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Making Find My Phone App secure

MAKING “FIND MY iPHONE APP” MORE SECURE


This article is not about how to install or set up the “Find My iPhone” app. An overview of the app can be found here http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2696 and setup details can be found here http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2697.


When the “Find My iPhone” app is downloaded and installed, the phone screen when settings>iCloud is selected should look like this:

 

Photo 1.png

        Photo 1

 

To secure the phone, an Auto-lock interval should be set and Passcode lock and Restrictions should be enabled.  The phone screen when settings>general is selected should then look like this:

 

IMG_1147.PNG

         Photo 2

 

If the phone is stolen before the Auto-Lock interval has expired and the phone is not on iOS 7 or later, the thief may select settings>iCloud to display the screen of photo 1 and turn off the “Find My iPhone” app. Now the phone cannot be tracked and none of the features offered by the “Find My Phone” app are available.

 

To guard against this, select settings>general>restrictions, scroll to down Privacy and tap on Location Services.  As part of setting up of the “Find My iPhone” app Location services is turned on for that app as shown here:

 

IMG_1149.PNG

        Photo 3

 

In settings>general>restrictions>Privacy, tap on Location Services and then on the next screen tick “Don’t Allow changes”. Now when settings>iCloud is selected, the screen looks like this:

 

photo4.png

         Photo 4

 

In the screen shown in Photo 4, the entry for the “Find My iPhone” app is greyed out and the app cannot be turned off unless the Restrictions password is known and Privacy in Restrictions for Location Services is changed to “Allow Changes”.


With everything set in this way, if the phone is stolen and the Auto-Lock interval has not expired (or one has not been set), it is now not possible for the thief to select settings>iCloud and turn off the “Find My iPhone” app.  To be able to turn off the app the thief would need to know the restrictions password and change the privacy settings in restrictions for Location Services to “Allow Changes”.

 

All of the above is applicable to iOS devices running  iOS 6.1.4 or earlier and which have iCloud service. For devices

using iOS 7 with "Find my iPhone" enabled and set up in iCloud, the settings mentioned above can still be adopted but are no longer really necessary as turning off "Find my iPhone" now requires the entry of the Apple ID password of the iCloud account to disable it.  If you try and disable the app a screen like the following will appear:

 

IMG_1383.png

 

 

For more information read http://tidbits.com/article/14113

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