Residents should reboot their smartphones daily to enhance cybersecurity, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, according to The Guardian.
Speaking on the appointment of Australia's first national cybersecurity coordinator, Darren Goldie, Albanese said Friday, "We need to mobilize the private sector. We need to mobilize, as well, consumers.
"We all have a responsibility. Simple things, turn your phone off every night for five minutes. For people watching this, do that every 24 hours. Do it while you're brushing your teeth or whatever you're doing."
Experts suggest that rebooting your phone daily can be a simple, yet effective, measure to reduce cybersecurity risks. Priyadarsi Nanda, a senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney, said this practice can help to close any potentially harmful applications or processes that may be running in the background and collecting user data.
"Given how much we use smartphones in our lives," Nanda said, "we know of cases where people haven't turned their phones off in an entire year," such a those who use their phones as an alarm clock.
Nanda said closing apps running in the background regularly could offer some of the advantages of rebooting a phone. He added that shutting the phone down may stop harmful processes running on a hacked device.
"If there's a process running from the adversarial side," he continued, "turning off the phone breaks the chain. Even if it's only for the time the phone is off, it certainly frustrates the potential hacker.
"It may not fully protect you, but [rebooting] can make things more difficult" for hackers.
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