Question

Describe one way to prevent your devices from being hacked or spying on you. Do you feel smart devices enhance your lifestyle or do you feel that increasingly, far too much of your privacy becomes vulnerable? Explain.

Answer 1

One way to prevent devices from being hacked or spy on you is to keep one's antivirus updated to ensure device security is up to date. Also, one should install apps only from certified vendors like PlayStore, GetApps rather than third party vendors. Another way is to give only the required permissions to the apps installed on the devices.

Smart devices enhance lifestyle as there are applications to serve almost every purpose and this adds convenience for the end-user.

However, this is outweighed by the fact that smart devices do make one vulnerable. Almost every app collects data and tracks user activity (be it to give a more personalized experience) but gleaning information regarding user behavior could make the user uncomfortable. Privacy of the user must be respected and the data should be collected such that the user identity remains anonymous (unless consent to provide user identity is given by the user).