“I have been called a nun with a switchblade where my privacy is concerned. I think there’s a point where one says, that’s for family, that’s for me.” Julie Andrews.
So how did our friends Alice and Bob manage their privacy permissions?
If you remember, Alice has a Windows 11 PC to support her personal IT consulting business and a MacBook Pro for personal use. She carries an iPhone for both personal and business calls. Alice enabled strong passcodes for all three of her devices. She configured her PC and MacBook to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity, and her iPhone after five minutes. They all require a passcode immediately after waking up from sleep. She limited access to screen widgets when the phone was locked to the first several items and enabled “Erase Data” to erase all data on the iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts.
She found local accounts to be too restrictive, so she established a Microsoft account for her PC and an Apple account for her MacBook and iPhone. She regularly reviewed the apps on all her devices and removed those she was no longer using.
To manage privacy permissions on her PC, she downloaded O&O Shutup10++ and enabled all recommended settings and many “Limited” settings. She took care to make sure that automatic updates for the operating system and applications were not disabled, and that she did not disable app access to the camera, microphone, documents, images, videos, and the file system. Those restrictions broke applications that she relied upon. Since she intended to enable “Find my device,” she also did not disable location services. She took care to disable Cortana.
On her MacBook and iPhone, she tightly restricted app access to “Location Services”, “Contacts,” “Photos,” “Microphone,” and the “Camera.” She turned off all options under “Analytics & Improvements,” and “Apple Advertising.” She also disabled Siri.
Bob has a Windows 11 PC and an Android phone. Like Alice, he downloaded O&O Shutup10++ and enabled all recommended settings and many “Limited” settings. He followed the general strategy as Alice. He only used his Android phone for phone calls. He still took the time to restrict app access to “Location Services”, “Contacts,” “Photos,” “Microphone,” and the “Camera,” and to opt out of Google ad personalization. He completely disabled Voice Access. And even he was not crazy enough to jailbreak his phone.
Now that you’ve reviewed Alice’s and Bob’s privacy permissions strategy, it’s time for you to choose your own if you have not already done so. Take one step at a time.
Next, we’ll discuss tracking a lost or stolen device.
Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.