Android and iPhone devices are among the most advanced mobile devices you can have today. However, with millions of such devices lying around the world, they often become great targets for hackers, thereby sending malware and other malicious stuff. Most of the time, both Google and Apple get to know about these malware or vulnerabilities, and quietly come up with a fix, thereby asking you to download the latest security patches. Sometimes, that may not be case and you could be needing to do something on your own to protect your data and your phone. How can you find out?
While there are no set guidelines to detect such anomalies, there are a few things you can observe to figure out whether your phone is infected by malware. And don?t worry, we won?t be asking you to sit down with your phone and tamper with its codes for these signs. These could be something as simple as observing the battery life and checking your SMS inbox, or messages on your web browser. Have a look.
Telltale signs of your Android, iPhone being infected
1.Overheating
We have all experienced our smartphones overheating almost frequently. But does it overheat? Often a malware while doing its job is using up your phone?s processor and other crucial resources, which eventually heats up the internals and your phone. If your smartphone is heating up a lot, check for the apps that you had installed recently and delete them, since they could have malware in them. Or, you can simply backup your crucial data and perform a hard reset.
2.Bad battery life
Related to overheating, a malware operating in the background will suck all your battery to do its job. Hence, if you suddenly see a drop in battery life on your Android and iPhone, you should repeat the same steps and either delete the recently installed app, or perform a hard reset.
3. Slow performance
The same malware causing your battery to drain faster as well as overheat the phone is also taking up valuable processing speed, which could lead to a slowdown in performance. If you see your phone getting sluggish in opening apps or running games, know that there is something wrong with your smartphone.
4. Mobile data exhausting quickly
Malware rely on a good data connection to do their job, which is mostly to steal your data and share it with the hackers. This may lead to your data pack ending prematurely. Hence, if you observe your data quota exhausting rapidly, your phone may be under attack.
5. Creepy pop-up messages on browser
This is an issue especially on Android devices. If you suddenly see a lot of text pop-ups occurring on your phone?s web browser, there may be a malware infecting your phone. In such a case, you have to install an anti-malware suite on your phone, or do a factory reset.