Privacy Protection on an Apple Device

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195 million iPhones were sold in 2020—10 million more than in 2019, despite a global pandemic.

It seems like there is always a hot, new tech product on the market. Especially with Apple products, there are constantly new iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers debuting. These products bring along new software updates, as well.

With all of these constant changes, it can be easy to lose track of your personal settings for your device. With an ever-growing list of customization and settings to choose from, important checks can fall through the cracks.

Unfortunately, this includes privacy protection.

If you’ve been wondering how to protect my privacy on iPhone, or how to protect my privacy on my Mac—look no further.

Before opening up your new iPhone, iPad, or Mac, it’s important to take a few steps to ensure you protect yourself. It just might be a game-changer protecting you from the next major data breach.

For tips on how to improve privacy protection with Apple products, keep reading!

The Importance of Privacy Protection

These days, technology rules our lives. Especially with the convenience of smartphones, we have access to the world in our pocket.

Every step of the way, there is an app that promises to make our lives easier.

Sometimes, they do just that. The maps app provides easy directions to hard-to-find locations, and a quick Yelp search can tell us if that restaurant across town is still open.

But other times, these tech products and their applications are more malicious than they may seem.

One of the biggest themes in 2020 has been protecting yourself. While this may have been more applicable to protecting our health, it is very important to protect our data as well.

Depending on what type of Apple products you use, there are various techniques you can employ to improve your personal privacy protection.

Password Security

The iPhone keychain feature is popular as it saves your passwords in a secure internal environment, and auto-fills them in appropriate fields. It also offers up secure, unique passwords when creating a new account somewhere.

But if you don’t use the secure password generator and decide to input your own, the keychain will save it for easy use.

As of late, a new feature has sprouted up that helps improve security in this area. Your iPhone will now identify when you have re-used passwords for multiple sites. It provides warnings on the dangers of reusing passwords.

The keychain will also let you know if there have been any reported data breaches that involve your passwords. If you re-use a password involved in another site’s data breach, it becomes that much less secure.

Your iPhone will warn you of this issue, and provide an easy link right to the site’s password management page to remedy the problem. This helps protect your devices against hackers and data breaches that can prove costly down the line.

Two-Factor Authentification

While two-factor authentication for phone privacy protection has been around for years, it has been widely underused. This security feature comes into play when logging into an app.

In addition to inputting your password, the app sends a double-check measure to prove your authenticity.

Usually, this comes in the form of a text message sent to your pre-determined phone number. In the past, you would have to exit out of the app to open messages. From there, you would copy-and-paste the code back into the app.

With all of these extra steps, many iPhone owners elected not to use this security feature. Apple recently introduced an update that hopefully encourages more users to adopt this security measure.

Now, once the code is dispatched, it will pop up right on your keyboard. While still in the original app, the code will appear as a suggestion at the top of the iPhone keyboard. You do not have to go searching for a code in your messages app.

Using two-factor authentication can further increase your privacy protection Apple device features, and protect you against hackers.

Incognito Mode

When using the internet, one of the easiest ways to obtain more privacy protection is with incognito mode. This is also known as private mode.

Essentially, it stops your web browser from tracking much of the information it normally does. This includes websites or apps you visit—the browser will not remember this history. It also prevents these websites from tracking you on their end.

Incognito mode prevents cookies from being saved on your computer, which is what these sites use to keep track of you.

By now you may be wondering, how do you go incognito?

You can use this feature on almost any web browser, and on any Apple internet-accessing device. With just a few easy clicks (usually in the top settings toolbar), you can transform your regular internet app into a private browsing tool.

Control the Access of Your Apps

Many of us keep an excess amount of applications on our mobile devices. While they make our lives simpler in some respects, they can also be collecting unnecessary data and information when given too much access.

On the settings page of your iPhone or iPad, you can control what these apps have access to. Between your camera, microphone, Bluetooth connection, and location services, there are tons of options for granting access to these programs.

Of course, some will have legitimate needs for these permissions. For example, it might be difficult to make the most of the maps feature without granting it permission to access your location. However, you may not feel as comfortable with Facebook knowing where you are.

Take the time to review the permissions these apps have on your iPhone or iPad settings page. You might be surprised at how much access these programs have.

More Tech Tips

These are just a few privacy protection tips to help keep you safe. When employed correctly, they may be the extra step that stops hackers from targeting your Apple products.

If you liked this content, check out our other articles for more tech news and tips!

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