Smartphones can do more tasks than a computer or laptop that’s they have become an integral part of our lives. Millions of phone users use their phones for various purposes such as online shopping, banking, social media, etc. at times, it will be difficult to know how to stop a hacker from hacking your phone.
However, cybercriminals always try to target our phones so they can get away with important or confidential information of ours. So if you are thinking about how to prevent hackers from hacking your phone then this article is for you. We will try to explore various methods that you can use to secure your digital life.
How To Check If Your Phone Is Hacked?
Before we tell you the best practices on how to stop hackers from hacking your phone, let’s see how you can find or check if your phone is under hacker’s attack. We have below outlined some of the common signs that indicate that your phone might be tapped or hacked by a hacker.
- Unknown Application: If you ever notice an unknown or new application in your phone that you haven’t installed. Hackers remotely install an app in the user’s phone to hack.
- Battery Loss: If your phone losing its battery drastically then there are high chances that your phone is hacked. Malware running in the background uses phone resources that result drastically battery loss.
- Higher Data usage: If you ever notice that your data consumption has suddenly increased then this is the time to investigate. Hacking is one of the top reasons for the sudden increment of data because hackers can remotely use your smartphone without letting you know. That is why it is important to know how to prevent hackers from hacking your phone.
- Ongoing calls and Text: Another sign that you can consider as a hacking attack on your phone. If you see lists of outgoing calls and SMS that you haven’t made or increased phone bills then there are chances that malware or hackers are making calls from your phone.
- Performance issue: Performance issue indications such as phone keep freezings or crashing, continuous running apps despite efforts to close tell you that your phone has been compromised. These issues occur when malware overloads the phone resources or conflicts with other apps. In the next sections of this article, we will discuss codes to check if phone is tapped or not.
- Mysterious Pop-Ups: If you notice, your smartphone is flashing strange pop-ups or inappropriate content such as adult or X-rated are popping up, It might be the sign that your phone is hacked.
How Did My Phone Get Hacked?
There are various ways that hackers use to gain access to your phone. However, most of the time they required action from your side. These ways are:
- Application: If you ever install a suspicious application on your phone, can harm your phone. Millions of unsafe applications are embedded with malware and hackers use them to gain your phone access.
- Links: We often receive mysterious emails or texts with links or attachments and urges you to click on them. There are high chances that they may contain malware.
- Public Wifi: Using public Wifi is one of the major ways that increase the chances of compromising the phone.
Apart from these ways, various other ways help hackers to hack your phone such as Keylogging, Trojan, Hacking through mobile number, etc. You should be aware of how to prevent hackers from hacking your phone if you want to secure your device.
How Do I Unhack My Phone?
Just like hackers have various ways to hack, You too have many methods that you can use to block or remove from your smartphone. Let’s find out.
1. USSD Codes: There are various USSD codes to know how to unhack your phone that you can use to check if your phone is hacked and disabling them will block hackers to access your phone. Below are the codes you can use:
| Code Type | USSD Code | Use | Disable Code |
| Conditional Forwarding Codes | *#61# | To check if someone is accepting your calls and SMSs when your smartphone doesn’t respond | ##61# |
| *#62# | To check if someone is taking your calls and texts when your phone is switched off | ##62# | |
| *#67# | To check if someone is accepting your calls and receiving texts when you are busy on calls or rejecting | ##67# | |
| *#004# | To Check all the scenarios setting above | ##004# | |
| Unconditional Forwarding Codes | *#12# | To check if someone has forwarded all the calls and texts from your smartphone whether the phone is busy or available to take calls | ##21# |
| Other Codes | *#06# | To check the unique IMEI number provided by the Phone manufacturer. Use IMEI number to file a police complaint in case of phone loss or some steal your phone | – |
| *3001#12345#* (iPhone Code) | To check if your phone is tapped or not. It will show you some important RAT & LTE information such as Ota Msg, Tach Attempt, and Service cell information | – | |
| *#002# | To check all the conditional and unconditional diversion setting at once | ##002# |
Apart from these codes to unhack your phone, there is a Utility Netmonitor Code that you can use to see every detail that your phone is sending or receiving along with the device location. Follow the below steps by dialing this shortcode to check if your phone is tapped or not.
Steps: Dial *#*#197328640#*#*🡪 Main Menu🡪 UMTS Cell Environment🡪 UMTS RR Information(Here you will get the Cell ID number, Note it down)🡪 Go back to the main menu🡪 Select MM information🡪 Serving PLMN (Here you will get the Local area code on the screen, Note it down).
Once you followed all these steps, Open a net monitor website and enter the cell id and local area code and it will show you if your phone has an unknown connection.
2. Delete Suspicious Application: As mentioned earlier, if you ever find a suspicious application that you don’t know how gets installed in your phone, get rid of such applications by uninstalling them.
3. Get an Anti-Malware Software: There are various paid as well as free anti-malware software you can find on the internet. It helps your phone to get a secured environment by identifying and blocking malware attacks. This is how to stop hackers from hacking your phone by using such amazing software.
4. Phone Reset: You can get rid of the majority of malware by performing the factory reset of your phone. However, this will delete all the data including photos, video, files, etc stored in your smartphone. So don’t forget to back up your data before resetting your phone.
5. Change Passwords: Once your phone is safe from malware, do change all the passwords of your smartphone and each account including cloud storage applications.
6. Disable the “Allow Siri when locked” feature: If You are an iPhone user, make sure you have disabled the “Allow Siri when locked” function because earlier due to some bugs, iPhone used to allow anyone to unlock the phone by using Siri.
7. Avoid Public Network: Public Wifi networks and ports are some of the easiest ways that hackers use to hack our smartphones and other devices. Try to avoid using them.
Wrapping Up On How To Unhack Phone
Cybercriminals and hackers can damage you socially as well as financially. To avoid being a victim of a hacker’s attack, we need to be careful while using our smartphones. Small actions such as avoid opening suspicious links, public Wifi, having security software, etc can make our digital life more secure. We hope, now you are well aware of how to prevent hackers from hacking your phone.