After the naked pictures of several celebrities have leaked online recently, and the Kelihos botnet phishing campaign managed to take advantage of the users’ worries spamming them with fake emails and thus collecting their Apple IDs, the issue with the iCloud security has become quite popular.
Not only Hollywood stars are concerned about the security of the data they keep on their Apple devices. Corporate employees often have sensitive information on their iPhones, for example. Regular users also keep private videos and pictures on their iOS devices.
Here are a few tips on how to keep your data safe.
Carefully Select the Data You Back Up to iCloud
It is important that you limit the information that you back up to the cloud. When you go to the Settings menu on your device and choose iCloud, you will be presented with a list of all the applications that are backed up here. There is a toggle on and toggle off option to each of them. Choose which ones you would like to back up. Having your Documents and Mail backed up is always a smart choice. Pictures, on the other hand, are barely as important.
A Strong Password
You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that a unique and strong password is of big importance to the safety of each of your accounts, especially in the cases (like iCloud) where the option for two-step verification has not been activated yet. Make your password long, for example, 15 or 16 characters. Make sure to include digits, symbols, upper and lower case letters. Try not to use real words and create a unique password for each of your accounts. If remembering all of them sounds like an impossible task, you can always use a password manager.
Turn the Application Off
In case you decide that the risks involved in a potential data leakage from your iCloud storage will cause you more trouble than actually keeping this service active, you may always terminate your account.
To do so, you need to go to Settings and choose iCloud. On the bottom of the screen, you will find the Delete Account option.
Since deleting your account automatically means that there will be no data backup on your device, you will need an alternative option. Apple’s iTunes is one of them. Just follow the steps provided bellow.
- You need the latest version of iTunes. Make sure to download and install it on your device.
- Connect the device to your PC.
- Select File, then Devices and then Backup
And keep in mind that you need to perform your backups regularly.
