Tired of prying eyes looking at your personal information? Here's the solution.

How Samsung Galaxy’s security and privacy features protect you every day

If our smartphones spend most of their time in our hands, they also sometimes pass through the hands of others. Whether you’re entertaining a child, showing a friend something funny, or sending it in for repairs, we pass on our precious devices to other people more often than we realize. This risks giving the other person too much access to their personal information – a potential invasion of privacy.

With app pinning mode and maintenance, the user no longer has to worry: they decide what others can access, regardless of who gets their hands on the device—sort of like a personal smartphone bouncer.

Pinning an app

When you hold out your phone and show someone photos, whether they’re vacation photos or something funny you wrote down, you get a special feeling. The problem is that a person “accidentally” goes into another application and comes across a photo or message that he was not supposed to see. This can be annoying, which is why the app pinning feature wants to prevent this from happening again.

App pinning acts as a personal restrictor for apps, preventing others from going where they weren’t invited. This is achieved by storing them in your pinned app – and nowhere else.

The app pinning feature acts like Do Not Disturb and blocks annoying notifications that risk displaying sensitive information at the worst possible time.

Enabling app pinning is quick and easy. Go to Settings, then Security & Privacy. Scroll down and find “Advanced Security Settings” where you can turn the feature on and off and view advanced settings by tapping on the text. For added security, you can enable “Require unlock method (PIN) before unpinning,” so anyone with a smartphone in hand will need a password to exit a pinned app.

Then open the app you want to pin. Tap Recents (or swipe up and hold if you’re using gestures), then tap the icon above the app. Select the “Pin this app” option and that’s it.

▲ Settings > Security & privacy > Other security settings > App pinning.

Maintenance mode

There are times when we need to take our smartphone to a repair service to take care of a cracked screen or damaged charging port. More often than not, we have to be away from our device for a while, which comes with risks, especially if third parties can access our personal information.

Even the most careful of us can’t avoid accidents: when a phone is sent in for repair, no one knows who will be able to access the data.

This is where Samsung’s maintenance mode comes to the rescue.[1] : Specially designed to protect your personal data, it prevents anyone from accessing all your data when your device is sent to you for repair.

In maintenance mode, you can set up a separate user profile and keep your main account private. This mode can be activated in Settings, where you access it after pressing the Device Maintenance button, or in the Samsung Members app.

Once activated, Maintenance Mode hides all your personal data, including photos, videos, contacts and messages, and prevents unauthorized access. This also ensures that no data is accidentally deleted, for example by a repair service.[2]. If you need to send your device there, you can ensure that the service only has the features available to them that will allow them to perform the necessary diagnostics.

▲ Settings > Device maintenance > Maintenance mode

Safe file

Samsung Knox not only offers multiple layers of security and privacy, but also allows users to choose what they want to protect. For those who prefer to keep their secrets separate, there is a secure folder.

This is a safe that locks your data to limit access through your smartphone storage. It stores your most personal data such as calendars, contacts, notes, photos, videos, files and applications. You can even encrypt the secure folder itself to protect your apps and data until the next time you open it.

The secure folder is accessible from your applications. When you open it for the first time, you will need to set the lock type – PIN code, pattern or password. You can also add fingerprint access. Anything you create in the secure folder will be saved automatically, but you can also put data there at any time.

If you want to save a copy of your driver’s license, simply take a photo using the Camera app in a secure folder, or select a photo from the gallery, then tap the three dots and select Move to Secure Folder.

Many things are beyond our control. But when it comes to your privacy, Samsung doesn’t want to leave anything to chance. With app pinning, maintenance mode, and secure folder features, you no longer have to worry about prying eyes.