You may not think about it in this way, but the mobile phone present in your pocket is filled with important and personal data. As a result, it becomes a natural target for hackers and other parties to steal your identity.
We are living in the age of data, and it makes sense why so many bad actors try to steal your data from mobile phones.
But there is a way to protect your personal data located in smartphones… Yes, I am talking about encryption which can make the data obscure and unreadable without the encryption key. As a result, even if someone steals your data, the data will be unreadable without the encryption key.
Phone Encryption – How does it Work?
What does it mean when we talk about cell phone encryption? It means the encryption of all the data present on the device. But there is also another type of encryption-related to mobile phones, and that is communication encryption using various applications such as Telegram, Signal, and WhatsApp. These applications can encrypt your communications (text, audio, video call, data) using end-to-end encryption.
So in a sense, there are two types of encryptions for mobile phones. The first type is related to the encryption of data on smartphones, while the second one relates to encrypted messing and calls.
When a device (Android & iOS) is encrypted, all the data stored in it becomes unreadable and scrambled to others. The only way to make that data readable is by using a secret key (passcode) which can render it useful once again. To give you an example, think about secure WiFi networks – You can’t connect to these networks until you know the password. The same rules apply when it comes to data encryption on smartphones.
In fact, even if someone removes the data chip from the smartphone, they will still be unable to make sense of the data. For example, encryption may transform a text “Hello World” into “0943 7348732,” and the only way to convert that gibberish back to original text would be by using an encryption key.
IPhone Encryption
Every iPhone comes with a built-in encryption feature. In fact, the encryption key in iPhones is 256 bits in length and is not stored anywhere on the phone as well. The phone generates that encryption key automatically by combining the passcode (input) with a secure enclave chip to create the final key.
The chip mentioned above is also used for storing Apple Pay and fingerprint data information. On top of that, iPhone mobile phones can also block repeated failed attempts to ensure that hackers do not get access to your data.
Android Encryption
If we look at Android encryption, it is slightly more complicated due to so much variety of different smartphones and manufacturers. As a general rule of thumb, any device running on Android version 6.0 or higher means that the phone is capable of data encryption. In fact, a recent report shows that around 80% of devices running on the Android Nougat were fully encrypted (data).
