Risks of Interacting with Your Clients Through Mobile Devices
As a result of the digital revolution we experienced in the last decades, many businesses started interacting with their clients in new ways that replaced traditional communication. Thus, virtually any serious business that needs to efficiently interact with a large client base has websites or mobile apps in place to serve its customers better and to make its solutions or services universally and conveniently accessible. Close digital interactions are used to exchange various types of information in both directions.
Thus, a client might obtain important assistance/ support for a product he/she purchased or a service he/she contracted (e.g. customer support). In turn, a business might obtain personal information from clients (to help identify them and interact efficiently) or financial credentials for charging money. Obviously, breaches in such interactions carry many risks – hackers can use personal and financial information for personal gains regardless of consequences. Fortunately, for many of these problems, there is a solution in the form of Android VPN, iOS VPN, Windows VPN, etc.
How VPNs Can Help
VPNs would establish an encrypted communication channel between your client’s device and any website/ server accessed, including yours – this channels would have a VPN server as an intermediary data link (both incoming and outgoing data in VPN servers is encrypted). The implications of this are that:
- user data becomes invisible to anyone who does not have the encryption key
- the user becomes unidentifiable/ untrackable on the web – the IP address is replaced with the IP address of the VPN server, hence data is uncoupled from the owner, which is an additional security benefit
- the geographical location (e.g. country) of the user can be hidden/ emulated (by rerouting data through a VPN server from a specific country)
Encouraging Your Clients to Use VPNs
It would make sense to encourage your customers to use VPNs for smartphones when forced to make payments or exchange personal data using unsecured networks (e.g. in hotspots throughout the city, in dining locals) – if users are not using mobile data from their operators but opt instead for using a local Wi-Fi network, they might risk to have their data intercepted. By encrypting data traffic, a VPN can minimize the risk of hackers getting access to their personal or financial data.
While ensuring the safety of account-related client data on the server is your company’s obligation, the responsibility of ensuring safe data exchange between the client and your server is shared with the clients. They should be encouraged to install VPNs on all devices (including smartphones) to benefit from higher-level security standards.
You can also market your advocacy of VPN to alleviate customers’ concerns of being tracked (for advertising or other purposes). By explaining this technology, by encouraging its utilization, and by guiding how to correctly choose VPN providers, you demonstrate that your business wants a transparent and honest relationship with its customers, which is bound to increase trust and lead to a better business-customer relationship.
