New Device Security: How to Maximize Privacy on a New Phone

There are many apps that collect and use our data. Stores track your searches and purchases to get a better idea of items you may want. Social media platforms track innumerable aspects of ourselves to generate content for us to consume. We send data into the cloud with just about every action we take on the internet. 

Sound scary? It certainly can be. Data aggregates influence a tremendous amount of consumer-facing company policies, and it is absolutely understandable to pull back the amount of data your new device transmits to those companies. When thinking about new device security, there are many ways to maximize privacy, from simply asking an app not to track your data and using strong passwords to installing a new app store on your device and decoupling your data with a decentralized wireless company like Really. 

In this article, we will talk about how to maximize privacy on a new phone, explain decoupling data, and what happens to your data while it’s stored in the cloud. Let’s jump right in. 

How to Maximize Privacy on a New Phone

There are many steps you can take to increase privacy on your phone. If you truly want to maximize privacy, we will get into the details in this section. There are a lot of steps you can take to limit who can get your data while you use your phone, but those steps do limit the flexibility you have on your device.

However, there are many easy ways to increase the security of new devices! One important one is to use strong passwords. We recommend a password manager where you can generate unique, super-strong passwords and keep them all in one place. Third-party password managers like Bitwarden are far more secure than Google or Apple’s counterparts. 

To increase privacy, you can limit location sharing whenever possible, use private browsing, and avoid free WiFi networks. 

New Device Security

The moment you get a new device is the perfect time to maximize privacy. While you can always make these moves, it is easier when you have a device where you haven’t already downloaded and signed into a lot of apps. We will break down how to maximize privacy on a new phone by looking at some common cell phone brands. 

iPhone

iPhones have a little less potential for privacy because so much is locked to Apple services and has relatively little flexibility when compared to other kinds of cell phones. That being said, here’s how to maximize privacy on your new iPhone! 

• Turn off all iCloud features in settings. 
• Enable iCloud “Advanced Data Protection.”
• Disable Siri
• Use a 2FA app on your phone. A good option for iOS 2FA is Raivo.
• Grab a system-wide ad blocker like Adguard.
• Pay close attention to the apps you download and their permissions. 

Using an iPhone means you are tied to iOS and Apple’s service, but you can maximize privacy by following these steps. On top of that, you can seriously increase privacy with the right wireless service. Really’s service decouples your data, meaning the data you send from your phone is far more protected than it is using a major wireless provider. 

Samsung

Almost every phone on the market comes with many pre-loaded apps, sometimes called “bloatware,” which are automatically downloaded on the device and cannot be removed. Bloatware is frustrating to deal with, and in order to remove any of the apps, you have to get deep into your phone’s code using something called the Android Device Bridge. In this part of your phone, you can remove apps and features that are essential to the phone’s functioning, like the user interface or keyboard. This is okay if you have downloaded replacements in advance, but you’d find yourself in quite the pickle without keyboard software on your device. 

In removing bloatware from your device, you can increase your device’s security by removing a lot of background apps and reducing the total amount of apps on your device. It is easier to maximize privacy on a new phone if you keep your app list short. 

Google Pixel

With a Google Pixel, you can take steps as intense as installing a new operating system. There’s a product called Graphene OS that is a privacy-forward operating system designed for Android devices, including Google Pixels. We’ll highlight Graphene as well as other major changes later in this section. 

If you are not interested in going to such lengths, there are other ways to maximize privacy on your Google Pixel! One big one is to stick with a PIN passcode versus fingerprint or face identification. While convenient, using one of those methods means your phone has your fingerprint or face profile stored in its databanks. We also recommend turning off as much as possible in your app permission, ad personalization, and turn off Google backups. 

What Influences Privacy on a New Phone

There are many factors influencing the privacy of your phone. By far, the biggest one is app permissions. Every app on your phone requests permissions, some of them as simple as your messages app accessing your contacts, microphone, and camera. Most of the time, apps are getting the data they need to function on your device, but that’s not always the case. Always be on the lookout for apps that request permissions for things that are not associated with the task that the app completes. 

The intensity of targeted ads is one side effect of that. This leads to an overabundance of hyper-specific ads regarding something you might not even be interested in. You want to limit the use of location services, disable ad tracking where possible, and use a VPN to encrypt your internet traffic. 

Generally, the fewer apps you download onto your phone, the more private your device becomes. Think about what apps you want on your mobile phone, knowing that your phone generates a lot of data about you. It tracks your GPS, movement, and speed as it sits in your pocket. You can go into app settings to review app permissions, disable optional ones, and think about deleting apps that are collecting unnecessary information. 

Alternate App Stores and Operating Systems

For those interested in maximum cell phone privacy, there are alternate operating systems you can download onto certain devices. Graphene OS is an open-source operating system that improves the privacy and security of your device. With this system, your phone becomes much more protected against the most common sources of privacy vulnerabilities. It does what it can to mitigate risks across the board, increasing the security of all the apps running on your phone. To the best of its ability, Graphene keeps the user experience as similar as possible as it was before you made the switch, simply including additional privacy and security features in the background. With this system, certain features are always running, but the more noticeable ones, like network permission, sensor permission, restrictions when the device is locked, and other more complex user-facing features, can be toggled on and off.

The Aurora Store is an app store alternative that grants users access to the same applications available on the Google Play Store without needing a Google account to use them. This is a great way to get full functionality out of your device without going through Google for all your applications. Make sure to do extra research before you download and start to use this app store! There are a lot of online resources that can help you make the most out of this third-party app store! It is not available on every kind of device, namely iPhones. 

Decoupling Data

So, we’ve discussed all you can do with your phone’s hardware and software to increase privacy. There’s a lot you can do on that end! Another area in which to maximize privacy regards the data you send on your phone. No matter how you use your phone, all your activities involve sending data to one place or another. Decoupling data is a new look at how your data can stay private as it travels to its destination. In this section, we will break down the strengths of decoupled data, which we offer with Really’s cell phone plans. 

What is Data Decoupling? 

Decoupling Data is all about separating personal information from data, which means, in essence, that different services have different parts of your data, making it much more difficult for anyone to track your data. 

Data travels more condensed on conventional channels than it needs to be. In very general terms, your data contains your actions and personal information. The way data moves now, major companies like Amazon and Google collect your personal data, which is very valuable for a lot of reasons. When your data is bundled together, for instance, Amazon knows everything you buy on their platform. They create a data profile with everything you search and everything you buy on their website. With decoupled data, they would not know that you purchased something, just that there was a purchase. Your payment would go through without your profile attached, and then another server would check that the item you want is paid for and then send it your way. This means that no single platform can control all of your data. 

Blockchain technology is perfect for decoupling data. With a DeWi network like Really’s, no central entity will amass your data and use it for their nefarious purposes. 

Data Decoupling Protects Our Privacy and Security

We are much more secure with decoupled data. Just as it is secure from big corporations who want to aggregate your data, it is also much more difficult for malevolent entities to get your personal information since it is spread across many more servers. As your data is spread out, it means that there is no single point where a breach can compromise your data. If, for instance, a decoupled videoconferencing service is breached, the malevolent entity can only see encrypted data flowing between secure servers. When a traditional video conferencing service is breached, the entity can see current meetings and comb through the data stores. 

Decoupled cloud service providers can heighten security on their devices with many layers of protection. With decoupled data, no service knows who is accessing the data stored in the cloud; rather, it moves to an anonymous user and is decrypted there. When implemented, this has little effect on the user experience. It requires a lot of infrastructure to run correctly, which is one of the reasons that Really offers a host program where anyone can set up a small antenna in their home that builds a small section of the network. Let’s say there are 1,000 in your area. That’s a thousand nodes that can accept and send information, creating a network that decouples data. This is a huge step in your new device security. 

Our Data in the Cloud: How Decoupling Data can Protect Data Storage

Cloud storage is a potent tool that we use every day. The ability to store data in the cloud has opened up countless opportunities for individuals and businesses in every sector. While amazing, it does come with risks. People are, unfortunately, constantly looking for ways to steal data and leverage it for their own ends, making it a constant fight to stay ahead of those actors. Even so, data breaches happen all the time. Decoupling data can protect data storage by changing the landscape entirely, making it far more difficult for hackers to access important data. 

Data in the Cloud

Data in the cloud exists in one of three ways. It can be in motion, at rest, or in use. These three forms relate to what’s happening to the data at a given time, and decoupling data can increase privacy across all three forms of data. 

Data in Motion

Data in motion is all information that is moving from one location to another. Data moving from your phone to the cloud or from the cloud to your phone is data in motion. Let’s break down how decoupled data can protect your data in motion. One huge privacy increase is in anonymity. With decoupled data, data in motion is authenticated anonymously before returning to your device. Using a blind signature scheme, you can validate your device anonymously. This really increases privacy on a new phone, as it keeps your personal information separate from the data you request from the cloud.

Data at Rest

Data at rest, or data in storage, is in danger of security breaches. Just about every cloud storage provider has hyper-secure encryption, but many businesses face data security breaches as malware and hackers continue to find ways to get beyond all security measures. 

Decoupling data provides another layer of data security for data at rest. The cloud service provider does not need to access its stored data; it just needs to store it. With the data encrypted from everyone but one user, it makes it far more difficult for a massive data breach to occur. 

Data in Use

Data in use is what’s happening right now. Data that are being accessed, processed, or modified qualifies as data in use. Data decoupling opens a lot of doors for security relating to data in use through multi-layered encryption and anonymous users. 

New Device Security: Maximize Privacy with Decoupled Data

There are many ways to increase privacy on a new phone. You can limit your app’s permissions, limit the apps you download, or install an entirely new operating system. There’s a lot you can do on the device itself, and you can also use a service, like Really, that provides decoupled data. Decoupling data is a huge step in maximizing privacy on your new phone.