You can use countless services and apps on your iPhone, each with their own accounts. With these tips you can make your online accounts safer.
Making online accounts more secure
We deal with all kinds of accounts on our iPhone. You have accounts for your social media, email, dating app, music services, banking, entertainment and so on. You don’t want others to be able to get into these accounts. That’s why we give you some quick tips for extra secure accounts.
1. What is a strong password?
The Dutch still too often choose an insecure password for their online accounts. Think of a name and a number. This is very easy to crack. Aren’t you using a service to come up with strong passwords? Then the most important rule is: longer is safer.
Because long passwords are more difficult to remember, it is smart to use a sentence, for example. It is very nice if this sentence consists of random words, to which you make up a mnemonic in your head. Read our handy tip about this: come up with a strong password.
In addition, it is very important not to use the same password with different accounts. It sometimes happens that passwords leak, and then it is very easy for malicious parties to access your other accounts with the same password. In iOS 12 there is also a handy function to automatically create strong passwords.
2. Use a password manager
Rather than coming up with a password for each service and remembering them all, it makes sense to use a password manager. Such a password manager will come up with strong passwords for you and store them.
You then only have to remember one password: that of the password manager. So you can still use the above tip for that. This password can often also be replaced by Face ID or Touch ID on your smartphone.
Check out our tip where we list the best password managers for iOS.
3. Let iOS 12 enter your passwords
You can still make it easy for yourself. Since iOS 12, the operating system supports Autofill. This means that iOS with Autofill will already fill in the passwords for you, without you having to do anything. Autofill works with several good password managers, such as:
So the passwords are just in your favorite password manager, which you connect to iOS and the passwords are automatically retrieved.
This setting can be found in iOS 12 under: “Settings”> “Passwords and accounts”
4. Set up two-step verification (2FA)
Then your passwords are safe, but that is only the first step. Even the most secure passwords are vulnerable if, for example, a database is leaked or if someone gets your password in another way. That is why it is essential to protect your various online accounts with a second layer.
That is two-step verification, also abbreviated by 2FA. For example, you will receive a text message with a code that you enter after entering your password. It is easier and also safer to arrange two-step verification via a separate app, such as Google Authenticator or LastPass Authenticator. Don’t forget to enable two-step verification with your password manager first, and then for each individual account.
We have also listed which apps you can best use for this second layer of security. These are the best apps for two-step verification.
We wrote this earlier about security
- Apple gives hackers special iPhones to check iOS security (23-12-2020)
- Tip: recognize and prevent WhatsApp fraud in 6 steps (12-10-2020)
- Secure your Twitter account with two-factor authentication: that’s how it works (7/26/2020)
- Tip: Make your Mac’s hard drive (Book) more secure with FileVault (7/19/2020)
- Make your Apple device more secure with two-factor authentication – that’s how it works (6/27/2020)