The world is now extremely mobile, and the rate of that will only increase.
We have moved most of the conventional systems and optimized them in such a way that they can work on mobile. While that brings convenience with it, though, it also opens up new avenues for hackers to have their way.
In the world of mobile payment, for example, some of the threats that abound include, but are not limited to:
Mobile Phone Loss
Do you know how you feel when you see that you have lost your credit/ debit card? That is the same feeling that comes with losing your phone now.
Besides the wealth of data that such a phone holds, it is also key to a lot of financial platforms and pays tech services you use.
This means anyone with it – who can also find a way around the underlying security on these apps – can start spending your money like it is theirs.
Mobile Wallet Spoofing
Mobile phones now allow you to add cards to your phone. With these cards on your mobile, you are making payments a lot easier. A little background into how your card details are saved on mobile shows that an algorithm handles the encryption. Thus, your credit card details are masked to look like something else.
We should also state that the encryption technology used by most pay tech providers is as reliable as they come and is almost impossible to hack. When you add such details over a public Wi-Fi network or other unsecured networks, though, the risk of getting such card details hacked increases.
Malware Infection
When most people think of malware, they remember what they have seen in the movies. There, malware acts almost instantly – either locking the user out of their devices or displaying a large danger sign and wiping off the user’s data.
We can tell you that this is not how most malware works. Some can lie dormant on your unit for long, merely collecting data and sending it back
to the hacker’s server. Keyloggers, for example, will record all the keystrokes from your device. Appropriately analyzed, your keystrokes will reveal sensitive details such as login information, credit card details, and more.
Protecting Yourself
This is not the time to stop using mobile payment systems, though. They have made payments faster and comfortable, and you don’t have to give up this convenience just because of some threats. You can manage the situation better by employing the following strategies.
Use Secure Passwords
With strong and secure passwords, you have ensured that your pay tech services are safe even when your device falls into the wrong hands. You can bolster this security with options such as biometric authentication, two-factor authentication, etc.
Install a VPN
When you are using payment gateways on your devices while connected to unsecured networks, you are not the only one seeing all that you do. A hacker can snoop around that network and sniff out your sensitive details in the process.
This would not be possible when you have a VPN. These apps make it possible to have an encrypted connection, tunnelling your data so much that it cannot be followed by anyone else on the network.
Another reason to secure your financial data with a VPN is that it even hides your internet activity from your ISP– keeping you safer in other ways. That, and we have not mentioned how VPNs will make it impossible for you to be deanonymized when making payments online.
Update Device and Apps
Your device and apps can create a backdoor into your pay tech apps since they all run on software.
Software is never perfect. There would always be some bugs to be quashed, a patch to be made and some vulnerability to be fixed. When the application or software developer comes in touch with these, they act by sending out an update to that effect.
It is left to you to download this update so that relevant changes are made. Otherwise, you remain at the mercy of hackers that could exploit such a flaw.
