We’ll assume that you already keep your devices up to date, use FileVault on Macs, have at least a six-digit iOS passcode, have strong password habits, and use multi-factor authentication wherever possible. Other options are more specific to travel.

As with our more general article about increasing security last month, we’ve divided our list of suggestions into two parts: things that everyone should do and measures that only people who worry about being specifically targeted should employ.

Sensible Travel Security Precautions for Everyone

These suggestions are appropriate for everyone who travels, and they’re aimed primarily at avoiding relatively common problems: loss, theft, data loss, and generalized snooping:

• Focus on physical security: As a tourist, you may be targeted by thieves, so it’s important to keep your iPhone in a secure pocket whenever you’re not using it. Carry an iPad or laptop in a bag that can’t be snatched, or leave them locked or at least concealed in your hotel room.
• Enable Find My for all your devices: You should have already done this, but if not, enable Find My to improve your chances of finding a device you lose or accidentally leave behind. It might help if the device is stolen, but local police cooperation for recovering stolen items can vary widely. Don’t attempt to recover a stolen device yourself.
• Put AirTags in your luggage and laptop bags: AirTags can help you track down lost luggage—you can now share their locations with airlines—and prevent you from accidentally leaving bags behind. An AirTag may also help with locating a stolen item, but always work with local law enforcement.
• Enable biometric authentication and Stolen Device Protection: Using Face ID or Touch ID wherever possible and having Stolen Device Protection enabled on your iPhone in Settings > Face/Touch ID & Passcode is even more important when traveling.
• Use a VPN or iCloud Private Relay: Because you may be using Wi-Fi networks whose security you know nothing about, it’s best to use a VPN like Mullvad VPN, NordVPN, or ProtonVPN to encrypt all your traffic. At a minimum, use iCloud Private Relay, which requires an iCloud+ subscription and won’t encrypt traffic from most non-Apple apps.
• Use iCloud Photos or another backup option: To ensure you don’t lose precious vacation photos, use iCloud Photos so all your photos are uploaded to the cloud whenever you have access. This will almost certainly require an iCloud+ subscription for sufficient storage space. If Wi-Fi and cellular are too slow or unavailable, consider an external SSD to which you can manually export photos and videos for backup. To speed up the process, you could create a shortcut that automatically copies all photos taken that day.
• Use iCloud Backup: It’s best to use iCloud Backup to back up your entire iPhone every night. That way, if your iPhone is lost or destroyed, you may be able to buy a replacement and restore from backup in relatively little time. You will probably need an iCloud+ subscription to have enough backup space.
• Practice dealing with a lost or stolen device: If the worst happens and you lose one of your devices while traveling, you need to know what to do. Immediately go to Find My on another device or iCloud.com and mark the device as lost. If there’s a chance of getting it back, stop there. However, if you believe the device was stolen, your data is at risk, and tracking it is no longer useful, use Erase This Device in Find My to wipe it. Activation Lock will remain enabled to prevent anyone from reusing the device.

Increasing Travel Security for People Who May Be Targeted

Not all travel is fondue and gamelans. If you’re a journalist, activist, government employee, or corporate executive with access to sensitive data, you could be a target while traveling. This is particularly true if you are headed to countries like China, Russia, or others with authoritarian governments and powerful intelligence agencies. Along with the suggestions above, we recommend:

• Be aware of local laws and government practices: It’s important to read up on regional laws regarding data access and potential government capabilities at your destination. Knowing what to expect can help you reduce your risks and take appropriate precautions.
• Use caution with cellular access: Even if your carrier allows roaming, consider using a dedicated eSIM for international travel, separate from your personal one. That way, you can use local cellular networks without revealing your home number. Be aware that your traffic may be monitored.
• Enable Lockdown Mode: If you’re concerned about your iPhone or iPad being targeted by local law enforcement or government intelligence agencies, turn on Lockdown Mode in Settings > Privacy & Security > Lockdown Mode. To increase security, it blocks most attachment types in Messages, complex Web technologies, incoming FaceTime calls from unknown callers, non-secure Wi-Fi network connections, and incoming invitations to Apple services. Plus, it excludes location information from shared photos, requires approval to connect accessories, and more.
• Reduce and protect your use of cloud services: While using a VPN is essential, you should still avoid using cloud services much if government entities might have access to stored files. If you need to upload files, encrypt them first using the free and open-source Cryptomator.
• Know how to disable Face ID and Touch ID: If you find yourself in a situation where you believe you may be compelled to unlock your iPhone or iPad with your face or fingerprint, press and hold the side or top button and either volume button to display the power off slider. This temporarily disables biometric authentication, requiring your passcode for the next unlock.
• Use dedicated travel devices and accounts: If you’re traveling to a potentially hostile part of the world, we strongly recommend carrying only devices—preferably iPhones or iPads, which are more secure than Macs—configured to contain none of your personal data or regular accounts. Keep them with you at all times, assume they could be confiscated, and be aware you might be compelled to share passcodes or other account information. Create a separate Apple Account for such devices.

Best of luck in your travels! With just a little preparation, you can reduce the chances that something bad will happen during a vacation. If you’re traveling on business to somewhere more concerning, putting in additional effort could prevent truly problematic things from happening.

For more information on all the great Apple products, features, and services, give us a call!  940-767-MACS (6227).  Or stop by MacTech Solutions, 4020 Rhea Rd, Suite 3B, Wichita Falls.  We’re open Monday thru Friday, 10am to 6pm

(Featured image by iStock.com/metamorworks)

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We’re not here to dub one better than the other, but many people find themselves needing to upgrade from an older iPhone with Touch ID to a newer one with Face ID. If you’re trying to switch between Touch ID and Face ID, we have some tips to help.

Unlock the iPhone

Once the iPhone is awake (the screen is lit up), you unlock an iPhone with Touch ID by pressing the Home button. On an iPhone with Face ID, you swipe up from the bottom of the Lock Screen—a bar reminds you where to start—while looking at the iPhone. Face ID is fast and accurate enough that you’ll notice that authentication is happening only if iOS asks to verify your passcode (which it also does with Touch ID).

Return to the Home Screen

When you’re using an app on an iPhone with Touch ID and want to return to the Home Screen, you press the Home button—logical! On an iPhone with Face ID, you repeat that swipe up from the bottom of the screen action you use to unlock the iPhone. You’ll get really good at it.

Switch between Apps

When it comes to switching between apps, iPhones with Face ID offer a unique shortcut. On an iPhone with Touch ID, you must quickly press the Home button twice and then swipe between apps in the App Switcher. Bringing up the App Switcher on an iPhone with Face ID requires swiping up from the bottom of the screen just slightly and then continuing the swipe to the right. But Face ID experts seldom do that. Instead, swipe right and left on the bar at the bottom of the screen to switch between apps—it’s far faster and easier, if hidden.

Activate Siri

On an iPhone with Touch ID, holding the Home button activates Siri. On an iPhone with Face ID, press and hold the side button to activate Siri. Tomato, tomahto.

Open Control Center

When all we had were iPhones with Touch ID, Apple decided we’d open Control Center by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Face ID relies on that gesture for unlocking and opening the App Switcher, so on iPhones with Face ID, you instead open Control Center by swiping down from the top right of the screen. Think of it as swiping down from the cellular, Wi-Fi, and battery status icons.

View Notifications

Because iPhones with Touch ID use a swipe up from the bottom for Control Center, they can devote a swipe down from the top of the screen to displaying the Lock Screen with notifications. The same gesture works on an iPhone with Face ID, but you must start from the left side of the screen.

Use Apple Pay

Paying for a purchase with Apple Pay requires that you authenticate, which means placing your finger on the Home button—but not pressing it!—on an iPhone with Touch ID. Getting the hang of the touch-but-don’t-press action can take some time, but once you have it, you may even have developed a habit of not looking at your iPhone to authenticate Apple Pay. In contrast, with an iPhone with Face ID, you must look at the screen when prompted so the Face ID sensors can confirm you’re making the purchase. Honestly, neither is as easy as double-pressing the side button on an Apple Watch.

Authenticate in Apps

Beyond Apple Pay, plenty of apps from the App Store, like password managers and banking apps, tie into biometric authentication so you don’t have to type lengthy passwords. As you’d expect, if you previously authenticated by touching the Home button, doing so on an iPhone with Face ID requires looking at the iPhone screen. That’s nearly always what you do anyway, so it’s even easier than touching the Home button.

Register Alternate Appearances

With Touch ID, you can register up to five fingers, which lets you use several of your own and let a trusted spouse or family member authenticate using Touch ID as well. We tend to have more fingers than faces, though, so with Face ID, Apple allows only a single alternate appearance. That shouldn’t be too limiting, but if everyone in your family had a Touch ID finger, sorry, you’ll have to pick a favorite.

(Featured image by Apple)

The post 9 Tips for Switching from an iPhone with Touch ID to One with Face ID first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

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This is how Google, Facebook, and Twitter operate. They provide services for free, collect data about you, and make money by showing you ads. In theory, the more that advertisers know about you, the better they can target ads to you, and the more likely you’ll be to buy. Personalized advertising can seem creepy (or clueless, when it fails), but it isn’t inherently evil, and we’re not suggesting that you stop using ad-supported services.

This ad-driven approach stands in stark contrast to how Apple does business. Apple makes most of its money by selling hardware—iPhones, Macs, and iPads, primarily. Another big chunk of Apple’s revenue comes from App Store and iTunes Store sales, iCloud subscriptions, and Apple Pay fees. Knowing more about you, what Web pages you visit, what you buy, and who you’re friends with doesn’t help Apple’s business, and on its Privacy page, Apple says bluntly, “We believe privacy is a fundamental human right.”

Of course, once your data is out there, it can be lost or stolen—in June 2018, a security researcher discovered that the online data broker Exactis was exposing a database containing 340 million records of data on hundreds of millions of American adults. Ouch!

Let’s look at a few of the ways that Apple protects your privacy.

Siri and Dictation

The longer you use Siri and Dictation, the better they work, thanks to your devices transmitting data back to Apple for analysis. However, Apple creates a random identifier for your data rather than associating the information with your Apple ID, and if you reset Siri by turning it off and back on, you’ll get a new random identifier. Whenever possible, Apple keeps Siri functionality on your device, so if you search for a photo by location or get suggestions after a search, those results come from local data only.

Touch ID and Face ID

When you register your fingerprints with Touch ID or train Face ID to recognize your face, it’s reasonable to worry about that information being stored where attackers—or some government agency—could access it and use it for nefarious purposes. Apple was concerned about that too, so these systems don’t store images of your fingerprints or face, but instead mathematical signatures based on them. Those signatures are kept only locally, in the Secure Enclave security coprocessor that’s part of the CPU of the iPhone and iPad—and on Touch ID-equipped laptops—in such a way that the images can’t be reverse engineered from the signatures.

And, of course, a major goal of Touch ID and Face ID is to prevent someone from violating your privacy by accessing your device directly.

Health and Fitness

People with medical conditions can be concerned about health information impacting health insurance bills or a potential employer’s hiring decision. To assuage that worry, Apple lets you choose what information ends up in Health app, and once it’s there, encrypts it whenever your iPhone is locked. Plus, any Health data that’s backed up to iCloud is encrypted both in transit and when it’s stored on Apple’s servers.

App Store Guidelines

A linchpin in Apple’s approach to privacy is its control over the App Store. Since developers must submit apps to Apple for approval, Apple can enforce stringent guidelines that specify how apps can ask for access to your data (location, photos, contacts, etc.). This isn’t a blanket protection—for instance, if you allow a social media app Facebook to access your contacts and location, the company behind that app will get lots of data on your whereabouts and can even cross-reference that with the locations of everyone in your contact list who also uses the service.

In the end, only you can decide how much information you want to share with the likes of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and only you can determine if or when their use of your details feels like an invasion of privacy. But by using Apple products and services, you can be certain that the company that could know more about you than any other is actively trying to protect your privacy.

The post Being an Apple User Means You’re Not the Product first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

It’s a thin, touch-sensitive screen above the keyboard, where the function keys used to be. The Touch Bar displays buttons, sliders, and other tools that change not only with what app you’re using, but also based on what you’re doing in that app. If you’re accustomed to using the function keys, you’ll be relieved to know that pressing the physical Fn key on the keyboard displays F1 through F12 on the Touch Bar. Most of the time, though, you’ll want to let apps customize the Touch Bar for you.

In Photos, for instance, the Touch Bar lets you scrub through your photo collection, mark photos you love, and edit photos. Once you select a photo for editing, the Touch Bar changes to provide editing tools, such as exposure and color sliders and rotation controls. In a video editing app like Final Cut Pro X, the Touch Bar can provide a timeline scrubber along with trimming tools. Plus, you’ll be able to customize the Touch Bar however you like in different apps.

Integrated into the right edge of the Touch Bar is a Touch ID sensor, just like on an iPhone or iPad. Touch it with one finger to log in to the MacBook Pro, or with another to switch to a second account via fast user switching. Other people can use it to log in to their accounts too. The Touch ID sensor also communicates with a new Apple T1 chip in the MacBook Pro to store Apple Pay information for use in Safari when buying stuff on Web sites.

The new MacBook Pro models sport an industrial design that takes cues from the 12-inch MacBook to reduce size and weight. In fact, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro is now thinner, narrower, and less deep than the 13-inch MacBook Air and less than an ounce heavier at just over 3 pounds. The new 15-inch model weighs in at 4 pounds.

Those size and weight savings don’t come at the cost of reduced performance or battery life. Battery life is the same as the previous models at up to 10 hours, and performance is notably better, thanks to faster processors, improved graphics chips, and speedier solid-state storage. Speaking of storage, the new Macs generally start at 256 GB, with 512 GB or 1 TB SSD upgrades, and you can opt for 2 TB in the top-of-the-line 15-inch model. 8 GB of RAM is standard, but you can bump that to 16 GB.

You’ll notice that the Force Touch trackpad looks huge. That’s because it’s twice the size of the trackpad in the previous MacBook Pro models, making it easier to move around and use multi-touch gestures.

Both models feature improved screens. The resolutions remain the same as before—2560 by 1600 pixels for the 13-inch model and 2880 by 1800 for the 15-inch—but Apple says the displays are 67 percent brighter, have a 67 percent higher contrast ratio, and show 25 percent more colors, a boon to graphics professionals.

For charging and expansion, Apple learned a lesson from the 12-inch MacBook, which has only a single USB-C port. These new machines feature four Thunderbolt 3 ports, two on each side, and you can use any port for charging, driving an external display (via an adapter for HDMI or VGA), or connecting to storage or other devices. Thunderbolt 3 uses the same physical connector as USB-C and supports older USB devices too. It boasts so much bandwidth—40 Gbps—that it can even drive two additional 5K displays or four 4K displays simultaneously!

Everything else is roughly as you might expect: 802.11ac Wi-Fi for connectivity, Bluetooth 4.2, a more responsive backlit keyboard, 3.5mm headphone jack, louder stereo speakers with greater dynamic range, three built-in microphones, and a 720p FaceTime HD camera.

Prices start at $1799 for the 13-inch model and $2399 for the 15-inch model, and you have a choice of silver or space gray colors. For those who are looking to save some money, Apple also introduced a cheaper version of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro that lacks the Touch Bar, has only two Thunderbolt ports, and uses a slower processor. The previous MacBook Pro models remain available, as do the 13-inch MacBook Air and 12-inch MacBook, so if you’re having trouble figuring out which of Apple’s laptops makes the most sense for your needs and budget, come talk to us!

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