A while ago we wrote about how can you password protect your iPhone apps with Lockdown. But as you might know, the iPhone has it’s own password protection system. You can set a 4 digit password, and everytime you want to wake the iPhone, on your lockscreen you need to insert the 4 digit password first.
Before we go into details with the alpha numeric passwords, i would like make sure you understand some things and you’ll take action on preventing them from happening.
Cell phones today, especially the iPhone is not just a normal cellphone as we had back in the late 90’s or even 3-4 years ago. You basically have a small PC with phone ability in your pocket now. Since that is the case, they are hackable, and a hot target. Hackers or hustlers are not only after your sensitive data. Most of the time are after your money. And it’s not that difficult to get your money. What can you do to prevent this from happening:
If you are in a subway, train station, busy street , anywhere with a lot of people around you, do not use your bluetooth. If you use your blootooth you are an easy target. Hackers can remotely get into your phone and place a call to a number that costs $x.x/min. Guess who gets that money?
If you are in a pub/cafe don’t leave your phone on the table , especially if there are a lot of things on that table. All they need is a map for example, and by playing the role of a lost tourist they are asking you for info and you wont even know when they snatch your phone. They just need to lean for a second over the table with the map.
Also don’t leave your phone in your jacket/purse and place it on the back of your chair. Hackers and hustlers are familiarized with most popular cell phones, and they know the menu by heart. All they need to do is mess with a couple of buttons, and than place the phone back, without you even noticing. Pheww at least they didnt snatch my phone, they just played with the buttons. Wrong, now everytime you call somebody, you also place a call to a number that cost $x.x/min and you dont even know until you get a huge bill .
Since we’re talking about iDevices, you know that all of them (anywhere in the world) have the same password: alpine. You might want to change that. Learn how to do it here.
Use Lockdown ( link above ) and password protect your most valuable apps ( messages, phone, mail, pictures and any other banking or w/e sensitive data you might have ). Never let anybody into those apps.Not even your best friends. A true friend stabs you in the front.Also use the built in iPhone password protection.
But here is where it gets interesting. The iPhone lets you set only a 4 digit password. Which should be enough, so that the hackers and hustlers wont get in your phone, because they dont have time to break the password, and they dont want to get caught. But if this is not your first time using a password, you know that a strong password is the one where you have upper and lower case letters and also numbers and symbols. Well, you can have that too on your iPhone thanks to PwnCenter, you can now set an alpha numeric password on your iPhone.
How to do it:
First load Safari on your iPhone/iTouch and go to this address: tinyurl.com/config4 . You will get a new profile to install. Tap on install, and tap again on install now.
On the next screen you will have to enter the password that you want, and than re-enter it.Remember this could be as long as you want and not just numbers.
You are done. Now everytime you want to wake your iPhone/iTouch , on the lockscreen you will be asked for the password, and it will be the new alpha numeric password.
If you want to remove the profile, all you need to do is go to Settings>General>Profiles and remove the profile.Then go to Settings and change the pass code back to a normal 4 digit code.