Privacy

Many readers are probably already (and unfortunately) familiar with "neighbor scam" calls, a popular tactic of fraudsters in which they spoof a phone number that has the same area code and prefix (the first six digits) as your own number. People are much more likely to pick up a call from a number that could be in their area, thinking that it could be a friend or a local service. It can be quite maddening to receive multiple calls of this sort on a daily basis, so how can you block them?

Sign in with Apple offers a secure way to use your Apple ID across a variety of apps, websites, and services. When using Sign in with Apple, every account is automatically protected by two-factor authentication, and signing in via iPhone or iPad only requires Face ID or Touch ID. Apple even offers a way to hide your real email address when creating new accounts, with built-in forwarding to protect privacy.

AirDrop can be incredibly convenient for transferring images and other content between Apple devices. The feature can also be annoying. Receiving an unsolicited AirDrop request from a complete stranger can feel like an invasion of privacy. Especially if the pop-up content preview is NSFW.

Some iPhone owners may be surprised to hear that a random subset of Siri activations are sent to Apple for human analysis. The Guardian reported that Apple logs these Siri requests to improve Siri responses and dictation.

The Google app on the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch now wipes its own history clean. Users of Google's iOS app can set up automatic expiration of search activity and location history. When configured in settings, this private data will be deleted after a set period of time. Once the option is set, no further action is required to delete history information from Google.