Have you ever given any thought as to why internet thieves manage to steal your information? It is mostly because you have forgotten to protect your smartphone or tablet. Increasingly people spend more time using internet on tablets or smartphones than on your own laptop/computer.
McAfee is the world’s largest dedicated security technology company and its Digital Assets report, conducted earlier this year, interestingly showed that Brits now own over 3,000 digital items (such as photos, videos, documents etc.). Consequently nearly 23% of UK households now have more than five digital devices, which naturally raises the issue of security concerns and losing digital assets.
I have been using my smartphone and tablet for years and it had never occurred to me that I need to protect them from identity theft. I have been using internet banking on my tablet so often that anyone could easily hack into my information. This is very scary! For all these years I have been neglecting this and left myself vulnerable!
Before I installed the McAfee LiveSafe on my laptop, I had to un-install my old virus checker. To install this software, you must have internet network at home as it needs to sign on online and open an account. Once complete, it will complete a full scan on your whole PC/laptop.
At the dashboard, you are able to add more devices to protect with McAfee LiveSafe. I have added my Android smartphone. It will text you the link. Make sure you have your internet/wifi on before you click the link. It requires you to download it. Once done, key in your email address and password. Now your smartphone is protected. So each time, I am on the internet on my phone, it is protected.
Next I tried to do the same for my iPad, but it would not allow me to download Mobile Security. I am only allowed to download either SafeKey or Personal Locker. It doesn’t look like there’s the full security app for iPads yet.
Choose between a SafeKey or Personal Locker?
SafeKey keeps track of only one password instead of having to remember passwords for all websites. Simply log in to McAfee Safekey and put your information in it. It securely stores usernames and passwords. When a user needs to enter information on the website, it can automatically fill in the appropriate information.
Personal Locker offers 1 GB secure storage in the cloud where users can store highly sensitive documents such as a credit card info, bank statements etc. Users access their documents through biometric authentication via a combination of face, voice and PIN.
Personally, I went for SafeKey, so I won’t need to sign in using a combination of face, voice and PIN. It is too complicated to do so many things at once. I have been using it for 2 weeks now. Each time I log into internet, it will scan and let me know the result/report. If I use Facebook, it will tell me if the link is safe. This is very useful to me as some links can contain malicious data if I click it, and I could inadvertently download a virus. I would recommend the software to anyone as identify thief stories seem to be increasingly common and this can help protect you against such malicious attacks. At the same time the software allows you to track your children’s devices through the Centralised Management Control feature to ensure you know of their whereabouts when they are out of the house. This is definitely very useful if you would like to have peace of mind!
Disclosure: We have received the software for the purposes of writing this review, however, all thoughts and opinions remain our own. We are members of tots100.
I’ve never thought of doing this on my phone. Because we use Macs/iPads I think they are automatically more protected than PC’s (although I could be mistaken!) so I’ve just never really thought about it!