Additional Settings

In this video, we’re going to take a look at some additional settings to help secure your phone. Now in the previous video, we took a look at VPN and DNS, how that can protect your privacy, how we stick to the official store when you’re downloading apps, always keeping those applications up to date, and also checking the app permissions even if you do download from the official store. So let’s take a look at other settings that we could use to help secure ourselves and our device. Now the demonstration for this is on a iPhone. However, if you use an Android, these still apply to you.

You just may need to go to a different part in the settings to get this done. Now the first thing I want to talk about is Wi-Fi. Now with the wireless network on a device– when you connect to a Wi-Fi network– your device will always look for that network. Now the problem with this is that as we go through our day, weeks, months, travel around, we connect to things like our home network, our work network, possibly Starbucks open Wi-Fi network, hotel, airport. Our devices are constantly pinging for those networks. Now if a malicious hacker is out there and they’re sniffing traffic, they can see that your phone, for example, is looking for the Hilton Hotel or Starbucks or whatnot.

They could set up a fake SSID, that when your device tries to ping that particular Wi-Fi network, it’ll pick it up and give a handshake, and either steal your credentials or even install malicious software on your computer. That’s why this is really dangerous. And we want to forget any Wi-Fi networks that we’re not trying to connect to. So let’s take a look at how we’re going to do this. So I’m in Settings already. I’m going to click on Wi-Fi here. So once I click on Wi-Fi, I want to look for the network that I’m looking for. Then I want to click on Forget this Network and then Forget. And that’ll take me out.

Now the next thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to take a look at photo GPS. Now photo GPS, when you take a photo– and if this is on by default, then what will happen is when I take a photo, it’ll geotag that photo, meaning that if someone takes a look at the metadata– the information on the photo itself– I could see exactly where you took the photo. So this means if you took a photo on vacation, I know exactly where you were.

If you happen to take a lot of photos throughout your day and like to post online, the problem with that is people could find the time stamp and exact location that you’re going, constantly and potentially track you that way. The other issue is if we take a photo of something at home, we take a picture of ourself at home, we take a picture of our pet at home, now people know where we live. And this is really dangerous. This is why we want to turn off the GPS feature on our phone, for photos at least. So again, I’m in Settings.

We’re going to go down to the Privacy Options and Location Services and then we’re going to go to the Camera app. And then we want to make sure it’s on Never.

Next up, we’re going to do Face ID and passcode. Now on different models of the iPhone, you could unlock your phone with your face. Generally, it is more secure just using a pin code. However, having some way to lock your device, rather than no way to lock your device, is ideal. So on your device, you want to have, I would recommend first and foremost, a pin code. Other than that, at least have face ID enabled, fingerprint enabled, or pattern recognition. The way Android uses pattern recognition where you just draw a pattern, some sort of way that your phone is not just open by default. Now to do this, we’re going to go into our Settings again. We’re in Privacy.

And then we’re going to go to Face ID & Passcode for iPhone. And then since I already have it enabled, I’m going to enter my passcode and then we’re going to have to use a face code again. But for you, if you didn’t enable passcode or Face ID, it’s going to ask you to input that information. So next up, we’re going to take a look at Wi-Fi. Now for Wi-Fi, as I mentioned, we went over and we talked about that Wi-Fi is actually constantly looking for things. So even if we normally just connect to say our home network, we’re always on our home network. We want to make sure that it’s off.

We don’t necessarily have to type our password in for Wi-Fi every time. Just make sure your Wi-Fi is turned off when you’re not in use. So to do that, we’re in Settings. And then from Settings, we could just go to Wi-Fi. And up on top, we just go to Wi-Fi and turn it off. And now our wireless is off. And it’s not going to try to ping our wireless network again. Now next up, we want to turn off Bluetooth. Now honestly, I don’t see a lot of Bluetooth attacks, but they do exist. The problem with Bluetooth attacks is you have to be relatively close. There are some devices where you actually can get some pretty good distance between someone.

But again, it’s just another precaution. Bluetooth is even more open than Wi-Fi. It’s constantly blasting a signal out, looking for a connection. There’s different programs out there like Blue Snarf that you can leverage this and actually compromise someone’s device with it. So this is why we want to turn Bluetooth off, if you’re not using it or when it’s not in use. So again, you go into Settings. You click on Bluetooth. And then it’s pretty simple. Once you’re in there, you just find the Bluetooth and then you just turn it off. And that’s it. So pretty easy. These are some pretty basic ways to keep yourself safe. So in wrapping up, always have a password.

Either it’s a pin code, a pattern, a Face ID, thumbprint, whatever. Always have some sort of password on your device. Turn your Wi-Fi off when you’re not using it. Turn off photo GPS. Turn off the geolocation on your photos. When your Bluetooth is not in use, turn off your Bluetooth. And always forget any Wi-Fi that’s no longer in use. Doing these simple steps will help secure you and secure your phone. In the next video, we’re going to go over options for data encryption. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you in the next video.