Congratulations on getting a new iPad or iPhone; maybe you’ve upgraded from an older model, or it is your first one. Arguably, privacy and security issues on these devices are more critical than they are with macOS. iPhones and iPads are carried wherever you go, and therefore, the threats to your privacy, security and identity are manifold. You must take steps to safeguard your devices, and here are a few settings and iPad OS security that you must activate right away.
1. Set up Touch ID & Face ID- iPad OS security
With Face ID, users can set an alternate appearance, which is a good feature if you often wear sunglasses and other accouterments that significantly alter your appearance. Also, the attention feature can be activated, so you have to look at your device and make small movements. Therefore, anybody other than you will be prevented from unlocking your device when you are sleeping by holding it in front of your face.
With Face ID and Touch ID, you can select whether you wish to use the features for such purposes as authorizing purchases in the App Store or iTunes Store, unlocking your device, auto-filling saved passwords or paying using Apple Pay.
2. Apple activation lock – iPad OS security
The activation lock feature is designed to keep your information and data security in the event your iPad or iPhone is stolen or lost. When Find My Phone is activated on your device, the activation lock is automatically turned on. All you need to do is activate Find My Phone and remember the Apple ID and password.
However, you may have forgotten the activation lock credentials, and in such cases, you need to learn how to iPad bypass activation lock. To bypass the activation lock, you’ll need to remember your Apple ID email and password and the screen code. You can also bypass the activation lock via iCloud.
3. Hide your email address from prying eyes
Hide My Email is a feature that lets users sign up for applications and websites with a random email account to maintain the anonymity of their identity and decrease the number of spam sent to their actual email addresses. You can use this feature if you are running iPad OS 15 and iOS 15. You need to sign up for a paid iCloud+ subscription.
Head to the Settings tab > select your name > click iCloud > click Hide My Email and create a new email address, or you can use any random email address that you might have already used with Apple’s older Sign in. So, the next time you need to access a website or fill out a form, you can use the random address.
Any emails generated via this account will be forwarded to your genuine email address. However, you can deactivate the anonymous address if you receive many spam emails. First, you need to return to the Hide My Email page and then select the random email address > select Deactivate Email Address.
4. Track permissions for application developers
Application developers can track users and send targeted ads using certain websites and applications. Apple introduced an exciting new feature that will prompt users if an application wants to track them. You can turn on the feature by going to Settings > clicking Privacy > selecting Tracking and turning on Allow Apps to Request to Track.
As you use the applications, they might start to ask your permission before tracking all your activities. However, keep in mind that apps that don’t ask for permission might continue tracking your activity.
5. Don’t allow access to your local network
Ever since the release of iPad OS 14 and iOS 14, certain applications have made requests to the local network to access your activity the first time you launch them. For example, some applications might need such access to communicate with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth devices.
If you launch such an application, you’ll see a message appearing on your screen which says that the application would like to find and connect to devices on your local network. You can deny access by tapping Don’t Allow. You can even activate or deactivate this for each application by clicking Settings > selecting Privacy > clicking Local Network. You can turn off the switch for certain apps to disallow access.
To sum up, these are a few of the security features that you must start using right away on your iOS and iPad. These will help keep your security and privacy safeguarded.