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How Jailbreaking Makes Your iPhone More Secure & Private

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In the mainstream, jailbreaking is seen as this dark and scary alleyway that iPhone users mustn’t go down, but it actually makes your iPhone more secure and private — two things that iPhone owners should be concerned about.

In the recent past, we’ve heard a lot about malware making its way onto jailbroken iPhones, and while that’s true to its fullest extent, it’s not as bad as the media make it out to be.

Yes, jailbreaking your iPhone is risky, as it can introduce instability to iOS when some jailbreaks tweaks don’t work well with your device. You can experience sudden reboots, freezing, and other annoying problems. However, those who jailbreak in the first place already know how to troubleshoot these issues and can fix them rather easily.

No, jailbreaking isn’t the devil, and it can actually make your iPhone even more secure and private than what stock iOS could ever accomplish. There are a handful of jailbreak tweaks available that make it more difficult for thieves to access your iPhone, as well as tweaks that make it easier to catch those thieves who do end up stealing your device.

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Plus, there are great tweaks that make your iPhone more private, like masking your iPhone’s advertising identifier and instead giving apps a fake one. And there are even tweaks that can force the GPS to automatically turn off so that apps can’t use your location when you’re not actively using the app.

In any case, here’s how jailbreaking your iPhone actually makes it more secure and private.

To Catch a Thief

One of the biggest benefits of jailbreaking is that you can make your iPhone practically thief-proof. While there’s nothing you can do to prevent your iPhone from being stolen (other than always keeping a close eye on it), there are a lot of jailbreak tweaks available that can make it more difficult for a thief to cover up his steps.

One of the most popular jailbreak tweaks for this is  called iCaughtU, and it kind of takes Apple’s Find My iPhone to a whole new level.

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You can customize the tweak so that whenever a wrong passcode is entered, your iPhone will automatically take a selfie of the perpetrator and email it to you. It can also include the location and time that the selfie was taken.

Of course, this tweak is worthless if the thief knows that they can just force power down the device by holding down the power button and home button at the same time, which is where other tweaks come into play.

Activator is one of the most popular jailbreak tweaks available, as it can do all sorts of stuff, like provide shortcuts for certain actions and even automate certain tasks that you set up. From a security standpoint, though, you can use Activator to disable a long-press of the power button while on the lock screen, effectively disabling any way to power down your iPhone while it’s on the lock screen.

This will allow you to track the location of your iPhone and the thief can’t do anything about it.

Put On Your Tin Foil Hats

Privacy is one of those things that most people will say they care about, but they really don’t. However, if you truly do care about your privacy, jailbreaking your iPhone is a good way to start.

A jailbreak tweak called Protect My Privacy is the ultimate tweak for those who truly care about privacy. As mentioned previously, it can mask your iPhone’s advertising identifier and instead provide any apps with a fake one. It can also provide fake information if an app is requesting other info, like your contacts.

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Plus, the tweak can provide an app with a fake location so that it doesn’t know your real location.

Furthermore, some iPhone apps use your location even when the app isn’t being actively used. It’s nice to have this feature in some cases, like a weather app or a maps app, but sometimes you only want apps to use your location only when you’re actively using the app, and some apps don’t have that option in settings.

Enter Locus, which is a jailbreak tweak that automatically flips off the GPS completely when you’re not actively using a certain app. You can customize which apps Locus enforces and which apps are free to roam.

Give these jailbreak tweaks a try if you have a jailbroken iPhone, as they will seriously boost the security and privacy of your device.

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