Previously, the Washington Post reported that a series of thefts occurred across the United States, where criminals used iPhone users' passwords to change their Apple accounts, passwords, steal money, and lock them out of iCloud stored albums and **. Cases of this kind have occurred in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis, and other U.S. cities.
In this type of theft, the cost to the victim far exceeds the value of the phone itself, because in Apple's original security settings, once the password is in the hands of the bad guys, there is almost no way to prevent the damage from being caused. The Washington Post also pointed out that in the past year, there have been more than hundreds of letters from victims because their iPhones and digital lives were stolen by malicious actors.
However, now Apple is testing new protection settings for stolen devices and has released them to testers. Apple plans to release this feature with an upcoming software update, but users will need to manually turn on the feature, and even if it is activated, it won't cover all threats to personal and financial information on the iPhone.
How does this protection mechanism work?When this protection is activated, the iPhone will restrict certain settings when the user is far away from a familiar location on the iPhone, such as home or work.
Your phone's password has strong coverage, and when a malicious person has this string of numbers (usually 4 or 6 digits), they can access a lot of data and make full changes to the user's account. When Face ID or Touch ID fails, this string of numbers is used as a backup to enter the phone.
Apple ID password changeNo startup settings:Thieves can use your phone password to change your Apple account password and lock it, which is key to turning off the "find" feature and clearing the phone data for resale. Even the owner of the phone can't find their iPhone immediately without the changed Apple ID password.
Launch Protection Settings:When someone tries to change the Apple ID password in an unfamiliar location on the iPhone, the device will need to do a Face ID or Touch ID scan, and the passcode can only be changed after biometrics.
Update Apple's security settingsNo startup settings:The thief can simply use the password to recover the key. Apple is designed to protect users from online hackers. But if the thief activates the recovery key function, he or she can't reset the Apple ID password using the ** number or email, which means that the user may never be able to access all the **, files, or anything they have stored in iCloud.
Launch Protection Settings:As with changing your Apple ID password, you will need to take two biometric scans per hour to activate or change your recovery key or trusted** number.
Access the password in iCloud KeyringNo startup settings:Most people use iCloud keyrings to store all sorts of passwords, such as those for online banking, encrypted apps, thieves can use your iPhone passcode to unlock keyrings and access content, and the Washington Post says many users have said their bank caregivers have been diverted tens of thousands of dollars.
Launch Protection Settings:Once the protection is activated, the device will be suspicious of requiring a Face ID or Touch ID scan before it can access the passcodes.
But activation protection isn't completely secure, and the Washington Post notes that even with protection activated, a thief who steals your iPhone and has the phone's password can still unlock your phone, any app that isn't protected by an extra password or PIN is still vulnerable, and accounts that can be reset via text message or email are just as vulnerableMoreover, even if the Face ID or Touch ID scan fails, the thief can still use Apple Pay with a password.
Therefore, the Washington Post also recommends that you never tell anyone your phone password, and when you want to open your phone in public, you must definitely protect the password, and it is best to use Face ID or Touch ID to unlock your phone.
In addition, the more complex the password, the better, and a combination of letters and numbers is far more difficult for a thief to guess than six numbers. If you want to make the phone unlock passcode complicated and difficult to guess, you can go to "Settings", "Face ID & Passcode", "Change Passcode", "Passcode Options", and "Customize English Passcode".
You can also add a PIN to banking (or money-related apps), crypto apps, and add protection mechanisms to these apps by activating additional PINs or biometrics.
Science and Technology News).