this is how you hide sensitive notifications on Android phones
Reading notifications from the lock screen is a barebone feature that has been in Android for years. This also entails disadvantages, especially since our phones more often process sensitive information – information that is also visible in notifications. Fortunately, you can hide such sensitive information: this is how you can proceed.
Hide sensitive notifications
When Android was launched, phones were still seen as obsolete devices that were unimportant and “would never be an important part of our lives.” Why would you trade human interaction for a phone? More than ten years later, we actually don’t know any better, and you can no longer do without a telephone. You are even tied to a telephone for banking or government administration. This evolution, the merging of the computer and your phone, unfortunately entails security risks.
More and more often you have to process sensitive information on your phone. Take, for example, the codes for confirming your login attempt at websites such as Facebook or Google, or important emails in the inbox on your phone. While most sensitive information is stored behind the lock screen ‘code’, a lot of information is also displayed on the lock screen on your Android device. Take, for example, two-step authentication codes that can often be read from text messages, or the first lines of an email – or even a notification from a banking app with, for example, information about a transaction.
If the phone stays in your hands, the data is safe. However, things only go wrong as soon as the device is stolen and gets into the hands of the wrong people. They can then also read the notifications – without logging in, that is. Some caution with notifications may be desirable. We will discuss this in the step-by-step plan below.
This is how you hide Android notifications
Safety is important, but don’t immediately worry about all the possible dangers you face if the reporting data is still visible at the moment. After all, the malicious person has to get their hands on your phone. Still, the steps below can be a bit of a relief, even if you are not worried about your phone being stolen, but more because you do not want people near you to go through the notifications on your phone thoroughly.
- Open it settings menu from your phone
- Navigate to Apps and notifications
- click on notifications
- Then click on the switch behind Sensitive notifications
If the switch is turned off now, sensitive content – the text of a sensitive notification – will no longer be displayed on the lock screen. Which apps are covered depends on the app developers. Developers can label notifications as sensitive and therefore have them hidden on the lock screen. Apps that are often labeled as sensitive are bank or mail apps.
Are you going to hide the sensitive notifications from your Android phone, or are you not worried about the data visible on the lock screen? Let us know in the comments below the article.
