iPhone users who have had an iOS 16 update are being urged to check their settings for a little-known privacy hack. If you are an iOS 16 user, you need to make sure that you have configured your device the right way and ensure that you know what you are doing. Otherwise, you might put your data and privacy in jeopardy.
New iPhone Settings You Should Watch Out For
Released on September 13, the recent iOS 16 update comes with a range of new features for iPhones including iMessage updates and a customized lock screen. As part of the privacy upgrade, new password setting options are available.
Featured Content
The iPhone Photos add exquisite beauty to our iPhone home screen. It alternatively shuffles various images on our devices and showcases them for us.
Go to Settings, then Photos, and scroll down until you find Feature Content. Enabling this feature will make photos and memories appear on the device in places such as for you and search in widgets.
The Featured Photos on your iPhone widgets will select images that automatically display on your home screen. Inherently, there’s no way for you to make decisions on the images you want to see in your featured photos.
Apple has designed the featured photos to be selected automatically by artificial intelligence (AI). Thus, you can’t choose the pictures you want to see in your Featured Images but you can edit, delete, and even share them.
If you don’t actually want to share featured photos, you just have to disable Featured Content. This way, none of your memories and photos will be shared automatically on widgets, which can be easily seen by other people.
Share Status
In the iOS 16 upgrade, Apple has added a cool new option in focus mode.
If you enable the Share Focus Status mode, it will only affect focus modes like Do Not Disturb, Personal, Sleep, Work, Driving, Gaming, and any other modes you have set up.
The whole point of these Focus modes is to silence non-urgent contacts and notifications. You can decide to allow notifications from certain contacts and applications when putting up Focus Mode under Settings > Focus.
If you want someone in your contacts to know that you are in a Do Not Disturb mode, you just have to click enable. The same goes for other modes.
Emergency Reset
The Emergency Reset feature rests within the Safety Check of the iOS. Basically, this feature allows people to quickly and rather seamlessly take back control over all the various ways you may have been sharing your data with other applications and people.
Perhaps, you could be sharing important data with your significant other. If the relationship, unfortunately, turns abusive, you would need not to quickly get yourself and your loved ones to safety. With Emergency Reset, you can ensure that your safety remains uncompromised.
With Emergency Reset, you can quickly stop sharing all data with all people and apps with anyone whom you share it with. This setting will sign you out of iCloud aside from the one that you are holding to ensure that you do not accidentally continue to share information on devices you may have had to leave behind.
According to Apple, this feature is created for victims of domestic abuse, which gives them some power back to secure themselves as necessary.
Lockdown Mode
Apple dubs Lockdown Mode the “first majority of its kind.” As per Apple’s head of security architecture and engineering Ivan Krstić, this mode is a “ground-breaking capability that reflects our unwavering commitment to protecting users from even the rarest, most sophisticated attacks.”
The Lockdown Mode offers an extreme, optimal level of security. While Lockdown Mode solidifies devices’ defenses, it also strictly limits certain functionalities. For instance, with the Lockdown Mode, most message attachment types aside from images are blocked. Other elements like previews are disabled.
The incoming service requests and invitations including FaceTime calls are also blocked if the user has not previously sent the initiator a request or a call. The wired connections with an accessory or computer get blocked with iPhone locked.
However, if you would activate the Lockdown Mode, it is not a magic bullet but it will disable most message attachments; most websites will run more slowly as it will disable Just In Time JavaScript, which is often utilized to put a spurt on sites.
Severe Crash
With this feature, you can severe car crashes whether it may be side-impact, front-impact, rollovers, or even rear-end collisions that involve minivans, SUVs, pickup trucks, sedans, and other passenger cars.
When iPhone detects a crash, the screen would display an emergency call slider which will enable you to immediately call emergency services. If you don’t respond to the alert, your device will automatically call the emergency services after 20 seconds of delay.
If you have an emergency contact listed on your phone, your device would send a message to share your location with these people and let them know that you have been in a severe car crash.
