Security issues for Android smartphones

There's a lot of reasons Android-owners need to be careful with security: from excessive permissions, malware, ad networks, trojans, slow-downs and more. This forum is designed to help keep you on top of what problems people are suffering from and what you can do about it.

Hi Amy, great questions. I'll try to answer them as best I can

1) There's plenty of cloud encryption services out there. I use Boxcryptor for my Google Drive account, but you'll find plenty of others. The important thing to note is how secure the data is not only during transmission, but also on either computer. Most of the time when data is intercepted it is simply done on either end, not in the middle. It is also a good idea to keep it in the back of your head (even with encryption) that anything you post on the cloud can be intercepted, so perhaps storing financial information and sensitive personal information is not advised. Keep that stuff under the mattress.

2) I believe Caspar our Product Management guru answered this elsewhere. You can check permissions for paid apps in the App Center before installing (and paying, of course), but for free apps you first have to download them, then check permissions, then choose to install or not. Not very elegant, but functional enough.

3) I don't know much about secure browsers, but I use startpage.com as my default search engine - it uses Google search results but does not store any information about searches or users. You could check out secure browsers like Webroot, InBrowser and AirWatch but I don't have any personal experience with them. You can also keep an eye on cookies, cached items and the like too, which I expect you already do.

4) Way above my technical knowledge, sorry! Hopefully someone else reading this can advise you better?

5) I hope you have managed to correct the G+ link issue - I had a few problems with G+ links on Google accounts I didn't want G+ on too. But I got it sorted out eventually too. But not without headaches!

One thing I do know is that in all my NSA spook fan reading I know they have apparently cracked SSL and VPN a long time ago, so a new kind of security layer is required if you actually want to encrypt your data, rather than just make yourself feel better. Have you seen the ninja phone on indiegogo? Check it out, could be something interesting when it gets made (and despite flopping in indiegogo, it WILL be made, due to some unannounced backing).