The Right Settings Will Go A Long Way To Enhance Your iPhone Privacy
Apple’s iOS 10 operating system is Apple’s latest operating system for its mobile products. It comes with options to guard your phone’s privacy and you should give strong thought to enabling them. Here are 9 things you can do to better guard your iPhone or iPad privacy.
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- Minimize your lock screen access – If you have a passcode lock on your phone (and if you don’t then add it right now) go to “Settings” then to “Touch ID & Passcode”. Where you see “Allow Access When Locked”, disable “Siri”, “Wallet” and “Home Control” People should not be able to access these without knowing your passcode.
- Use a custom alpha-numeric passcode – the current iPhone passcode default is a 6-digit number. You can do better. In “Settings” go to “Touch ID and Passcode”. From there enter your current passcode and then tap on “Passcode Options”. Then select “Custom Alphanumeric Code” A longer password is hard to crack than a shorter one. If you do not have a passcode that put one on your phone pronto! An article I wrote a while back will tell you more. Click here
- Don’t Blindly Join Wi-Fi Networks – Go to “Settings” then “Wi-Fi” and enable “Ask to Join Networks”. When activated you will not be able to join a network that you do not know about unless you agree to do so for that specific network. You won’t be logged into a network that you would rather not be in. An untrusted network may be a bad network.
- Stop Your iPhone From Tracking You – If you connect to Wi-Fi while you’re at a location, your phone can track you. That is unless you go to “Settings”, “Privacy”, “Location Services”, “System Services” and “Frequent Locations” and turn this option off. Clear the location history by hitting the “Clear History” button for even more privacy.
- Enable “Find My iPhone” – Should your phone get lost or stolen, this could enable you to locate your phone. Go to “Settings” “iCloud”, “Find My iPhone” to enable this function. For good measure also enable “Send Last Location”. When your phone’s battery is critically low, your phone’s location will automatically be sent to Apple. Should you lose your phone, you can find out how to recover it by clicking here.
- Always require password with every app purchase – Do you have children? Are you concerned about your financial security? If you get prompted to require a password for purchases made from your iPhone select “Always Require” to protect yourself.
- Don’t Let Apps Upload Your Data – Ever wonder how Facebook suggests contacts, LinkedIn determines people you may know? Allowing your phone’s contacts to be accessed by them is one way they get this information. Go to “Settings” “Privacy” and select apps like contacts, photos, or email. Then move the slider on or off for the apps you wish to allow or not allow access to.
- Set up 2-factor authentication – You may consider this a pain, but it could be the difference between a hacker accessing your data or not. Having your user ID and password is not enough. When you log into an account where you have enabled 2-factor authentication, a code is sent to your phone. You need to provide this code in addition to your user ID and password. I wrote about this a while back and the article is helpful for you to understand this. Note that since this was written that there are some variations of this but the intent is the same. Click here for article
- Limit Ad Tracking – Ever wonder how ads you see appear to correspond to your own interests and preferences? Part of this is without enabling the “Limit Ad Tracking” option, you are allowing Apple to supply some of your user information for advertising purposes. To enable this option, go to “Settings”, “Privacy” and “Advertising” “Limit Ad Tracking” and enable this.
Readers Of The Computer Concierge NY blog "Making Your Computer Personal" Also Read:
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- Is Your Smartphone's Flashlight App Spying On You?
- How To Get Off Those Annoying Email Lists
- 8 Ways To Get More Life From Your Smartphone's Battery
- Do NOT Do This 1 Thing With Your Passwords
It’s never too late to start guarding your iPhone’s privacy so why not start now.
Feel free to forward this to anyone you feel would benefit from this.
If you want to know more about iPhone tips or other technology issues, I can be reached at (917) 572-3468 or email me at mike@computerconciergeny.com . Which of these iPhone privacy tips have you started to do? Can you suggest one not mentioned here?
Making Your Computer Personal by Mike Klubok - Computer Concierge NY LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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