We’re living in an era where our lives are dominated by our phones. Within seconds, we can send text messages to anybody we want. A lot of us share important information like this. Therefore, preserving your privacy is vital.
Most Android users are handling countless SMS messages each day. While some of these SMS messages may be a bit more jovial, many of them can include very sensitive material or even personal information. You don’t want this sort of thing to fall into the wrong hands. Therefore, it is important that you learn how to guarantee the security of your text messages.
Our goal here is to give you the steps that you must follow to limit the chances of prying eyes feasting their gaze on your private texts. We’ll also let you know more about one of the key tools for your battle – AutoForward Text.
Enable App Permissions Wisely
As you may know, most of the apps on your phone will require you to give certain permissions before that app can tap into certain features. For example, a photography app wouldn’t be able to access your camera unless you told the phone to give it permission, likewise, a social media app can’t access your phonebook unless you let it do so.
Whenever something appears on your phone asking whether you give permission to the app, particularly SMS-related permissions, then carefully consider what you may be letting yourself in for. Once you give an app access to your SMS, for instance, it can read all of them. Download the wrong app, and you could run into issues.
Some apps will use the permissions properly, though. For example, AutoForward Text requires certain permissions to access the full features of the app. This is fine. But, with other apps, always take care to know exactly what you are giving permission for.
Utilize Encryption
This isn’t something that you need to worry about too much. Android phones will automatically encrypt messages when they are sent. This ensures that they can only be read by the intended recipient.
The one time you should think about this is if you are using a secondary app to send your texts e.g. AutoForward Text. Most of these apps will not encrypt your SMS messages, which means they could be intercepted while in transit. Thankfully, this isn’t a problem for AutoForward Text. It always encrypts your SMS.
Set Up Screen Locks and Passwords
Always have some sort of lock on your phone. It doesn’t matter whether it is a biometric lock, PIN, or password. It just makes it a little more difficult for somebody to get into your messages without permission.
Once you have a lock in place, all of your device’s apps will be protected. Nobody could read anything, even things sent through AutoForward Text.
Install a Trusted SMS App
Many of the SMS apps on the Google Play Store are significantly better than the default app on Android. Download one or two of them, but make sure that you only download trusted apps i.e. ones that have proven their worth to countless people before.
If you are going to use AutoForward Text to automatically forward your text messages (which is highly recommended), we suggest that you browse the Google Play Store to find something decent that you can pair it up with. Although, honestly, it will work just as well with the default Messages app on your Android phone.
Be Wary of SMS Scams
Unfortunately, SMS scams are now more prevalent than ever. It is easy to fall victim to one too. All it takes is a misclick on a dodgy link in an SMS and you could have your SMS messages read (or worse). So, if you receive an SMS from an unknown number, always assume that it is a scam until proven otherwise. Never click a link that you do not trust!
Something like AutoForward Text could work incredibly well here. While it is not going to protect you from scams (that’s all on you), it will help you to save backups of any SMS that you have received, so if you do fall victim, or want to report a potential scam, then it makes your life a whole lot easier.
Conclusion
As you can see, it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to protect your text messages and privacy. Doing something as simple as turning on a password for your phone can work wonders. Most of the protection is going to be on you being hyper-vigilant and knowing how to spot when an app is asking for more permissions than it needs, or worse, being able to spot a scam SMS. We recommend that if you do download an external app to deal with your SMS, only download something reputable.
