How to Secure Your iPhone

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iPhone 7 and iPhone 6S owners need not fear another round of encryption breaches, at least not if they plan to keep their personal information off the Internet. The new iPhone features a Secure Enclosure (SE) feature that encrypts all apps and data stored on the phone, including photos, text messages, web pages and contacts. If you’ve signed up for an iPhone account or recently updated your phone, it’s time to take care of yourself and your data first — before handing it over to the browsers or hackers who can decipher your secrets. To ensure that no unauthorized third party accesses your iPhone files, Photos app deletes all images, videos and other content stored on it when you connect your phone to a computer. Settings also let you block people from view who have access to sensitive information about you. If these steps aren’t enough, consider keeping photos on your camera roll as evidence in court should a hacker ever gain control of your device. If you already have an encrypted smartphone — or are planning on buying one — here is how to secure it yourself:

Change Your password

If you’ve already established a password for your iCloud account, change it. Your password should be as secure as possible, but if you have to enter it each time you log onto a new app or website, you may want to keep it as plain text. To make sure that is possible, change the password on your iCloud account. You can set up a password manager to securely store your passwords and emails, but doing so before you purchase an iPhone or iPad is a better option.

Make Sure Your iCloud is Enabled

If you haven’t changed your iCloud password in a while, it might be a good idea to do so now. The first step to accessing your account information is to take care of one important thing: Make sure your iCloud account is enabled. If it isn’t, someone who knows you’ve logged onto your account will be able to view your photos, music, and documents. To make sure your account is up-to-date, take a look at the status of your iCloud password policy. If it’s still not changed, contact your online service provider and ask them to change the policy. You can also look in the Account Settings > Security > iCloud Password policy section to change the default password.

Use a Strong Password

If you’ve been using a login name other than your entries on the computer or mobile device, or you’ve been putting sensitive information like credit card numbers or financial accounts in──most especially, those that may contain passwords, security questions or information about yourself or your family members──you should change it. If you’ve been using a similar name on the computer or mobile device, change it to make it harder for hackers to guess. For example, change your name on your computer to something more memorable, like “khajji” or “sap”. Doing so on your phone will make it harder for hackers to guess your password, but not as much as it would be if you kept it the same. If you want to be extra safe, change your phone’s name as well, so that if someone knows your password, they can’t easily guess what it is.

Change Your Admin Channel

If you’ve kept all of your important files on your computer, it’s a good idea to change that on the computer as well, too. You don’t want hackers who have access to those files gaining access to your server, or worse, getting your personal information. So, change the order in which you store those files on your computer. If you’ve also been keeping your contacts and calendar on your computer, change that, too. These should be stored in a format that lets you easily find them if you need to look up someone’s information. If you’ve been storing these in a spreadsheet, table, or any other format that lets hackers look for your unique data, it’s a smaller piece of the husbandry that they can easily remove and change into something more useful.

Secure your iPhone by using a passcode and syncing to your device’s calendar

It may be tempting to try to log into your account on your computer, but doing so on a mobile device lets you take care of business even more securely. If you have an account on your computer, you will still need to enter your password and select how you want to access it. If you don’t have an account set up on your computer, you can also try using a passcode to access accounts on other computers. This will make it much easier for you to access your computer from any device, such as a laptop or smartphone. You can also set up a passcode for every location on your phone, like when you go shopping or grab a cup of coffee. This keeps hackers from getting your personal information when they’re not after it.

Conclusion

After all this, you should be ready to take the plunge and secure your smartphone. The most important thing to do is make sure you’re already on the most up-to-date passcode policy for your device. If someone hacks into your account and accesses some of your sensitive data, they’ll have a much harder time finding what you didn’t want them to see. For that reason, it’s critical that you make sure your passcode is kept protected. Once you have the passcode, use it only within your own account. This way, if anyone else attempts to access your account, they’ll be able to see it only as a backup passcode.