- Big tech is spying on you.
Your personal information isn't secure
and advertisers are collecting
an absurd amount of information about you.
- That is the truth.
In this video, we're gonna talk about
every iPhone privacy setting you should change,
and also some things you should just do
in your day to day life
to keep your life more secure.
- Yep.
- Let's dive in.
- Let's start in the settings app in the privacy section
of settings, that seems appropriate.
Let's scroll down, tap on privacy. First thing, tracking.
Let's tap on that.
Do you want apps to be able to track you across other apps
and websites?
- Probably not.
Why would they need to?
- Couple options here, you can go one by one,
you could leave this switch on at the top and allow apps
to ask you, and then you could say, oh, do I want Facebook,
do I want Mark Zuckerberg tracking me across every app
and website? Do I want-
- Yeah just imagine Mark's following you everywhere.
- Do you want Elon Musk tracking you
across other apps and websites?
What do you think about Elon Musk buying Twitter?
Leave us a comment down below.
What I recommend doing,
just tap that switch at the top of the screen,
turn it off, apps can't even ask to request a track.
- And it's really just another annoying thing.
Facebook hates this. - Yep.
- Full page ad, New York Times, Apple,
you're killing small businesses with this setting.
Nope. You're not. - [David L.] Nope.
- [David P.] It's fine. Turn it off.
- Yep. Let's tap back to privacy.
Upper left hand corner of the screen.
Scroll down and tap on Apple advertising, personalized ads,
Apple says turning off personalized ads will limit
Apple's ability to deliver relevant ads to you,
but will not reduce the number of ads you receive.
Not necessarily true.
If there's less information about you,
you're a less valuable advertising target,
and therefore you might see fewer ads.
- You might see fewer ads 'cause
they're not gonna pay money to show you an ad.
- Yes. Also, advertisers are smart enough to deliver you
contextual ads, you're on an iPhone help website,
you're gonna see iPhone fixer.
- That's right. You should go to payetteforward.com.
You're gonna see some ads and we're gonna make one set.
- Yep. Let's tap that, switch personalized ads, turn it off,
you don't need it.
Tap back to privacy, upper left hand corner of the screen,
tap on analytics and improvements.
All these switches are on for me,
and when you set up your iPhone for the first time,
it asks you every single time, do you wanna turn this on?
And this is one of those settings that often finds a way
of getting turned back on again.
Do you want to send diagnostic and usage data
to Apple every single day?
- Probably not.
Turn that switch off. - Yeah,
just turn that switch off at the top of the screen,
tap okay, for Apple watch too, just turns everything off
and you can just tap on analytics data
and just see how much information is actually in here.
It's a lot. - It's a lot.
- Next let's tap back, upper left hand corner of the screen,
back to the main privacy page.
Here, you can see a whole bunch of apps and services
on your iPhone, which other apps, third party apps,
do you want having access to things like your photo,
your camera, your contacts? - Right.
- Probably not too many.
So let's start with microphone, for instance.
Do you want Facebook to have access to your microphone
all the time?
- Probably not.
I think that eventually they're gonna build in
an ask every time feature to this part-
- Yeah.
- Like they do for location services,
which we might talk about later. I don't know.
But yeah, I don't think so.
- Yeah. So for an app like Zoom, for instance,
if you wanna be on a Zoom call and talk to people,
that needs access to your microphone,
but if you just use Facebook to scroll feed
and you don't really post videos or anything,
Facebook doesn't need access to your microphone.
- No it doesn't. - So-
- You can always come back here and turn it back on.
- Yep.
- [David P.] If you have a problem.
- Yeah, so I'll just tap that switch, turn it off.
Instagram, same thing. Slack, same thing.
TikTok, same thing.
I guess you're uploading TikToks,
you need the access to the microphone,
but just be selective.
- It would be interesting to just turn them all off
for all the categories - - Yeah.
- And then see where you ran into actual issues,
and I bet you'd only end up turning on a couple of things.
- Right
- Just an idea.
- Let's tap back to privacy.
Let's tap on photos next.
Which apps do you want having access to the photos?
Sometimes all of the photos on your iPhone.
I bet there aren't that many.
- Right? So this is one now where they have ask every time.
Right? Or always.
- Yeah, you can,
so I'll tap on Facebook,
for example, you can choose specific photos
you wanna upload to Facebook,
probably the way you want to go about doing that.
You give them access to all the photos on your iPhone,
which you probably don't want to do, or you can select none,
in which case you can't upload photos to Facebook
before turning select photos or all photos on again.
- Right. And how dangerous is this?
It really could be very dangerous.
It's interesting,
this is only a recent feature where they give you
this sort of granular ability,
but if you downloaded a crappy third party app in the past,
gave it access to all the photos on your phone,
that app could be uploading all the photos to itself.
- Yeah.
- So Facebook is probably not gonna do anything
too nefarious or at least get caught.
They're too smart to get caught.
But other third party apps that might be smaller,
you never know. - You never know.
- You never know if they steal your photos.
- So really you should do that for all of these apps
you see in this list here, contacts, right?
Do some of these apps need access to your contacts?
Probably not. (David P. laughs)
- Does my bank need access to my contacts?
- No it does not.
- Probably not. Yeah.
It's funny, apps just ask for permission.
- Yeah. - Left and right.
- So be selective here.
Next, I wanna just point out
to research sensor and usage data.
Coming here, I recommend turning off this switch.
Sensor usage data is sensitive research data,
enabling its collection allows apps and studies
you authorized to access important sources of information
that are otherwise unavailable.
- It's a little bit scary there
and Apple's very good with privacy,
but this is something you should just turn off to be safe.
If you ever do wanna opt in, just come back here,
turn it back.
- So turn that switch off.
Yep. Let's tap back,
upper left hand corner of the screen.
scroll all the way up and tap on location services.
So first things first, at the top of the screen here,
you've got this location services switch.
You could disable all location services on your iPhone
by turning off the switch. Some people do wanna do that.
And that's how you do it.
However you need location services for things
like maps apps.
- Right? Location services is Apple's word for GPS
and then all the other fancy ways it can figure out
where you are. So yeah, maps. I wouldn't turn this off.
- Right.
- I don't turn this off.
- If you find my iPhone, that uses GPS too.
That's a really important iPhone feature.
- Yeah.
- So we really don't recommend turning off
this location services switch at the top of the screen.
What we do recommend doing is going down here to your list
of apps and being selective about which apps can access
your location and when they can access your location.
So we're picking on Facebook today.
Right now, Facebook is set to always,
that's the big word to look out for is always,
let's tap on Facebook.
Do you want Facebook to have access
to your location, always?
- And not even always when he app is open.
Always, always, always right now,
always while you're doing nothing,
with the phones in the pocket,
always, always, no.
- Probably not.
- It's gonna drain your battery too.
- So never ask next time or when I share
or while using the app fine.
- Right?
- I like to frame this as,
do I want Facebook to have access to my battery always?
Because location services, GPS,
phone has to figure out where it is,
use the cellular networks or GPS, it takes some power.
So anyway, it's gonna drain your battery.
I don't want apps to be able to always drain my battery
even when I'm not using them.
What David said.
- Yes. So also look at this precise location switch.
How precise does that location need to be
for an app like Facebook? Not super precise.
Maybe for a maps app, you want precise directions
to where you're going? - Right.
- Leave on precise location for maps apps,
or where location is super important.
But for an app like Facebook, or Twitter, or Messenger,
it doesn't need to be that precise.
- Right. Precise location,
the more precise your phone figures out where you are,
the more battery uses and it could be a big difference,
so, off.
- If you're confused about why any apps want access
to your location,
there is a relatively new app explanation feature,
that explains why this app is asking for your locations.
If you're confused at all,
look for that explanation and then evaluate it for yourself.
Is that explanation valid?
(both laugh) - Yeah.
- Do I need this? - Yeah.
- A lot of the time it's gonna be, probably not.
- Yeah.
- Let's tap back, upper left hand corner of the screen,
scroll all the way down and tap on system services.
By default, we have a lot of switches turned on.
We recommend turning off most of them.
- These switches, for the most part, they don't do much.
I like find my iPhone right? And emergency calls on SOS.
Those are the two that are the most important to me,
especially with find my iPhone,
if you have an AppleCare+ plan with lost and theft
or whatever it's called,
if you lose your phone and you don't have
find my iPhone turned on, they won't cover it, period.
So make sure that's on.
- Yep. So I'll turn off Apple Pay merchant identification,
cell network search, compass calibration,
so when you're in a maps app and you see that arrow
and it's pointing you in a specific direction,
that's where compass calibration is handy.
You're in a new city,
you've never been there before,
you wanna make sure you're walking in the right direction.
(David P. Laughs)
Otherwise you can end up five blocks in the wrong direction
and then you're tired.
- Well, I think you would find out, before you got-
- Yeah. - Five blocks, David.
- Yeah. But that's where compass calibration can be useful.
I don't use that.
- Yeah, but, he's right. Maps apps.
- It can be it's sometimes useful.
Device management. Turn that one off.
As you said, emergency calls and SOS,
Find my iPhone, leave those on.
HomeKit. Do you use HomeKit devices?
If you don't, you can turn that switch right.
- I have some smart devices in my home.
I have it set up with an automation
so that whenever I get in my car and plug it in,
that certain things turn off.
Does that need my location? No.
Doesn't need battery access because it knows,
it has nothing to do with my location,
it has to do with the fact that I plugged it in, in the car.
- [David L.] Location based alerts and suggestions,
turn those off, motion calibration and distance,
off networking and wireless, you turn that off.
You get this kind of scary pop-up location
for networking wireless, turn off location for networking
and wireless may affect Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
and Ultra Wideband performance.
- So forget about the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi part,
it's not gonna affect your performance
unless you're going to other countries, location,
other countries have different configurations.
However, if you use air tags
and you want the ability at on iPhone 11 or newer
to point your phone at a direction and track 'em down,
this is Apple's U1 chip, this will turn it off.
You won't be able to do that.
- So if you don't use that,
you can just turn that right off.
Setting time zone. You don't need to leave that
on all the time.
- [David P.] Certainly don't.
- Share my location. If that's a feature that you use,
leave it on. I actually use that feature.
So I'll leave that one on, sharing.framework off,
system customization off,
you can still customize your iPhone.
- [David P.] Yep.
- Wi-Fi calling, you can turn that off as well.
- Yep. Again, in other countries,
Wi-Fi calling is configured figure differently,
if you're traveling to other countries
might be worth your while to turn some of these back on.
- Yep.
- But if you're not, turn 'em off, save battery life.
- Yep. Next let's tap on significant locations.
Face ID,
significant locations allow your iPhone
and iCloud connected devices to learn places
significant to you in order to provide
useful location-related information
related to specific native iOS apps.
- And I wanna just address a comment
that we got in a recent video
about how Apple says, that if you turn this off,
optimized battery charging will not work anymore.
- [David L.] Right.
- And it does say that on the website,
but I have screenshots to prove that it still works.
I still get the pop-ups that say
your iPhone is going to wait to charge to 80% until 6:00 AM.
I don't know how it's doing it.
Apple wants you to leave this on.
I just think it's a battery drainer and it's unnecessary.
- Yeah, also with optimized battery charging,
I've had this iPhone 13 Pro for seven months
and I've just had significant locations off the entire time.
My battery health is still at a hundred percent.
I'm not sold on the optimized battery charging feature
as being that important.
I would rather turn off significant locations.
- Right.
- If you have to choose between one or the other.
- Well, yeah.
And this is gonna drain your battery a lot.
- Yeah. - Which is funny,
so it's like optimized battery charging or significant,
I would just choose the thing that drains your battery,
stop doing that.
- Yeah. - Turn this off.
- So if you had this feature on for a long time,
you'll see this long list of places that you've been,
and I think that's weird,
and maybe if your iPhone did happen to fall
into the wrong hands.
- Or your spouse's hands. - Yeah.
- If you were doing the wrong things.
- Yes, and they had your passcode,
you didn't have Face ID set up,
but they could get in here
and they could see all these places you've been.
- Yeah.
- [David L.] He leaves it off.
- [David P.] Turn that for a reason. Yeah.
- That's why. Yeah. (David P. Laughs)
That's why, not the battery drainer.
I actually have an ulterior motive that I cover it up-
- Mr. Ulterior Motives, yeah.
- Let's tap back.
Upper left hand corner of the screen.
(David P. Laughs)
Couple product improvement, switches, iPhone analytics,
routing in traffic. Turn those right off.
A lot of important privacy settings do live outside
the privacy section of the settings,
we're gonna get to those in just a minute, before we do,
we would really appreciate it
if you could subscribe to this channel.
- And you know who would really appreciate it
even more is David- - Oh.
- because today is his 28th birthday.
- We're gonna light it every single time?
- We're gonna light it every time.
- Okay.
With the torch over your (indistinct)-
(David P. laughs) - Done.
- Happy birthday to you. Happy, happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear David.
Happy birthday to you. Okay.
And do the harmony, but that's okay.
- Subscribe to this channel. We'd really appreciate it.
So we're gonna go back to the main page of settings.
Scroll down, a few below privacy is mail.
Let's tap on that and then tap on privacy protection.
Protect mail activity, we recommend leaving this switch on.
It is on by default, double check to make sure that it's on.
- Yeah. It's a good idea.
Email is a great way that people can track you.
They've got all these tracking pixels,
this disables some of that tracking,
not all of it, but some of it.
Why not?
- Why not? - Yep.
You're gonna get less spam I think,
at least in some cases,
if they don't know what you're doing-
- Right. - They won't send you emails.
- Next we're to tap back
upper left hand corner of the screen,
scroll down and tap on Safari.
A lot of privacy settings live in the Safari section
of settings, so we're going to scroll down,
first thing, prevent cross site tracking.
Turn that switch on.
Do you want websites to track you across other websites?
- No. - No.
If I'm on Airbnb looking for a vacation on Fiji,
do I really want the car battery website
to know that and show me ads from Airbnb?
I don't think so. - No, I don't think so.
- No.
- One below prevent cross site tracking is hide IP address.
Tap on that.
We recommended choosing from trackers,
now some websites do need your IP address
to do some features. It's kind of rare.
So if you run into an issue where a website actually needs
your IP address, just come back in here, set it to off.
- I don't think you're gonna have a problem with this.
- Probably not.
- And it's saying from trackers, not from websites-
- Yeah. Right.
- But as David said, there could be a bug,
'cause obviously there's a list of trackers.
- Yeah.
- But I think that this is pretty safe at this point.
- Yes.
- Even though there had been some issues.
- Choose from trackers, tap back to Safari,
upper left hand corner of the screen,
privacy preserving add measurement.
Now that sounds like something we'd wanna leave on.
- Right. But it isn't.
In fact, if you turn this off,
there is none of the ad measurement of this type.
It used to be that advertising networks got your IP address,
they knew exactly who you were,
not just the website you were on,
but also all the advertisers who had ads on that website
knew exactly who you were, where you lived, little creepy.
- Yeah.
- Apple built this in which protects your privacy.
Turn it off.
They won't get any data.
- Turn that switch off.
Then scroll down, settings for websites.
So this is kind of similar to allowing apps
to access your camera, microphone and location.
Tap on camera, for instance.
Camera access on all websites,
you just wanna allow that by default? Probably not.
- No, uh uh.
- I recommend sending it to ask,
maybe some websites do need access to your camera.
You need to take a photo or something.
- Yeah.
- But don't allow it all the time.
- I wouldn't do that. Yep.
- Tap back to Safari, microphone, same thing.
Do you want microphone access on all websites?
No. (David L. laughs)
- I don't know how this would get turned,
I guess it could theoretically be annoying for somebody
if they were using a website that used it
all the time, but I like ask here
'cause you just don't want that.
- Ask and then location, same thing, ask, deny, allow.
We said don't allow any app to allow your location access
all the time. Same thing goes for websites.
- Yeah. - Ask.
- Ask is good.
I get this random pop-up
'cause you can allow it for one day.
- Yeah. - And that's cool.
- We all know that there's more to the iPhone
than just the settings app,
a lot of third party apps have their own privacy settings
that you need to change to protect your personal privacy.
- Right, like Facebook for -