Protecting your device
Basics of making sure your iPhone or iPad are sufficiently protected.
FRAUD PREVENTION
It's important to protect your phone. These days we use our phones for nearly everything including paying bills, accessing our banks and other important websites and apps which contain vital information to our identities.
Device passcode
It's important to create and keep a good passcode on your phone. This passcode is the code that you are asked to unlock your phone periodically or when your FaceID or TouchID are deactivated. Because your iPhone/iPad default back to your passcode when FaceID and TouchID are not functional/deactivated or additional verification is needed, you need to make sure your passcode is as long as possible, contains letters, numbers, uppercase and lowercase. The most secure passcode is the AlphaNumeric option. Think about it like this. Every code is breakable. It only takes more time to break the more complex the code is. You want your code to take as long as possible for someone to break if they wanted to. There are 26 letters in the alphabet (a-z), and 9 different numbers (1-9). Add uppercase to the mix and you get even more possible combinations. Hopefully you can start to see the possible combinations if you only use a 4 digit numeric passcode versus, for instance, an eight or twelve character AlphaNumeric (including upper and lower case letters) passcode. The time to break a four digit numeric code vs an eight digit AlphaNumeric with upper and lower case letters is much shorter. Passcodes can be phrases as well. Make it something that is easy for YOU to remember. Make something unique that only you would put together. Use something like "MyWallsArePaintedWithToastedWhite". That's 33 digits but because it's something you know and it's a phrase, you don't feel like remembering so many digits is as bad as remembering a whole bunch of numbers or letters alone. The more predictable the passcode is, the faster it will be broken. Don't use things that are easily attainable like your birthday, address, kids names or similar. Things like this can be easily attained online with a search.
What does your passcode protect?
Apple Health information - your health information is contained here. This is a whole blog post on its own but what Apple Health does in general is keeps all of your health information in one place. Do you have an Apple Watch? All of your steps and heart rate information are collected and stored in Apple Health. Medications, blood pressure, weight, as well as many other types of health information can be stored here.
Apple Card/Apple Savings/Apple Cash/Apple Pay information - Do you have the Apple Credit Card or the Apple Savings account? Have you set up Apple Cash to pay other people? Have you used the keychain feature on the iPhone/iPad to save your passwords? Have you used the save credit card feature on your iPhone/iPad? Answer yes to any of these questions means your passcode/FaceID/TouchID are protecting this information.
Apple Card - Your Apple credit card number, expiration and CVV are stored in your phone.
Apple Savings Account - Your Apple Savings account number and routing number are stored in your phone.
Apple Cash - If you've used this to send money then you've likely added your debit card or credit card as a source to fund your transfers to others.
Apple Pay - Similar to Apple Cash, you will have added a debit or credit card in order to use Apple Pay.
Credit Card - If you have saved your credit cards after using them in apps or websites, they are stored and protected.
Have you used apps or websites to log in to your accounts? Depending on how long it's been since you logged in, your account could still be accessible.
Photos/Browsing History/Location history - You may be amazed at the amount of information someone wanting to do you harm, could glean from these items.
Photos - Aside from the fact that your photos contain personal information, did you know that your photos can contain the location where the photos were taken and the date/time they were taken?
Browsing History - This one is pretty straight forward. A person could see what banks you use, company accounts you have or other important information that will give them a lead on where to focus their efforts to access your information, if they wanted to.
Location History - Your location can be used or saved in map apps as well as other apps.
Email - Your email apps usually stay logged in for a while. If someone has your passcode, they could read all of your email in these apps.
Hopefully you can start to get a sense for the amount of information in your phone and what your passcode protects.