Nowadays, it’s very important to protect your phone. With apps like Apple Pay, Venmo, and Apple wallet, all of which make your life a thousand times easier, your phone has never been more valuable and your data has never been more at risk.
Despite the fact that most smartphones have very reliable and thorough security measures, there are always ways of hacking a device or having someone guess your password (looking at you, people whose pin is ‘1234’). Business Insider wrote an article about one of Apple’s most useful and feared features, which deletes all of your data after 10 failed attempts.
Daring Fireball explained that this feature, although highly secure, is disregarded by a lot of iPhone users out of fear. What if a child grabs the phone or a friend plays a prank? The post explains that even if the feature sounds scary it’s much more complex than it appears to be.
After the 5th failed attempt, iOS requires a 1-minute timeout before you can try again. During this timeout the only thing you can do is place an emergency call to 911. After the 6th attempt, you get a 5-minute timeout. After the 7th, 15 minutes. These timeouts escalate such that it would take over 3 hours to enter 10 incorrect passcodes.”
You can activate the feature by opening your Settings, scrolling down to Touch ID & Passcode, and then scrolling down to the bottom until you flip on the Erase Data switch. Activate it and you’ll have one less thing to stress over. Also, keep a back up of your important data.
