Lock out hackers by installing new security patches on your iPhone, Mac and iPad. Photo: Chepe Nicoli/Unsplash
Apple released iOS 17.1.2 and macOS Sonoma 14.1.2 on Thursday. These are security patches for bugs that have been actively exploited by hackers. As such, they come strongly recommended.
iPadOS 17.1.2 was also released to take care of the same issues.
Save $85 on a year's subscription to Norton 360 and LifeLock. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
The internet isn’t as wild as it once was, but at the same time, the threats have become more focused and more dangerous. This one-year subscription to Norton 360 and LifeLock protects your privacy on two devices.
Is this what the prolific Mr. Hammer was singing about? No. Image: Jonathan Cutrer/Flickr/D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Taking a moment to add an extra passcode to your iCloud account might save your skin if your iPhone is ever stolen by a shady character who’s eyeing you like a hawk. By default, your iPhone passcode is all someone needs to lock you out of your devices and wreak financial havoc on your life. And it’s not that difficult to capture your passcode if you tap into your phone in a public place.
In fact, a recent spate of coordinated scams have played out like this: A spy watches for anyone entering their iPhone passcode in a bar or other public place. Then, the device is yoinked out of the victim’s hands. And before they can do anything, they find themselves locked out of their own iCloud account. Soon, the criminals who stole the iPhone proceed to make unauthorized purchases, empty bank accounts and generally wreak havoc on the victim’s finances and personal life.
Luckily, setting up a second passcode just for iCloud can protect you from this type of criminal operation. I’ll show you how to keep these thieves at bay — and offer some additional advice for keeping your account secure.
It’s World Backup Day, a good opportunity to take a close look at the backups your iPhone makes to iCloud. Are you running out of iCloud storage space? Living with a slow internet connection? Worried about privacy? In any of these cases, you might want to exclude some apps from your iCloud backups. Doing so will save iCloud storage space and conserve bandwidth.
The good news is that it’s easy to exclude pretty much anything you like from your iCloud backups in iOS. Here’s how.
Apple’s privacy-focused features in Mail are really handy at keeping spam at bay, but you might still need to find that secret email address or delete an account after a while. Image: Ascánder/Wikimedia Commons/D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The Sign in with Apple feature, which lets you log into third-party accounts using your Apple ID while keeping your personal info private, is so easy to use that I utilize it everywhere. But that also means my disguised logins pile up, accumulating in the digital junk drawer that is iCloud Settings.
I’ll show you where you can find, manage or delete these accounts. Perhaps you’re jumping ship from iPhone to Android, and you want to make sure you still have another way of signing into your Chipotle account.
The Hide My Email service is similar. It creates a temporary email address that forwards to your real one — handy if you’re signing up for a shady website, or if you need a public contact email. I’ll show you where you can create new ones and delete the old ones.
In the future, expect Rapid Security Responses from Apple for iOS, macOS and iPadOS. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
A second round of ‘Rapid Security Response’ bug patches for the iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 betas were seeded to developers and other beta testers on Monday. At this point, Apple is testing the system for distributing these by releasing them for beta versions of the operating systems.
Once testing is over, these will allow Apple to fix security problems without releasing a full OS update.
PayPal introduces passkeys as an alternative to passwords. Photo: PayPal
PayPal just adopted passkeys as an easy and secure log in method for user accounts. Users with an iPhone, iPad or Mac will be the first able to take advantage of the passwordless biometric security system because Apple built support for it into its devices.
Passkeys are an improvement over passwords, as they can’t be phished, stolen or guessed.
Be careful you're not revealing more to TikTok than you mean to. Photo: TikTok
The web browser built into the TikTok iPhone app can monitor your keystrokes. A developer who researched the software called it “the equivalent of installing a keylogger,” and warns that it can potentially grab passwords and credit card info.
macOS Big Sur or macOS Catalina users really need Safari 15.6.1. Photo: Apple
A recent macOS Monterey update deals with a nasty security problem in WebKit. But Apple is aware many users don’t upgrade to the latest operating system versions, so it also released Safari 15.6.1. The web browser update allows anyone using older macOS versions to avoid the vulnerability.
Apple users may be freed from CAPTCHA. Image: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Apple developed Automatic Verification to let iPhone, Mac and iPad users bypass those irritating CAPTCHA image tests that websites use to confirm that someone is a human and not a bot.