Privacy and Security on iOS 10

If privacy and security are top priorities for you, you may find it difficult to know which apps and devices to trust. Apple has lots of amazing aspects, but it also has quite a few misses.

If you have an Apple device, such as an iPhone or iPad, you’ll probably have iOS 10 installed right now. It offers lots of features not available in previous versions. However, for those who are concerned about their privacy and security, there are aspects of this version that you should check.

Today we’ll look at the top ways to keep your information safe and secure on iOS 10.

It stores your deleted photos

Did you know that iOS 10 saves your pictures for 30 days after you’ve deleted them?

This may not be a problem if you’ve accidentally deleted a few images. However, that happens quite rarely. On the other side, this means that anyone can find your horrible or very private images you’ve deleted by just going into your Recently Deleted folder.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick way to get those images deleted quickly. You’ll essentially have to delete them twice. First you’ll need to delete them from Camera Roll in Photos. Then you’ll need to go to the Albums tab and press delete again from the Recently Deleted Album.

It stores your parked location

You may not have noticed this feature, but your iPhone can tell you where you last parked. This is useful in that it will notify you about where your car is located when you look for it.

However, not all of us would be comfortable with our devices recording pretty much every place we visit. In fact, it could be quite creepy for many.

In order to turn it off, you’ll need to head to your Settings in Maps. At the bottom you’ll see the Show Parked Location option and uncheck it.

It provides location-based everything

Apple loves to show you advertisements and information based on your current location. This could be useful in some cases, but it rarely presents more benefits than disadvantages.

• Location-Based Alerts provide you with notifications based on your geographic positioning, such as a reminder that you need to call someone when you get to a specific address.
• Location-Based Apple Ads provide you with ads based on where you are—no matter where you are.
• Location-Based Suggestions will provide you with a few suggestions based on your location, such as an app to install or other task you’d like to do.

If you are concerned about Apple collecting giant amounts of data on you about where you are going, all the time, you might want to turn off this feature ASAP.

In Settings, go to Privacy, Location Services, then System Services. There you can disable these location-based services.

It will share your location by default

One great-sounding feature is the Find My Friends option to help you keep track of your friends and family. Of course, however, they will also be able to keep track of you.

You’re probably not too comfortable with that idea, especially since there are others that might be secretly tracking your location.

To disable this feature, simply go to Settings and click on Privacy. There, you’ll need to disable the option that says Share My Location.

It saves your messages forever

Another thing that you may not be aware of is that iOS saves your text messages pretty much forever.

This is of course good news if you have some important information stored there. However, you may not be so comfortable knowing that a strange conversation you had 3 years ago is still in your phone for anyone to find.

To be safe, you probably want to change those settings and have iOS 10 save your messages only for a limited amount of time.

To do that, you’ll need to first head over to Settings. From there, go to Messages and click on Keep Messages.

Now you can either choose 30 Days or 1 Year. Then you’ll need to click on Delete on the popup that asks you to delete all other messages that don’t fall within this timeframe.

When you’ve changed these settings, you can be secure in the knowledge that your private information is actually now more private.

Got any other tips and tricks for making iOS 10 more secure? We’d love to hear about it. Let us know in the comments below!