iPhone and iPad, set safe

This pass takes about ten minutes. It closes the door apps use to follow an iPhone or iPad around the internet, trims which apps may know where the device is, makes sure a real passcode guards it and Find My can bring it home, sets updates to install themselves, and turns on the browser’s own fraud warnings. Every step names the exact screens, starting from Settings. On screens that ask, the owner’s own face, fingerprint, and passcode are the only ones that belong there.

Tracking and ads Location Lock and lifeline Updates Safari Permissions The finished list

First, tracking and ads

Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking

Step 1. Stop apps from asking to track you

Open Settings, scroll to Privacy & Security, and open Tracking. The switch at the top, Allow Apps to Ask to Track, is how tracking starts on an iPhone or iPad. Every app that wants to follow you around the internet has to ask through this door first. Turn the switch OFF. The asking stops, and apps already on the list lose their permission with it.

Finished setting. Allow Apps to Ask to Track reads OFF.

Settings → Privacy & Security → Apple Advertising

Step 2. Turn off personalized ads from Apple

Back in Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom and open Apple Advertising. Turn Personalized Ads OFF. Apple may still show ads in its own stores. What changes is that the ads stop being built from the record of what this device does.

Finished setting. Personalized Ads reads OFF.

Second, walk the location list

Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services

Step 3. Give location only to the apps that earn it

Open Location Services and walk the list of apps one at a time. Maps and weather honestly need While Using. A shopping or social app almost never does, and for most of the list the right answer is Never. Treat Always as a word an app has to earn. Very few can. Anything you set to Never still opens and works. It simply stops knowing where it is.

Finished setting. Every app on the list holds the least location it can work with, and almost nothing holds Always.

Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → System Services

Step 4. Know about Significant Locations

At the bottom of the Location Services list, open System Services and find Significant Locations. The phone keeps a running list of the places its owner goes often, and uses it for traffic guesses and calendar suggestions. If that trade does not suit the household, turn it OFF here, and clear the history while you are on the screen.

Finished setting. Significant Locations is set the way the household chose, on purpose.

Third, the lock and the lifeline

Settings → Face ID & Passcode (or Touch ID & Passcode)

Step 5. A real passcode, asked for right away

Open Face ID & Passcode (on older models it reads Touch ID & Passcode). A passcode should be ON, six numbers or better, and it should be one a stranger could not guess from a birthday. Set Require Passcode to Immediately, so the phone locks the moment it is set down. Face ID or Touch ID should hold the owner’s face or fingerprint only. A phone that opens for anyone is a wallet with no clasp.

Finished setting. Passcode reads ON, Require Passcode reads Immediately, and the face or fingerprint on file is the owner’s alone.

Settings → your name at the top → Find My

Step 6. Turn on Find My before the day it is needed

Back at the top of Settings, tap your name, then Find My. Turn Find My iPhone (or iPad) ON. Turn Find My Network ON, so the device can be found even offline, and Send Last Location ON, so it reports where it was as the battery dies. This is the setting people wish they had made on the day the phone goes missing. Make it on a calm day instead.

Finished setting. Find My reads ON, with Find My Network and Send Last Location both ON.

Fourth, updates that handle themselves

Settings → General → Software Update → Automatic Updates

Step 7. Turn every automatic switch on

Open Software Update, then Automatic Updates, and turn every switch on the screen ON, the downloads, the installation, and the security responses and system files where they are offered. From then on the phone patches itself at night while it charges. Most phone break-ins in the news walk through holes Apple already fixed, on phones that had not taken the fix.

Finished setting. Every switch under Automatic Updates reads ON.

Fifth, the browser’s own guardrails

Settings → Safari (on newer systems, Settings → Apps → Safari)

Step 8. Fraud warnings on, cross site tracking off

Open the Safari settings. Turn Fraudulent Website Warning ON, so the browser speaks up before a fake bank page or a prize page gets its say. Turn Prevent Cross-Site Tracking ON, so one site cannot quietly follow the reader to the next. Both live in the Privacy and Security part of the Safari screen.

Finished setting. Fraudulent Website Warning reads ON and Prevent Cross-Site Tracking reads ON.

Sixth, walk the permissions

Settings → Privacy & Security

Step 9. Photos, Camera, Microphone, and Contacts, one door at a time

The Privacy & Security screen is a row of doors, one for each kind of thing an app might want. Open Photos, Camera, Microphone, and Contacts one at a time and trim what you find. A photo app needs photos. A game rarely needs the microphone, and almost nothing needs your whole contact list. For photos, Limited access, a chosen handful of pictures, is the right answer for most apps that ask.

Finished setting. Each of the four doors holds only the apps that honestly need what is behind it.

The whole pass, on one list

When the nine steps are done, the phone or tablet should read exactly this.

Allow Apps to Ask to Track reads OFF
Apple Personalized Ads reads OFF
Location reads trimmed app by app, with almost nothing on Always
Passcode reads ON, and required Immediately
Find My reads ON, with network and last location ON
Automatic Updates reads every switch ON
Safari Fraudulent Website Warning reads ON
Safari Prevent Cross-Site Tracking reads ON
Photos, Camera, Microphone, Contacts reads trimmed to the apps that need them

Published as a public service by Agentic Armor LLC. Menu names follow the maker’s current screens as of October 2026, and an update can rename a line without moving the setting far. The finished list above is the standard to check against. Nothing on this page asks for an account, a payment, or a sign up. More from the house stands with the books and the information releases.