Featured Image Credit: ITV
Topics: Martin Lewis, Money, Phones, Crime
Joe Harker
Martin Lewis used his ITV show to give Brits an important primer on avoiding falling foul of nefarious sorts who might try to steal your phone in order to get into your bank account.
Plenty of Brits use mobile banking these days, and with a few taps of their phone screen can access their worldly fortunes, which worryingly means that anyone who nabs your phone and taps the screen in just the right way also does.
On an episode of The Martin Lewis Money Show Live, the man himself sounded a warning that phone theft was on the rise and there were some things people ought to be doing to keep their bank accounts safe.
"Thefts are up 40 percent in London but they're going up right across the country too," the Money Saving Expert warned.
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"Now the crucial thing is they're not just trying to nick your phone, some of them are trying to access your financial data from your phone. You have to protect yourselves on this folks."
As for how to protect yourself, Lewis ran through the ways you could stop thieves from getting access to your money.
He said: "Use remote tracking to locate your device if it's been nicked and suspend payments, there's 'FindMy' from Apple, 'SmartThingsFind' from Samsung, 'FindMyDevice' from Google, do those things.
"Next, enable the biometrics, you know, face ID and fingerprint ID, on your phone both for the phone itself and for your banking apps.
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"If you're not going to and you're a PIN code type person, please different PIN codes for the phone and the banking apps.
"It's called 'shoulder surfing' these days, people look over your shoulder to see your PIN code and then if they're doing the same for both they can access your money."
He then explained something else you might want to know about, saying you could dial *#06# to get something called an IMEI image, then suggested you should get a screengrab of that and save it.
"That is what you're going to need to give to the police if your phone is stolen," Martin Lewis said.
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"Screengrab it, and assuming you can access your email not just on your phone I would just email it to yourself so you've got a copy somewhere."
Other advice the Money Saving Expert had for Brits included switching off 'preview notifications' for the sake of your lock screen and looking into the other security features you could get for your device to stop ne'er-do-wells from getting their hands on it and by extension your bank account.
He said: "There are thieves who want to access your finances by your phone. It is growing. It is dangerous. Protect yourself please people."
So, now you are armed with knowledge, a most powerful tool.