Applications Designed to Secure your Phone (continued)

So next up, we have Disconnect. And disconnect is actually a VPN service. A VPN is the same one as you run on a computer itself. And a VPN allows us to tunnel our traffic through. Disconnect is no different. And there’s a lot of VPNs for both iOS and Android. The one I particularly use is Disconnect. Other good ones are ProtonVPN and TunnelBear. Now a VPN, again, allows tunnel traffic through. It could also make our traffic look like it’s coming from different states or different countries also. And a VPN is really critical. The VPN is going to help protect our traffic, encrypted and keep it anonymous.

Now in addition to our own anonymity, a VPN is important because if we connect to something like a public Wi-Fi, we go down to Starbucks, we go to the library, our city itself is running a free VPN, it’s important to run a– or not VPN, rather but free internet– it’s important to encrypt our traffic. Because if someone intercepts our traffic through regular means, if we connect or even if they set a fake access point up, they can potentially grab our traffic, redirect it, manipulate it in some way. Whereas a VPN, if we run it through a VPN, it adds that extra layer of encryption. It adds an extra layer of protection for us.

That’s why it’s really important to run a VPN, both on mobile devices or on a laptop. And especially if you’re going to connect to public Wi-Fi spots. Now with VPNs, you do want to be careful. There are some that actually didn’t do anything. It didn’t really protect your traffic. So you want to do your due diligence. You want to actually do your research. Another great way to test it is running through a DNS leak test, see if it’s leaking that DNS information. But overall, what you want to do is, you want to go through, you want to read the reviews, you want to do a little bit of research on the VPN that you’re going to choose.

Make sure that it’s going to be– well, not only protect you, but also going to fit your needs. Next up, we have Jumbo. Now Jumbo is designed to take a look at your social media and try to reduce your attack surface and how much data is actually going out and sharing. Now, it’s a pretty simple program. Once you load it up, you have to accept the terms agreement, start Jumbo. The first thing you can do is you could enter email address. And then it’s going to monitor. And it monitors who have I been [INAUDIBLE].. So if your email address shows I’m in a data breach.

It’s supposed to be able to find it and then notify you that, “Hey, your password was found on a data breach, you should probably change it.” Next up, it’s going to ask you what type of apps you are using. And then they’re going to ask to be able to connect to those social media accounts in order to actually find if it’s selling your information, if it’s selling your bank info, or other information that you don’t want to get out there. And it’s going to make some suggestions on how you can help secure your account. So overall, it’s a pretty easy program. It is free. And I do encourage you to actually check it out.

See if it’s actually going to be a good fit for you. Again, it’s called Jumbo. And it’s available in iOS store. Now the next one up is called Burner. And what Burner allows you to do is it allows you to protect your phone number. So what you do is you create– once you have the program– it is a subscription base, you actually buy time on here. So it allows you to create multiple phone lines. So once you create a phone, it gives you a virtual number. That phone number, you can make calls, you can receive calls, you can get text, you can send text, you can send photos. And you can keep the number as long as you like.

So the use case for this is if you need to give your phone number out. Say you’re doing online dating or dating, period. Easy way to communicate with someone is you give your phone number out. Problem is, if you give your real phone number out, things don’t work out, then you’re stuck with the real phone number that someone has. It’s a little bit of hassle to have to go and change it or sometimes you get charged for it. What Burner does is allows you to give the Burner number out. You’ll still get phone calls on your regular phone. You’ll still get text messages and whatnot.

But it allows you to burn that phone number and generate a new one when you’re ready. So that’s really handy. Also a good use case is things like if you’re dealing with salespeople, you need to give a phone number out for a while, you can give that. And when the salespeople eventually sell your phone number out to other corporations, marketing, and whatnot, you could simply burn that phone number and not deal with it again. So it’s a pretty easy app to use. Once you load it up, you put your real phone number in because it does need a phone number to actually call back to your phone with. But again, this is on iPhone and Android. And it’s pretty handy.

We’ll take a look at another program in the next video. So always be sure to verify the application permission before installing. Just because it is on the official app store doesn’t mean it’s always safe. And we saw this example with the wallpaper app on the Android store. So wrapping up, both Android and iOS have a lot of useful apps out there. It’s definitely worth exploring. But again, do your research.

Make sure that, two things: the app is going to fit your needs and it is actually indeed safe. It’s actually doing what it’s supposed to do for you. Keep your applications up to date. Not only is it important to keep the operating system of your phone up to date, but also you want to make sure your applications are up to date on a regular basis. Just because the application is on the official store, which you should try to stay within, always make sure the app permissions makes sense. And that it’s going to be safe for you. So this was all about applications for your smartphone, keeping you safe, keeping your smartphone safe.

Next video, we’re going to take a look at Sudo and how it works. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you in the next video.