know what the warning signs are

One infected phone by computer viruses (malware, pishingetc.) is an open access door for your personal data and that can put your privacy or your bank accounts at risk.

As internet access began to happen more and more through mobile devices, pirates shifted their attention to mobile phones, making them one of their main targets.

Although the installation of antiviruses on smartphones is more and more frequent, sometimes even the best protection software cannot be enough to protect your mobile phone.

Being aware of the first signs of infection on your device is therefore crucial to prevent and avoid further damage.

Infected mobile phone: 5 signs to watch out for

If you notice any significant changes in the way your phone usually works, stay tuned and investigate.

More slowness, a battery that lasts less time, overheating for no apparent reason, calls that drop for no apparent reason or frequent loss of connection to the network when coverage is good, can be alarm signals.

Although some of these situations also happen when mobile phones show aging or too much storage space, we advise you to rule out these two situations by cleaning data or running performance tests on your device.

If aging does not set in and the available storage space is more than enough for good performance, the reason could even be an infected mobile phone.

One malware installed will cause malicious programs to always be running in the background, which can be the cause for greater battery consumption, excessive overheating and the greater slowdown that your device experiences.

Programs maliciously installed on your mobile phone can waste much more data than normal usage usually does.

They can even make you exceed the limits imposed by your data package, which will weigh on your bill.

This happens because some of these programs installed by default may be programmed to send messages (SMS) or information packets – with your data – to other servers, creating additional costs.

Another situation of excessive billing may be related to the fact that these programs or applications use premium or roaming services that are much more expensive.

If you detect an unusual increase in your billing, review your bill. Look for any signs of suspicious activity and ask your carrier for help in identifying and reporting the cause of this excessive charge.

Numerous malicious websites and apps earn money by displaying advertisements, much like free websites such as social media or news.

But in these last cases, advertising is not usually as intrusive and repetitive as on malicious websites and, when it appears, it can be easily closed.

On the contrary, ads that witness an infected mobile phone are difficult to close, remaining insistently on the screen so that the user ends up touching a link that redirects him to a malicious site or starts the installation of a new virus.

If you have difficulty distinguishing between a good and a bad ad, the best option is to click on none of them.

And, if you think that they are showing up too often and with strange and unusual content, be suspicious and investigate. Run your updated antivirus or install a different one and try to see if there is any infection.

If when you open your browser, you see a website you’ve never accessed and that seems to load immediately without you having to do anything, suspect an infection on your mobile phone.

Especially if these “spontaneously opened” sites look like pages from banks, games or pornographic sites. This instantaneous opening means that some program may be installed on your mobile phone that, not being a virus, may be trying to direct you to some malicious website or application.

However, even if you don’t click on anything, that program will be wasting battery and taking up space, lowering your phone’s performance.

To avoid this situation, regularly visit your list of installed applications and try to understand which ones are used most frequently. If any strange application appears, that you haven’t installed, that you don’t know what it is, and that seems to be used very regularly, try to investigate its designation online.

Some of those programs might also be there, not to encourage you to click on anything, but just to gather information from you. It is therefore advisable to regularly monitor this list of applications and always uninstall the ones that do not interest you.

This is one of the least common warning signs of an infected cell phone, but when it happens it is usually a sign that the infection is really happening.

Often, similar to what already happened with computers, when you try to access the blocked file, a message even appears asking you to pay a sum of money so that you can unlock and access that file.

Never respond to these requests, much less send money or make money transfers to the indicated accounts or services.

Alternatively, try to perform a factory reset on the infected phone. Incidentally, this action usually manages to resolve the vast majority of infections that we are talking about here, as it allows the user to return to a configuration prior to the infection situation.

But, for this solution to be implemented, you need to always have an up-to-date backup of your most important files so as not to lose anything in this process. reset of manufactures.

And, if you still have doubts that this solution may not have removed the entire infection – which almost always happens – look for free online tools that can help you remove the most persistent threats or ask for help in a specialized store.