MacMost Now 534: Basic iPad Security

There are three simple steps you can take to protect your iPad against being lost or stolen. Use the passcode feature to stop someone else from accessing your data. Set up Find My iPad with your MobileMe or free Apple ID. Put a message on your lock screen to help someone return your lost iPad to you.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary wit MacMost Now. On today's episode, let's look at basic IPad security. So with the IPad being an extremely mobile device, you should be worried about what happens if you lose it or if it gets stolen. So there are three simple steps you should take. First you should set a password on your IPad. Second you should enable find my IPad and third you should put something on your lock screen that will help somebody return a lost IPad to you. So to set a pass code for your IPad, you'll want to go into settings and than in there select general and look for pass code lock. You go to the pass code lock screen and turn it on by tapping the top button there and you'd be asked to set a pass code. So I'll just do something simple . You'll be asked to re enter it again. It is very important that you remember this pass code, as you'll need it to access your IPad in the future or even turn off pass code. So you can hit the second button for changing the pass code, you can set when you want it to be required, immediately or after a delay when starting to use your IPad. You should keep it at immediately. You can also turn off simple pass code, when you do that, you have the ability instead of using just numbers, you can use letters and enter in a better pass code that's a little harder to guess. You can also turn on erase data at the bottom there and what will happen than is that there's ten failed attempts to enter a pass code, everything on the IPad gets erased. So this is pretty extreme, but it's very useful if you got sensitive data on your IPad especially if you have everything backed up anyway on your computer and you can easily restore your IPad if you do find it later. And back under general settings, you want to look at the auto lock setting and set it for the lowest amount of time that makes sense for you. Don't set it to never because that means it won't lock and won't require the pass code. Now setting up find my IPad is pretty easy. If you already have a mobile me account, all you need to do is go into setting and than mail and than make sure you've turned on find my IPad for your mobile me account. Once you do that, you can log into me.com in any computer, once our in your account you can use find my IPad and you'll be able to locate it if its turned on. Now even if you don't have a mobile me account, you can still do this. you can still use your ITunes account, the same one you use to buy apps with, and such and you can basically active a mail account using that. And you won't have the mail functions, all you'll have is find my IPad. Just turn that on in the settings and you can still log into me.com and access find my IPad to locate your IPad on a map. So suppose your IPad is lost and somebody wants to return it to you. Well you want to make sure they can find out who you are and get in touch with you. One way to do that of course is put a sticker somewhere on the outside of the IPad, but you can also put a graphic on the lock screen of the IPad and anybody that gets it even if they don't have the password can see the lock scree and sees a phone number or email address on there. Now you can create a graphic to use as your wallpaper, just about anyway you want. If you use a graphics program on your computer, you can create one and sync it to your IPad. you can use any graphics creation program you want on the IPad to make one. You can even take just a screen shot of something in key note or another program and than use that screen shot as your lock screen. There's also some programs that are specifically made for this kind of thing. So I like to use this Stickys app here. You can choose a background, basically just creating a graphic image here and I can add a note to it. I've already put a note on the screen here. I can edit that note and do different things with it, move it around where I want. And I can preview what it looks like as a lock screen so i can see where it falls according to the time at the top and the bar at the bottom. and if I'm happy with it, I can export it to the camera roll. and now that I've done that, I can go into settings and go into wallpaper and change the wallpaper here. Go to the camera roll and select that image right there. Now i can say set it to the lock screen and now my lock screen will be that image. You can see that's what it looks what it looks like now somebody gets my IPad and trys to use it before they enter the pass code. So there are there basic steps that you could take to better secure your IPad of course these all work for the most recent version of the IPod Touch and IPhone as well. Hope you found this useful. Til than, this is Gary with MacMost Now.

Comments: 5 Responses to “MacMost Now 534: Basic iPad Security”

M.A.

13 years ago

I got lost around "find my ipad" without mobile me. the presenter is assuming that there are things I know how to do.. so there were some steps missing. something about setting up a mail account through iTunes, but there were no instructions about how to do that or whether I do that on my computer or on the ipad. is there another place where I can find this?
tks

Gary Rosenzweig

I anticipated that some people would want to know more about the steps needed to set up Find My iPad. So I put a link into the video right at 2:41 (look for it). The link is for http://apple.com/ipad/built-in-apps/find-my-ipad.html -- go there and you can find out how to set it up.

oh great. I thought that if you did Mobile Me you had to pay for a subscription and I'm not ready to do that.
thanks

rob

12 years ago

I set up 'find my ipad' but how do I set up the security code and load in an alarm sound for it?

Security code? Alarm? That's not part of Find My iPad.

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 534: Basic iPad Security

Comments: 5 Responses to “MacMost Now 534: Basic iPad Security”

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