The most handy and most common electronic device of today is a smartphone. A smartphone is not only used by youngsters but adults also make full use of it. Smartphones help us take images along the go, they help us in communicating with our friends and family from any corner of the world, and what not. People spend a great deal of money on purchasing the best and latest version of smartphones. Smartphones are present with us all the time, unlike many other electronic devices that we use in our daily routine. Despite the fact that our smartphones are present with us all the time, 62% of smartphone users do not password protect their phones. People do not even turn their smartphones off. According to a survey, smartphone users are 33% more likely to be a victim of identity theft than the  people who do not use smartphones.

A smartphone holds a lot of information about its user. The location of the user, the number of times the user checks his email, text messages, incoming and outgoing calls, etc, are some of the important pieces of information your smartphone is aware of. Service providers keep records of the incoming and outgoing calls and messages. Some records are saved and kept longer than others.

Smartphone users should be aware of the data which the service providers use and keep a record of. Any photo or video that the user takes is being recorded. Moreover, the contacts saved in your phone, who is calling and when you attended the call, the description of the email and text message, financial data, our location, even our gender and what we store in the phone`s calendar is not something only we know.

However, there is something very less that the smartphone users can do about this security error. People want to use their smartphone to the fullest. They aim to turn the mobile data on and access their emails. In this way, to avail this advantage smartphone users cannot do much protect their privacy. Not only companies providing services can snoop on people using their smartphones, but criminals, advertisements and the government can also access the information.

There are many advantages of a smartphone. But all these advantages come with a cost. Smartphones act as an opportunity to spy on people. Even NSA, a powerful organization was unable to stay safe.

Advertisers are always on the verge to market to the people. Appearing on several most commonly used applications, advertisers can promote their product. Advertisers pay the application developers to gain access to the smartphone users. The app-makers are provided with a code by the advertisements to build into the application. The code not only makes the ads appear in the app, but also sends data from the phone to the advertiser.

There are several ways to make sure that the privacy of smartphone users is maintained. Smartphone users should password protect their phones. The password should be strong and hacker resistant. Moreover, people should not allow their smartphones to remember their logins and passwords. It is safer to write down the passwords in a notepad than to have the website remember it for you. Security softwares can also be installed on the smartphones. These softwares lock the phone when not in use and also wipe off the unwanted data. All the smartphones themselves have a security lockout feature. This feature should be used. The apps to be downloaded must be researched beforehand. The privacy policy and terms of service must be pondered over. By carrying out certain steps we can lessen the risk of security breach.