Right now, you shouldn’t be using the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad. Thanks to a serious exploit, a hacker can take control of your iOS Mail app just by sending you a malicious email.
You don’t need to open that mail for it to do its bad business. In fact, you don’t even have to have the Mail app open for the attack to work. Yesterday, we covered the news of this attack, and you can read all about the consequences. Today we’ll show you how to protect yourself by changing just one setting.
Face ID is great, as long as your iPhone can see your face. A mask — like the ones we all should be wearing to slow the coronavirus pandemic — blocks the iPhone’s Face ID sensor from seeing your face. That means you either need to remove the mask (bad) to unlock your iPhone, type in your passcode every time (annoying), or disable the passcode entirely (a terrible idea).
But, according to in-depth research from China’s Tencent Xuanwu Lab, you can train Face ID to work while you’re wearing a mask. It needs some careful setup, but once it’s done, it works reliablly and quickly. You can even wear glasses.
This week we punch through muted, silenced phones with magic alerts, replace $1,300 hardware sequencers with a $20 iOS app, and enjoy Endlesss music jams with anyone, anywhere in the world.
Apple has eliminated a number of serious flaws that allowed an iPhone’s camera to be hijacked.
Hacker Ryan Pickren discovered the vulnerabilities during a “pretty intense” bug-hunting expedition in Safari. He was paid $75,000 through Apple’s Bug Bounty Program for his efforts.
Apple’s newest iPad Pro has the ability to disconnect its microphone when the device is not in use for increased security. The disconnect happens at a hardware level so software cannot override it — but there’s a catch.
The feature only works for you if you have the right accessories.
Video-conferencing tool Zoom is seeing a surge in use during the coronavirus pandemic, due to people being stuck at home and unable to meet in meatspace groups. I’ve read about people using Zoom to drop in on yoga and pilates classes, as well as for more usual business-related activities.
A new report published on Friday by the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) details the many ways hackers are using the COVID-19 pandemic to exploit unsuspecting targets.
It includes new social engineering attacks that convince email users to give up sensitive data, and an increase in malware distributed via malicious links. Europol calls for law enforcement agencies to be vigilant and prepared.
Lockdown, the open-source firewall app for iOS, is now available on the Mac. And just like the iOS version, it blocks all kinds of connections to trackers and other unwanted snoop-ware.
Mac users already enjoy good options when it comes to privacy apps, so how does Lockdown match up?
Last week’s revelation that iCloud backups can be accessed by Apple, and are regularly given to law enforcement agencies, came as a big surprise to many people. Isn’t Apple the company that claims to protect your data? While your iPhone or iPad is locked down, much of your iCloud data, including1 your iMessages, is available to Apple. The only way to prevent Apple, and government agencies, from accessing that data is to switch off iCloud backups, and make local backups instead.
Facebook Messenger could soon add Face ID support to protect your conversations from nosy neighbors.
The feature would prevent access to Messenger until it is first unlocked with your face. It seems like a useful addition to the app for the security-conscious, but it’s still in development for now.
Ever since Safari 13, the Mac browser now prompts you every time you try to download a file. In this way, it behaves much like Safari for iOS. It’s a security feature, clearly designed to stop websites sneaking files onto your computer. But perhaps you value the convenience of uncontrolled downloads more than this added security? If so, you’re in luck, because you can turn this feature off. Better still, you can still block Safari downloads from “bad” sites, even while allowing new ones automatically.
Did you get a MacBook, iPhone, or iPad this holiday season? Are you going to return it? The good news is that, even if the gift was purchased back in November, you can still return it thanks to Apple’s generous holiday return policy. But if you’ve already set things up and used the iDevice of the Mac, then you need to wipe your data off before you return it. Here’s how.
This VPN post is presented by PureVPN.
There are many good reasons to use a virtual private network (VPN). Now you can add one more to the list. PureVPN just announced its biggest deal of the year — an 89% discounted Christmas sale price on its five-year plan (now $69). That’s a good VPN for Mac at a great price.
macOS 10.15 Catalina is ruthless about launching unknown apps. Unless your app comes direct from the App Store, or the app’s developer got the app notarized by Apple, it won’t launch. Double click on it, and you’ll see a warning — and nothing else. There’s no option to say you trust the app and launch it despite Catalina’s warnings.
But you can still launch those apps. It’s just that Apple hides the controls in the hope that you’ll give up. It’s petty, and it shows a lack of respect for you, the user. However, it’s also dead easy to fix this problem. Let’s see how to launch any app on macOS Catalina.
Maybe my favorite Continuity feature is Apple Watch Unlock for the Mac. Once you set it up, you’ll never need to enter your password to unlock your Mac ever again — not until you restart it, anyway. It’s one of the best examples of Apple’s It Just Works™ philosophy, and it will change the way you use your Mac.
This online security post is presented by Dashlane.
Remember the “Nigerian prince” who famously emailed financial requests far and wide more than a decade ago? It was a variant of the advance-fee scam, aka The Spanish Prisoner scam. Even just last year, Americans lost $700,000 to such schemes, according to security firm ADT. And it all comes to mind again with recent news of outlandish online scams originating from the same country. But how do these people manage to keep getting away with people’s money, information and identities? It makes you wonder how to protect yourself from online scammers.
iPhone 11 units are using location services even after access has been blocked by the user, a new report reveals.
Security researchers have discovered that Apple’s latest handsets intermittently seek location information regardless of the user’s privacy settings. Apple says it is “expected behavior.”
The default passcode length on the Apple Watch is just four digits. And while it’s true that you don’t keep as much sensitive data on the smartwatch as you do on an iPhone, and that your Apple Watch is arguably safer from bad actors because it is always strapped to your wrist, it’s still worth making this passcode more secure. After all, it’s not like you have to enter your strong passcode very often, right?
Today we’ll see how to change your Apple Watch passcode to a longer one. And we’ll also check out a neat feature that lets you skip entering the passcode altogether.
Facebook is quietly using your iPhone’s camera in the background while you scroll through your news feed.
The issue is believed to be a bug that affects devices running certain versions of iOS. It has been replicated on handsets with iOS 13.2.2, but not those still using iOS 13.1.3.
This OS updates and security post is presented by Jamf Now.
Apple’s new operating systems, macOS Catalina and iOS 13, bring innovative capabilities to organizations using them. A streamlined approach to Apple upgrades ensures security measures are met, an accurate systems inventory is maintained and downtime is eliminated. Mobile device management products like Jamf Now help simplify the upgrade process and maintain security of employees’ devices by keeping them up to date.
In iPadOS and iOS 13, long-pressing a link does two things simultaneously. It brings up a contextual menu with options for sharing and so on, and it loads a preview of the linked web page. Apple calls this a link preview.
But what if you don’t want a link preview? Maybe you’re on a cellular connection and you don’t want to waste data by loading pages you won’t read. Or maybe you only need the link, and never want to see the page. What if it’s a link to a huge image, or an MP3? Or perhaps it’s a link in an email, and you want to use the contextual menu to check the URL for scams. In this last case, there’s no way you want that link to load. It could prove disastrous.
The good news is that you can disable link previews in iOS 13 with a single tap.
You know how you can double-press the side button on your Apple Watch, and then wave it over a contactless terminal to pay with your credit card? Wouldn’t it be great if you could do the same with your Mac login password? Instead of having to type your password to authenticate yourself, you’d be able to double-tap the Apple Watch’s side button to do it instantly.
Well, now you can do exactly this — if you’re running macOS Catalina.
Apple’s latest patches for iTunes and iCloud for Windows are out to block potential ransomware attacks.
The software previously contained a vulnerability that allowed malware to piggyback on Apple’s digital signatures and go undetected by antivirus software.
And don’t assume you’re safe if you’ve already uninstalled Apple’s apps.
Scrolling through your Instagram feed in the middle of the night just got a lot easier on the eyes.
Instagram introduced support for iOS 13’s Dark Mode this week along with some new security tools that help people identify phishing attempts from emails that appear to be from Instagram.
Law enforcement agents in New York City have been cracking into locked iPhones since January 2018, according to a new report.
Agencies are using a tool called Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) that’s developed by Israeli firm Cellebrite. It is said to have cost at least $200,000 and allows a full file system extraction.