Smartphones today carry an enormous amount of sensitive information. Among this information we find personal, financial data and private conversations; information whose loss would place the phone owner at serious risk of privacy violation. For this reason, it is important to check that everything works correctly from time to time.
This is also applicable for know if we have been hacked mobile camera, which we are going to deal with in this article. To do this, we are going to give you a series of tips that you can follow if you suspect that your phone's camera has been compromised in some way.
Can the mobile camera be hacked?
The short answer is yes, you can. A somewhat more elaborate answer would involve commenting that it is possible if they first install control applications on your phone. That is, anyone who tries to hack your device through the optical sensor needs to have physical access to the device.
On the other hand, it is possible that if you have downloaded an APK file from an untrusted repository, be installed malware in your terminal. The same goes for links received by email, or those that can be accessed from social networks.
Another possible gateway is the public Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth hotspots. With this we do not mean that if you have Bluetooth activated, or if you access a public WiFi network this can happen to you, but it is interesting that you know the potential risks.
How to know if your mobile camera has been hacked
There is no 100% sure way to know if our mobile camera has been hacked, but there are a series of signs that we can pay attention to to get a rough idea.
Performance issues
The first of these is to observe whether we experience performance issues at the terminal. Generally, a hacked device runs a lot of tasks in the background, which greatly compromises its performance.
Very low autonomy
Following these background tasks, they connect to the Internet and proceed to send data from the device to the hacker. Consequently, due to the constant exchange of data, a rapid battery discharge. If we see that this happens, it is interesting to enter the application of the energy unit and see which applications are the ones that consume the most, and then uninstall them.
Phone overheats
This brings us to another point, which is that the constant exchange of data can also cause a excessive phone overheating. This is because, by running so many processes at the same time, the phone's processor is running at full capacity all the time. This causes all terminal circuitry to heat up to dangerous levels.
High data consumption
Continuing with the constant exchange of information through the Internet, it should be clarified that a sudden spike in mobile data usage it could be another sign that our device is compromised.
Unknown apps appear on your phone
It is not uncommon for everything we have just told you to be accompanied by apps you don't remember installing (and that you don't know what they are for), which appear as a mushroom on your device and which, generally, have been placed there by hackers to control it remotely.
These unknown applications, which are not part of the operating system applications either, could be used to steal your data and send them to third parties.
The sound of the phone has interference
If your camera has been hacked, it is quite possible that he also gained access to the microphone. The idea is to listen to conversations you are having at any time. If this happens, you may hear unusual background noises while having a phone conversation.
My phone is hacked, now what?
The most normal thing in these cases is that, if you have managed to identify an application that could be considered malicious, proceed to uninstall it as fast as you can. The normal thing in these cases, and more considering how the launchers current, is to make a long press on the app to uninstall and drag it to one of the corners of the screen.
You can also use a batch uninstall app, in case you think there may be several apps that are interfering with your phone. For example, you can use Uninstaller, which you can download below.
Another thing that can be used to put extra lines of defense is have the operating system updated of your phone, as long as the manufacturer has support for your terminal. If not, you could always consider installing a custom ROM, but that would already be entering a field that is not for all users.
Finally, you always have the option of factory data reset of the telephone. In this way, you make sure that the terminal is as when you just bought it. You will lose all your user data, but malicious apps will also be gone.