What To Do Before Handing Your iPhone to a Cashier, Ticket-Taker or Police (Revisited)

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take another look at what to do before you hand your iPhone over to a cashier, ticket taker, or the police.

MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.

Recently I did a video on using the Guided Access feature of your iPhone which can lock the iPhone to a screen so if you have to hand your iPhone to somebody it is much more secure. But being only one minute short I couldn't go into too much detail about this feature and why it is a good idea to use it. So there were a lot of questions and comments. So let's take another look at it and go deeper into the issues involved handing your iPhone to somebody. 

Let's look at how to setup Guided Access. The idea is you setup certain things before hand. So it is ready to go when you need it. To begin go to the Settings App. In Settings you want to go to Accessibility and then scroll down to find Guided Access. Then you simply want to turn this On. Now this is just the start of settings things up. After you've got it turned on here in Settings then you need to go to the App where you want to use Guided Access. So as an example I'm going to use Notes. Just say you've got a reservation number for something in a note and you may need to hand it over to somebody instead of reading the reservation number out loud. So you want to restrict the person to this screen. Make sure that they can't exit this screen, this app, and they can't do anything with your iPhone while they are holding it. 

So to activate Guided Access you're going to triple press the side button. Now you'll see a list of all of your Accessibility features that you have enabled for triple pressing the side button. Guided Access should now be one of them since you turned it On. So you've activated Guided Access and it goes into this setup mode. Only the first time you use it will it go into this mode so the next steps only need to be done when you set things up, not when you're actually using it out in the real world. Now you want to go to Options and you want to turn everything off. If you're using Guided Access to say hand your phone to a child and have them look through some photos or play a game then some of these things you'll want to have on. Like, for instance, Touch. But what I'm dealing with here is just if you want to completely restrict somebody from doing anything except viewing the contents of the screen. 

So once you've got the Options set then you tap Start and it is going to ask you to create a Passcode. Now this should be different than your regular iPhone passcode. Create another one and make sure you remember it. Forgetting it will make it much harder to get out of Guided Access. So now I'm just going to enter one in and then you confirm and now you're in Guided Access mode. So nothing works on the screen! You can't tap on any buttons. You can't do anything. You can't exit the app. It's basically locked to this screen. To exit you need to triple press the side button again and now reenter that code you created. Now you exit Guided Access and you go back to the Option screen. You can change the options here, resume Guided Access, or simply End. Now your iPhone is back in regular mode. 

After you did all of that at home when you're out in the world and you want to use this all you need to do is triple press and then Guided Access will come up. Then you tap it and it will enter Guided Access mode. That's it. None of the prompting for options. None of the prompting for your passcode. It has all already been set. When you exit with a triple press on the side now you have to enter the passcode and now you enter back into the Option Screen. So if you want to change your options here you can. 

Now note this is a per App basis. So if you go into another app and you use Guided Access then it will ask for setup again. You can have a different set of options for this app but the passcode remains the same. You don't have to enter that again. The idea here is if you're using this, maybe to hand your iPhone to a child that you can allow them to scroll through your photos, but maybe in another app you don't let them scroll at all. 

Alright. So let me address some of the questions and comments that came up with the original video. A lot of people commented that there are a ton of steps to set this up. If you're in a situation where you need it then it is going to take too long to get it going. Well, of course, the solution for this is you need to set it up in advance. So if you know you have a reservation number or a ticket to an event or something like that think ahead and set this up so that all you need to do is triple press the side button and enter Guided Access mode. In a lot of situations though you do have a little bit of time to set this up. Like, for instance, if you're standing in line and you realize you may need to hand your phone over to a ticket taker or if you get to a bar and you may need to hand your iPhone to somebody so they can check your digital driver's license you usually have a few minutes there where you can set this up before you actually get to the situation. But if you have a digital driver's license in an app or maybe an auto insurance card also you definitely want to set this up in advance in case you do get pulled over and need to show the identification and insurance you've got this already to go.

A ton of people missed a key feature of all of this and asked the question why not just lock your iPhone before you hand it to somebody. Well, the idea here is that you want to show somebody something. You can't show them something if your iPhone is locked. All they will see is your locked screen. So if you want to show them the ticket in that ticket app or your digital ID, or a reservation number in the Notes App they are not going to see that on the locked screen. So just locking your iPhone, of course that's great security, but it's not going to allow you to show somebody something. 

Other people say just never hand your iPhone to somebody. That's actually really good policy. But sometimes it's not realistic. In a perfect world we should never have to hand our iPhone to somebody. They should have a device where you can hold your iPhone and they can scan it or maybe they could look at it while you hold it. But the real world isn't perfect. Sometimes a ticket taker is behind glass and everybody else is handing them a paper ticket and you just slide your iPhone under the window so they can take it and then scan it. Sometimes you've got information or a coupon or something like that on your iPhone and the cashier needs to take it behind the counter and you can certainly decide not to do it. But in that case it may mean not actually attending the event or getting whatever it is you're supposed to get when you show the information on your iPhone. I guess it is perfectly okay to say well you would just refuse that. But if it's a concert you've been looking forward to for months and spent a lot of money it's going to be hard to turn around and walk away. With a feature like Guided Access you can allow somebody to hold your iPhone temporarily and know that your information is secure.

A lot of people saying you should never hand your iPhone to the police. This is good policy too but sometimes it's unavoidable. If, for instance, you're stopped for speeding and you need to provide proof of insurance you just don't have any other way to do that except for the insurance app on your phone. Then you may have to make a decision. Do you want to get an additional ticket for not having proof of insurance. In some states you would have to take off from work, go to a government building far away and show proof of insurance on another day, or just know how to use this feature so you can safely, temporarily hand your iPhone to a police officer so they can see that you have your insurance. The decision whether to do that is up to you. But at least if you know how to use Guided Access you've got options.

Now some people commented that if somebody steals your iPhone or if the police take it from you they can break into your iPhone anyway because they have equipment to do that. Now with what I'm mostly dealing with here on Guided Access is voluntarily and temporarily handing your iPhone to somebody. It's a whole different story if somebody actually takes your iPhone from you and keeps it. But the idea that somebody can break into your iPhone with some sort of device goes back years before Apple added some security features. Today, if you go into Settings and then you go into Face ID or Touch ID and Passcode you can turn on three key features. One of them is Require Attention for Touch ID. This makes it very hard for somebody to force you to unlock your phone with your face. Next, at the bottom here you want to make sure Accessories is turned Off. This means that Accessories cannot be used with your iPhone when the screen is locked. So that old device that would break into iPhones, well if your iPhone is locked and they plug the accessory into it the iPhone will reject it. Only having this turned On will allow that device to actually try different passcodes. Then finally, turn On Erase Data. This will erase your iPhone if there are ten failed login attempts making it virtually impossible to get into your iPhone with brute force guessing at passwords. 

Of course you want to make sure in your iCloud Settings have Find My turned On. That way if somebody steals your iPhone you do have a way to remotely wipe it through iCloud.

Other people are saying not to use digital driver's licenses or ID's or always carry a physical driver's license with you. There's actually a better level of privacy and security with a digital driver's license that you don't get with a real one. For instance a digital driver's license often lets you hide parts of the driver's license that aren't important in a situation. So, for instance, if you are carded at a bar you don't necessarily need to show the bartender your home address and your birthday. All they need to see is your driver's license with your photo and an indicator that you are over 21. Now if you don't feel that that level of privacy is important to you then fine, you don't need to use that. But a lot of people do like that level of privacy and not having everybody who looks at their driver's license know all that information about them. 

Another thing to consider if that if your iPhone is lost or stolen all the information on it is secure. But, of course there is no security on your driver's license. Somebody who has it has all that information. Plus you can't track a lost driver's license like you can track a lost iPhone. As for the availability of digital driver's licenses there are three states right now that work with Apple and the Wallet App to provide them. But there are other states that have their own app with driver licenses available inside that app. Then, of course, there are going to be more to come. It won't be long before all states provide some sort of digital ID that you can use. Of course many other countries do this as well. 

Another comment I saw all the time was that it seems really easy to exit Guided Access. Just triple press the side button. So if you hand your phone to somebody and they know how Guided Access works they can just get out of it. But that, of course, is not the case. If you saw what I did you have to triple press the side button AND enter in that passcode you created. The other person wouldn't know that passcode. So even though it is easy to exit without that information they can't. 

Of course there is a fail safe for actually getting back into your iPhone if you forgot that passcode you created. That's to simply shutdown your iPhone and restart it. Then you can enter your regular passcode and you're back in. But somebody else can't do that without your regular passcode.

So I help that all this additional information makes it easier to understand how to safely and effectively use Guided Access. Thanks for watching.