New Find My Book and an Update to iOS & iPadOS Privacy and Security
Whenever Apple updates its operating systems, I’m there with a host of book updates—and sometimes entirely new books. I’ve got two so far this September, and more coming soon.
Take Control of Find My and AirTags gives you a full understanding of Apple’s three overlapping services for finding people (who consent to share their location), devices (like Macs and iPhones), and items (like AirTags and other trackers). Apple has richly intertwined these three kinds of tracking services across two different networks: the classic Find My Device system, which relies on Macs, iPhones, and iPads transmitted their location continuously via Wi-Fi and cellular, and the newer Find My network, which allows nearly all Apple hardware to relay its current location in a secure and anonymized way back to an owner through other people’s iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
Find My helps you coordinate with others when meeting at a restaurant or planning a trip, and keep tabs on kids for safety or oversight. Its device-tracking feature helps you recover lost, misplaced, or even stolen hardware. And the AirTag and other new Find My items lean on the crowdsourced network to let you track a backpack, car, bike, purse, or anything to which you can attach a tag or put one inside.
You’ll also learn how to play a sound on a lost device or an item you find, send a message to a missing piece of hardware (providing a phone number or reward), or erase your lost or stolen Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Watch, ensuring no one can ever get their hands on the data stored on it.
This is an entirely new book, derived in part from a short section in the following book that I just updated. It was about 40 pages in that book, but we left out so much about the service and Apple had added so much that was new. This led to a 100-page-plus book that’s exhaustive and will help you manage the people, places, and trackers with which you interact.
Take Control of iOS & iPadOS Privacy and Security, Second Edition, brings my comprehensive tome on networking, protecting your privacy, and ensuring your security up to date with the release of iOS 15 and iPad OS 15.
Your iPhone and iPad have become the center of your digital identity, and it’s easy to lose track of all the ways in which Apple and other parties access your data legitimately—or without your full knowledge and consent. While Apple nearly always errs on the side of disclosure and permission, many other firms don’t. This book comprehensively explains how to configure iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 to best protect your privacy while messaging, email, browsing, and much more, and how to ensure your devices and data are secure from intrusion.
Take Control of iOS & iPadOS Privacy and Security covers how to configure the hundreds of privacy and data sharing settings Apple offers in iOS and iPadOS, and which it mediates for third-party apps. You’ll learn how Safari has been increasingly hardened to protect your web surfing habits, personal data, and identity—particularly with the addition of the iCloud Private Relay, an option for iCloud+ subscribers to anonymize their Safari browsing. In addition to privacy and security, this book also teachers you everything you need to know about networking, whether you’re using cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or combinations of all of them, as well as about AirDrop, AirPlay, Airplane Mode, and Personal Hotspot and tethering.