Tickled Squirrel January 2015 | Page 29

per minute and 8.5 cents per minute to a UK mobile. Viber calls to a UK landline cost 1.8 cents per minute and 5.4 cents per minute to a mobile. Google Hangouts call charges are 1 cent per minute to a UK Landline and between 3 and 5 cents per minute to a UK mobile. Call rates to other countries are easily found on Google – just search for Skype calling rates, or Viber calling rates etc. So if you call friends abroad or even in this country, you should be looking at these systems if you don’t already have them. You could save a great deal of money. Smart Phone Safety Most of us today have mobile phones that do far more than simply make phone calls. We can surf the internet, send and receive emails, download eBooks to read using one of the many apps, download and play games, check the news and the weather and much more. But are you aware that your phone can be infected with viruses and other malware in the same way that your computer can? Malware on your phone can send emails pretending to be from you, log keystrokes (the recording of every key that you press) so that when you connect to your bank they can discover your passwords. Malware can also cause your phone to call premium numbers, allow an external user to call abroad via your phone, and at your expense and much more. It is most important to have protection installed to help ward off these threats. Just as with PCs and Macs there are several free and paid for options which you can install, including AVG and AVAST to help protect your phone from viruses, and Malwarebytes for helping to keep out other nasties. Whether you choose AVG or Avast, make sure you only download it from the official Android or IOS store. In fact, you should only ever install apps from the official sources; apps from other sources can often be the cause of infections. app installed at a time, but you can install Malwarebytes to run in the background as well. I have found this to be an excellent tool to help protect against malware which, while it might not always be bad for my phone, can cause it to seriously slow down. So if you haven’t yet installed antivirus on your phone do it now before you visit another website or read another email. And get it to scan your phone to check it’s as clean as it should be. With free products that are reliable and easy to install, there really is no time like the present to start protecting yourself. You can only have one antivirus 29