which stored on your phone such as your accounts, all installed apps, music, pictures, videos, files, text messages and contact information.

However, you can restore your data from your backup location or cloud storage. So, it is important you should take regular backup of your sensitive data.

Phone factory reset option depends on manufacturer but also most of the Android phones; you can reset the phone by using this tip:

Go to Setting –> System –>Reset –> Reset Phone –> Erase all Data

2. Change Accounts Passwords

Hacker can get your passwords when your phone has been hacked. So, after removing virus or malware from your phone you should immediately change your account and device passwords. If you don’t change your password then you are again vulnerable to phone hacking. That’s why, create a strong and unique password to protect from hacker as well as protect your phone.

Learn more How to Create a Strong Password?

3. Run Antivirus Software on Phone

After completion of factory reset your phone, you have to again install your required mobile apps from Apple App Store or the Google Play store. You will restore your data, files, photos from backup location.

So, the next step you need install antivirus software to scan your all installed apps, data, files and documents in order to check virus and malware. Anti-Malware Software helps to detect and remove against malware, viruses and cyber threats. Now, we can say that you should always use antivirus software either your phone has been hacked or not.

Here is the list of antivirus software for Android phone:

1. Avast Mobile Security
2. Bitdefender Antivirus
3. AVG Antivirus
4. McAfee Mobile Security
5. Kaspersky Mobile Antivirus
6. Sophos Mobile Security
7. Norton 360
8. ESET Mobile Security
9. Malware bytes

4. Delete Suspicious Apps from Phone

What to do if your phone has been hacked? Delete suspicious Apps is another important tips when your phone has been hacked. If you think you have installed apps from a third party source which seems to be suspicious, then remove those apps immediately.

A suspicious app is a common gateway that hacker can easily access and compromise your phone. You should always installed apps from Apple App Store or the Google Play store not from any third party sources.

To find harmful or suspicious apps on phone, you can check following ways:

Go to Google Play store –> at the top Right, click on your Profile –>  Click on My apps menu –> if you see “No harmful apps found”, that means there has no harmful or suspicious apps on phone.

5. Keep Your Phone Up to date

To protect your phone from malicious attack you should keep up to date operating system and apps. For your kind information, older version software apps may have security holes and vulnerability. So, hacker can simply exploit security vulnerabilities and compromise your phone. That’s why, up to date software apps whenever an update version is available on your phone.

To see all apps on your phone are update or not, check following ways:

Go to Google Play store –> at the top Right, click on your Profile –>  Click on My apps menu –> if you see any “Updates pending”, then click on “Update all” button.

Related article: How to protect your phone from Hacking?

Conclusion

Finally, don’t install any third party apps from unknown sources, use strong passwords, don’t respond to phishing email and browse only secured website to protect your phone from hacking. Hope the article “What to do if your phone has been hacked” will be helpful for you!