iOS Privacy Settings Check List

cybersecurity July 13, 2022 0

iOS Privacy Settings Check List

Here are the iOS settings to consider increasing the privacy of iOS devices like iPhone or iPad. It will also greatly improve your device’s battery life!

1. Select only mandatory Location Services

Go to Settings and scroll down to Privacy and hit that Location Services menu.

Here we focus on two sections: Location Services and Share My location.

Location Services ON

Review the list of all installed apps and consider only two options: Never or While Using. The only app that could be set to Always is the Apple Weather app.

Share My Location menu

In Settings > Privacy >> Location Services >>> Find My iPhone

You can keep all three settings enabled: Find My iPhone, Find My network and Send Last Location.

2. Disable Allow Apps To Request To Track You

Go to Settings > Privacy >> Tracking, and disable tracking for all Apps.

3. Turn Off Unnecessary System Services

This section is quite dramatic. It is also the main cause of the daily battery drain or the iPhone warm-up!

Go to Settings > Privacy >> Location Services, scroll all the way down to System Services.

In System Services menu, turn off almost all the services. You can only keep services that are really important to you enabled.

Disable: iPhone Analytics and Routing & Traffic in Product Improvements section!

Turn on Status Bar Icon, so you know when the device is using your location.

Finally turn off Significant Locations.

4. Review application’s permissions to access resources on your device

Go to Settings > Privacy, here you must review each app and its permissions.

5. Turn off Analytics & Improvements and Personalised Ads

Go to Settings > Privacy and scroll down to the bottom.

Turn off Analytics & Improvements as well as Personalised Ads in Apple Advertising menu.

You can turn on App Privacy Report.

You can read more about it here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212958

6. Turn off Sensor & Usage Data Collection

Go to Settings > Privacy >> Research Sensor & Usage Data. Make sure it is not enabled.

7. Make sure that Privacy Protection is turned on in Mail settings

Go to Settings > Mail >> Privacy Protection and enable Protect Mail Activity

You may also consider Turning Off Push Mail for better battery life.

Go to Setting > Mail >> Accounts >>> Fetch New Data and disable Push. Next, scroll down to the bottom and set the schedule to 15 or 30 min in the FETCH section.