Protect your Privacy on your iPhone

If you have an iOS device, you may be leaking personal information about yourself—without even knowing it—because you're not familiar with the privacy settings.

Apps have "permissions," meaning, they can access private information such as your social calendar stored on the phone, appointments, anything. Go to the privacy menu under "settings" to learn which apps can gain this access and deactivate it. And there's so much more to know…

Ads

• The Limited Ad Tracking option controls how targeted the ads are to your habits, not the amount of ads you see.
• This feature does not apply to ads across the Internet; only the iAds that are built into apps.

Location

• At the screen top is a Location Services entry.
• Explore the options.
• Shut down everything not needed beyond maps or "Find My iPhone"

Safari, Privacy

• Check out the Allow from Current Website Only option; it will prevent outside entities from watching your online habits.
• You can limit how much Safari tracks your habits (by activating Do Not Track requests).
• You can also disable cookies, but you won't prevent 100 percent of the data collection on you.
• Want all cookies and browsing history deleted? Choose the Clear History and Website Data option.
• In the Settings app, go to Safari, then Search Engine to change the default search engine if you feel the current one is collecting too much data on you.

Miscellaneous

• Every app has its own privacy settings. For every app on your device, you should explore the options in every privacy menu.
• Set up a time-based auto-lock so that your phone automatically shuts off after a given time if you're not using it.
• The fewer apps you have, the less overwhelmed you'll be about setting your privacy settings. Why not go through every app to see if you really need it, and if not, get rid of it?