Unless you are a celebrity it is likely no one will bother trying to get your “special” photos from your iCloud account but just how safe are your photos that ARE stored in the cloud? With all of the news this week about the posting of nude photos of some celebrities the debate is on. So, here are some suggestions for best practices:
- Make your passwords STRONG. Using your birthday, your dog’s name or anything you can remember quickly is simply not enough in this modern era. Make your Apple ID password impossible to hack. The software that is used to hack passwords usually will keep trying the 500 most common passwords until it finds one that works. Now, Morgan in our IT department uses Twitter size passwords but you do not have to go that far. Mix up a combination of UPPER case letters with lower case letters and toss in some numbers and a symbol or two. Use Keychain Access to remember them.
- Turn off iCloud sharing and Photo Stream if you want the pictures to just remain on your iPhone.
- Manage your photos in iPhoto or directly on your iPhone. Frequently connect your iPhone to your computer and delete photos from the iPhone or edit and remove unwanted pictures from your camera roll and iCloud account. Want to just remove a few risque shots here and there? It is simple —when you are in Photo Stream hit edit, tap the offending photos, and zap them. They will be gone from iCloud and all your devices EXCEPT the one that you used to take the photo. If you want to delete that, too, you need to go to Camera Roll on that device and delete it there, too.
- In iPhoto go to “My Photo Stream” and edit what is appearing there…you might be surprised at what you are sharing!
- Turn on two-step verification: While this added step will not add protection to your iCloud photos it will protect your Apple ID with another layer of protection. To set this up you visit My Apple ID, click on Manage your Apple ID>Password and Security>Two-Step Verification and get started. This two-step process will require you to verify your identity before you can make changes to your account or make an iTunes or App Store purchase from a new device. When two-step verification is active you will enter your AppleID password as normal but Apple will then send a verification code to one of your devices (i.e. iPhone, iPad, Mac) and you enter that code to complete the sign-in. They will also send you a Recovery Key for safekeeping in case you forget your password or lose your device.
Most importantly, keep in mind that if you are using iCloud and Photo Stream, whatever photos you take will be on all your devices and in the cloud so think about that as you take that selfie!