New on here, another security/privacy issue

[Llareggub]

Been lurking on here for a while, finally decided to create an account,

Anyway to the point...

Another possible security leak is the predictive text on your smart phone. Even if you use a browser with an 'incognito' or 'private tab' the predictive text on a lot of phones (certainly applies to my samsung s2 which is my punting phone) will remember the user name that I use to access a website. If a hostile actor gets hold of it thats over half the puzzle solved, after all they can then create an account on said website and search all the posts by XYZ and begin to build a picture.

I am currently investigating if there is anyway that you can stop the phone learning new words to close this loophole, if I find anything out I will post it, if anyone has any ideas I would like to hear them. The obvious one is turn predictive text off, not sure if you can.

A brill site, thanks to everyone who contributes, it helps make punting safer and better.

I only punt occasionally these days, but I was more active in the 80's to 00's

[pewpewpew]

Keyboard settings -> Predictive text -> Personalised data

Turn that off

It will still predict words from it's internal dictionary like house and car etc but won't learn new words from what you type

[nigel4498]

Welcome 
As already stated you can turn predictive text off.

[Jumping Jack Flash]

Why is it a problem on your punting phone?

[Llareggub]

Yes you can turn it off, but it has already saved words before I discovered the issue.

I searched online and found that if you hit the little settings button on the bottom left corner of the keyboard (on my version of android, may vary by manufacturer and version) you get a series of options, one of which is 'My Words'. This then opens a list of saved words. In this list I found user names to several sites. You can delete them, I did. There were no passwords in the list.

As for it being a punting phone, well I believe in defense in depth, if anyone finds it they are not going to find out much, I use a private browser, and I am careful to delete messages. I only use web mail, not the built-in e-mail app. It can be explained as a spare phone that I carry when traveling in case mine is stolen.

May be paranoid, but I'd rather go a bit OTT on security and privacy than have a problem. Yes state sponsored investigations could no doubt find out a lot, but the average, even tech savvy person isn't going to be able to find much out.