Privacy and Security

If you’ve never had your Facebook hacked into, consider yourself one of the lucky few. Nearly everyone I know has had their Facebook account hacked into at some point or another. While you can never be sure no one will ever manage to get in, there are important steps you can take to make your profile secure again. If your Facebook has been hacked, here’s what to do.

We tend to think of our iPhone getting hacked as a far-off scenario, but large tech companies like Apple pay big money to white hat (good ‘witch’) hackers to find the bugs and loopholes they can’t see. Just recently, Apple decided to make iOS 10.3.2 available to even older iPhone users because of a flaw found that had gone unknown for a couple of years. While it’s not worth panicking over, it’s good to take precautions. iOS 10 has more security features directly on your iPhone than ever before. Can someone hack your iPhone? Sure; it’s even possible for someone to hack an iPhone remotely. But you can do a lot to secure your iPhone and protect it from possible hackers. The ten tips below will ensure you’ve implemented every safeguard possible; here’s how you can protect your iPhone from hackers, both local and remote.

I recently wrote an article on how to turn on Two-Factor Authentication on your iPhone for better security. Two-Factor Authentication requires the use of multiple devices. For example, if you get a new iPhone, when you log into your Apple ID account for the first time, you’ll need to use your Mac, iPad, or old iPhone to confirm that it’s you logging in and not some stranger trying to access your account on a random device. This is important since your Apple ID is used for everything including making purchases with your credit card. However, if you don’t feel the need to turn this feature on, or if you have it on and decide it’s unnecessary at some point, you can use this tip to turn Two-Factor Authentication.

Different than two-step authentication, two-factor authentication is the latest in Apple ID security from Apple. When two-factor authentication is turned on, even someone who knows your Apple ID password won’t be able to sneak into your account. This is because two-factor authentication requires a confirmation from a trusted Apple device when someone is attempting to sign into your Apple ID account. Here’s how to set up two-factor authentication on iPhone.

Looking for an easy-to-use home security solution that works wirelessly both indoors and outdoors? Netgear's Arlo Pro (starting at $249.99) meets those requirements and offers loads of other features that make it worth a closer look.

Most everything you do on your iPhone centers around your Apple ID. Your Apple ID account is what grants you access to iCloud, iMessage, and Facetime. It's also what allows you to make purchases from the App Store, iBooks Store, and iTunes Store. Since your Apple ID is so important for running your entire Apple ecosystem smoothly, we put an awesome collection together of Apple ID video tips that will make it easy for you to set up and manage your Apple ID account.

Our video tip collections are one of many incredibly helpful benefits of our iPhone Life Insider subscription. When you sign up, you’ll get instant access to this collection and many more features, which I’ll review below. With this post, you’ll get a sneak peak with one awesome video tip from the collection that will help you master your Apple ID account. Here’s our essential tips for setting up and managing your Apple ID account on iPhone or iPad.

Need iPad and iPhone help? Sign up for iPhone Life Insider and I’ll help you with all of your iPhone troubleshooting and iOS-related issues. Here’s a question from an Insider who wants to create a more secure password on their iPhone.

Your restrictions passcode on iPhone can be reset without restoring your iPhone. Well, not reset exactly. But this is a sure-fire way to find your restrictions passcode, which will allow you to take restrictions off your iPhone or reset the passcode. In essence, this is an article on how to recover your restrictions passcode on iPhone. At some point, we have all forgot our restrictions passcode on iPhone, but Apple hasn’t set up a fail-safe for turning off restrictions when you don’t know the password. So we’ll use a simple workaround that will allow you to recover your restrictions passcode so you can either turn Restrictions off on iPhone or reset the passcode to something easier for you to remember. But if you happen to forget your restrictions passcode again, this article will be here for you. I’ve been so happy to see the comments from users this article has helped. It’s good to note that this article works for the old and new iOS (including iOS 7, 8, 9, 10). You can use this tip to take Restrictions off your iPad too. Here’s how to recover and reset your restrictions passcode when you don’t know the password on iPhone or iPad.  

When you allow Siri to be accessed from your Lock screen, you may want to consider what Siri is capable of doing without unlocking your device. For example, let’s say you’re in a room with multiple other people. If one of them were to activate Siri when you have Voice Dial turned on, they could tell Siri to call someone without needing your passcode. But if you have Voice Dial turned off, Siri won’t make the call until you enter your iPhone’s passcode. This may or may not be important to you, but it’s good to know what can and cannot be accessed from Lock screen. Here’s how to turn Voice Dial off on iPhone.

With Apple's release of its HealthKit API, the company has put the spotlight on its customers' health and wellbeing. Doing so has also encouraged manufacturers of third-party health-management devices to utilize the iPhone as a data hub, assisting users and even medical practitioners with monitoring and supporting healthy initiatives. One such device is the QardioArm Smart Blood Pressure Monitor $(99).

Last week, Apple released iOS 10.3.1. The update addressed a serious security Wi-Fi vulnerability discovered by Google Project Zero. Surprisingly, the update reinstated support for the iPhone 5 and 5C (the last 32 bit processor devices made by Apple) allowing those with the older iPhones to protect themselves from the security weakness. And now, Apple has also stopped signing iOS 10.2.1 and iOS 10.3, which means it's no longer possible to downgrade from iOS 10.3.1.

Facebook knows privacy concerns are on the forefront of users’ minds. How much of my information can people who aren’t my friends see and how do I stop someone from bothering me on Facebook? Luckily, Facebook added a feature called Privacy Checkup that allows you to easily see and change your privacy settings. Here’s how to change your Facebook privacy settings on iPhone.

You can hide photos on an iPhone in the Photos app—kind of. By kind of, I mean you can hide the photos from Years, Collections, and Moments. However you can’t hide photos from All Photos, which means you aren’t really hiding the photo much at all. Anyone who looks through your photos will still be able to find the supposedly hidden photo private picture folder on your iPhone. But there is a way to really, truly hide photos on iPhone from prying eyes using the Notes app to make a private picture folder on your iPhone. For even more security, you can also use an app to hide photos in a secret photo album on iPhone. Here’s how to hide photos on iPhone.

Few people know that the passwords you’ve saved in Safari are available to view on your iPhone. Don’t worry about security, your fingerprint (Touch ID) is needed to access the passwords. But if you’ve forgotten your login name or password, this tip makes it easy to find and view them. Here’s how to view your Safari login names and passwords.

Instagram introduced My Story to the app a while back. My Story allows users to film or snap pictures and short videos to share with their followers. If a follower is on at the right time, they can even tune into your Story in real time, or they can tap on your circle at the top of their Instagram feed later on to watch it. Your Story lasts a day before disappearing, allowing your followers to keep up with you in yet another way. But maybe there are some followers you’d rather didn’t view your Story on Instagram. You have the option to hide your Instagram Story from specific people; here’s how.

If you’re concerned about Notes disappearing on your iPhone, creating all your Notes in your iCloud Notes folder is the best way to go. But if you have a note with sensitive material that you want to keep super private, you can store those notes locally on your iPhone. To do this, you simply turn the On My iPhone account on for Notes. We’ll go over how to do that. Here’s how to keep your sensitive notes out of the iCloud.

With Find My iPhone, you don’t have to worry as much about losing your phone. It’s easy to set up, and once it's enabled, you will be able to see the location of all your devices right there on the map view. The best part of Find My iPhone is being able to see where your iPhone, iPad, and Mac computer are from any of your devices. That means if you lose your iPhone, you can check its location from your computer. Here’s how to set up Find My iPhone.

Enabling Touch ID for use in apps means you can lock apps with your fingerprint. Touch ID apps allow you to lock apps on your iPad or iPhone in order to protect sensitive information such as private documents or personal finance information, instead of setting a password you might forget. However, other apps such as Facebook don’t allow you to use Touch ID to lock the app. Whether or not an app uses Touch ID depends on the developer and how they intend you use the app. Once you have Touch ID enabled on your iPhone, you can use your fingerprint to open the Touch ID apps of your choosing. We’ll go over how to set up Touch ID apps below. We’ll also cover which popular apps are Touch ID apps and which ones aren’t.

Privacy is a huge topic these days. But despite this, many of us download apps and accept the terms without even thinking about it, thus giving apps access to our contacts, location, social media accounts, and more. If this describes you, no worries. I am going to tell you how you can check your privacy settings on your iPhone or iPad and revoke the access you absentmindedly gave to these apps.

My smart home runs on Wink, and it just got smarter thanks to the Wink Hub 2 ($99). This new version of the smart home hub adds Ethernet support in addition to 5GHz Wi-Fi support. This will make it more reliable and compatible with newer routers. The original Wink Hub is still available and still works fine. The newer home automation hub lists for $30 more and is worth it for the features mentioned. Technically, while the original Wink Hub lists for $69, it can often be purchased in a bundle that includes a few smart bulbs, etc., for that same $69 price, so it's not exactly a fair comparison.