Privacy and Apple go hand in hand – over the years, it was inspired by a recent video promoting Data Privacy Week starring Ted Lasso’s Nick Mohammad.
However, today (January 28) is Data Privacy Day, and it’s important to learn about other features available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac to help protect your data.
All of these are features that I turned on as soon as they were introduced—Advanced Data Protection is new to me, as it was recently introduced in iOS 16.3.
With that in mind, here are some other features you should consider enabling in addition to advanced data protection, and why you should as soon as possible.
Advanced Data Protection
Introduced in iOS 16.3, this not only allows you to protect your iCloud backups with an encrypted password, but also your Safari bookmarks, your iCloud Drive contents, notes, and more.
That way, only you and you have access to the data – even Apple. It adds another layer of protection to your data, especially if someone is trying to hack into your account, so no one else can access any valuable data.
This feature also works on iPadOS and macOS, so your data will be protected in the same category.
you can open this (opens in a new tab) go through Settings > iCloud > Advanced Data Protection.
email protection
We’ve all come across spam and other types of messages that try to get your information in an attempt to track you beyond your email.go through Settings > Mail > Privacy ProtectionApple’s Mail app hides your IP address when you open new messages from your inbox.
This means the sender won’t be able to tell if you opened their email, or from where you opened it.
Place
One could argue that too many apps ask for your location – Facebook is a good example, especially if you use it to check out memes and check what’s going on with certain family and friends.
However, you may find that perhaps too many apps are tracking your location all the time, not while you’re using the app.
You can view it by Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services And check each app shown in the list to see if its location is set to “Allow always” or “Allow while in use”. With the exception of weather and maps apps, “always allow” really isn’t required for most apps.
So set aside a few minutes during your lunch break to see which apps are trying to track your location, even when you’re not using them.
Security check
Introduced in iOS 16, this feature can go a long way in helping protect your data from the ones you want to have in your life.
Security Check, found at Settings > Privacy & Security > Security Checkup You’ll be given a detailed overview of who’s sharing what data with you, and you can easily limit this with just a few taps.
There’s also a “quick exit” in the upper right corner that takes you right back to the home screen if someone wants to check your phone out of the blue without your permission.
password
Another feature introduced with iOS 16, iPadOS 16.1, and macOS 13 Ventura is that you can sign up for a new account on the website without entering a new username and password.
You just need TouchID or FaceID to authenticate this and you’re good to go.
However, if this is an account you need in the future, you can save it to your iCloud Keychain, which is Apple’s method of storing usernames and passwords, by checking the “save account password‘ Options at creation time.
app tracking
A feature that Facebook was openly unhappy with — but in retrospect, it just makes Meta look terrible privacy-wise.
Certain apps are able to track your browsing in other apps like Safari and Mail, and since this is done in a variety of ways, Apple makes it difficult to close these individual cases, which is where App Tracking comes in.
You can enable all apps to do not track you by Settings > Privacy and Security > Tracking. You can choose to turn tracking on or off for specific apps, or turn off the option entirely.
