14 DAY TRIAL // If you’re looking for some peace of mind using your iPhone on a day-to-day basis, here are four neat tricks that anyone can use to prevent advertisers, retailers, governmental agencies, and even regular folks from tracking your device.
These days, it’s almost impossible to go by a venue unnoticed. Security cameras everywhere, now they’re testing iBeacons to sense your presence near the store, and things aren’t getting any less intrusive by the looks of it.
But you can still tweak some knobs on your iDevice to limit the nosiness. Here are four handy settings that you and your family/friends can perform to limit tracking.
Set a longer passcode
You may not know this but your iDevice supports passcodes that are longer than four simple digits. And you can use letters too if you just visit Settings > Passcode > Turn Passcode On > set Simple Passcode to OFF, and punch in a lengthy password.
Limit ad tracking
There’s a hidden setting in your iDevice that Apple sets to OFF by default, and allows advertisers to track your habits. Go to Settings > Privacy > Limit Ad Tracking and switch it ON. Reset the Advertising Identifier while you’re at it, and if you do this on a regular basis, they’ll never be able to learn your habits in time to make out a pattern.
Hide your whereabouts
This one’s actually pretty scary when you first come across it. Without your direct knowledge (though you’ve probably already agreed to this when accepting Apple’s EULA upon activating your phone), your iDevice records key locations that you’ve been to.
It isn’t very clear where and how often this data gets sent, but at least Apple’s servers are collecting it because the default settings allow it to. So, what you want to do is visit Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Frequent Locations and turn OFF the knob that allows this data to be collected. You can also select not to send this data to Apple and make them improve their Maps service without following your every footstep.
Well, not your real name, of course. Your phone’s name. But chances are you and your iPhone are named the same (as most people’s iPhones are). For example, mine’s Filip’s iPhone, and it lets everyone around me know I’m here if I do as little as tap the Bluetooth icon by accident in Control Center. But then there are times when you actually do need to employ the help of good old Bluetooth. To ensure no one can identify your phone with you, visit Settings > General > About > “User’s iPhone” and change the name of the phone.
