Really excellent Nik, such a tutorial is essential learning in these unsure times. Over the holiday I spent some time with my nephew who knows much about hacking - he goes on hackerthons apparently. Anyways he reckoned that if a hacker specifically targets you then there is actually very little you can do - other than go off line. It is a scary world we live in online these days.
Recently saw and interview with John McAfee, he was asked which was the most secure smartphone - he said it was the Samsung Galaxy S7- His team of hackers tried to hack it of rover a year unsuccessfully. He even asked hackers to try and hack is phone. It still has not been hacked. However. you probably saw that a few days ago he got hacked. Not it was not his phone, but his phone company. They hacked in and accessed his phone number on their system and then rerouted it to another phone. That meant that anyone who called him the called was sent out to another phone- From there the hackers contacted Twitter and other media accounts. When they saw that it came from his phone they gave out the password. In this case did to make any difference how long or complex the password was. Social engineering and security weaknesses in phones companies are definitely the weakest link IMO-