I know many people have an opinion that the iPhone, by default, offers a lot of privacy and security; that’s a wrong assumption. But iOS (Apple) provides many tools/features that can help us improve our privacy (this does not mean Android does not offer the same; in my next story, I will cover the Android platform). Today I will share how you can use those tools/features to improve your privacy and security.
When you install any app on your phone, how often have you just accepted an allow option without even reading and understanding if you need that option to be allowed? A lot of you might have done it. But You don’t need to enable all permissions. So now, let’s see how you can check and disable it if required, all in one place.
Following is the list of apps most people use daily; you can cross-check the permissions for these apps and decide what permissions are required and what are not.
Camera App
Facebook App
Instagram App
WhatsApp / Telegram / Signal
Even Banking Apps.
Third Part Browser such as Chrome/Edge/Brave
Calendar App
Retail store App (Amazon/ Target/Walmart or any other local retailers based on your geography)
I am sure you might have a long list of apps that you don’t even track if they are using any location information, camera app, or microphone to access your photos or file system or may even track your activity across different apps.
How many of you know that when you take a picture using a camera app, it can capture photos and location info where you capture the picture and camera settings? It can even capture and store information on the date, time, etc. All this info is called metadata embedded in the picture. When you share this picture on the internet with someone or on social media, can the information captured in this picture be used to track you down and misuse this information against you? If that falls into the bad actor’s hands.
In the same way, you can check your microphone permissions; if we allow all, let me give you an example of how to identify if it is necessary to provide microphone permission, recently when I was helping a friend improve their security/privacy posture, I found that she provided microphone permission to the doordash app on her mobile. Then I asked her why she needed microphone permission for that doordash app. She said she never used a microphone with the app and immediately disabled it. If you are not actively uploading video/audio content to Instagram, why do you need to allow permission for the same? I mean, microphone permissions?
Enable App a privacy Report
So now, let’s see how you can navigate these settings and update them to protect your privacy. Before updating settings, let’s understand how you can see basic privacy reports. Apple provides a way for iPhone users to check when different apps use data and sensors and what domains they access. The following picture shows when WhatsApp used the Microphone; now, if these data do not match the call record, that means Microphone permissions are misused (Technically, you can say WhatsApp is using your Microphone to listen to you when you are using WhatsApp).
You can enable this by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Scroll down. You will find the option App Privacy Report.
By enabling App Privacy Report, you can view reports about which apps use sensors on the phone, data, and most accessed domains. This will help you know the activity is happening on your phone. I recommend that everyone enable and use this as one of the most critical settings.
Apple Advertising
If you assume Apple will not sell Targeted ads, you are wrong, Apple does sell Targeted ads, but there is an option to disable these Targeted Ads. You can follow the steps mentioned below to disable targeted advertising which means apple will not give ads based on activity. (You will not be profiled). Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising > Turn Off Personalized Ads.
Even after this setting, you will see ads that might not be relevant ads for you.
Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking
Allow Apps to Request to Track must be enabled to see a popup when you install apps to ask you if it’s allowed to track or not. You can choose not to track this way; you improve your privacy, and these apps can’t track you based on activity outside and some of the activity within the app.
Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone
scroll down to the Microphone option and Check the list of apps with a microphone enabled. When you start reviewing these settings.
Settings > Privacy & Security > Contacts
In this section, you will find the list of apps to which you have permitted your contact list. Check in what cases you wanted to give access to the contact list.
Settings > Privacy & Security > Location
It is often one of the most common settings to use specific apps. Apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats or Amazon, and Target (or any E-commerce Apps), why we think a location is a mandatory option. Because they need to get our location for delivery, honestly speaking, we don’t need to share our location constantly; we need to provide them delivery address. That’s all. Once it gets saved, why do we need location information? I know some people allow location information even to WhatsApp / Telegram / iMessage and similar apps, but do we these this? Think about it.
Under the privacy and security section, you may be using more options; those mentioned above are the settings I highly recommend everyone pay attention to. If you still think they are insufficient, I recommend exploring other options.
Tip1: It’s always a good idea to regularly review these settings and information to make sure you don’t give permissions that are not required for your usage of apps and also understand if any unauthorized access to unknown domains.
Tip2: Change the default search engine to DuckDuckGo or any other privacy-based search engine. Change the default browser to some privacy-focused browser such as brave, Duckduckgo, or Firefox.
