On any device, the only thing you need to turn off is notifications from all apps. Leave only calls. Because all the noise created by push notifications simply wastes a person's attention and does not carry any useful information. And the really important things are discussed in the course of a live dialogue.
The setting I'd recommend disabling is Background App Refresh. It allows apps to constantly update and fetch new data even when they aren't in use. While it sounds convenient, it eats up battery life, slows down performance, and increases data usage. Most users never notice the trade-offs, but disabling it frees up processing power and makes the iPhone feel faster day to day. Apps still refresh as soon as they're opened, so there's little to no downside, but the improvement in battery and responsiveness is immediate. __ Name: Eugene Leow Zhao Wei Position: Director Site: https://www.marketingagency.sg/ Headshot: https://imgur.com/a/JM5Iisz Email: eugene@marketingagency.sg Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugene-leow/
My partner recently showed me this one. If you don't want Apple to use your data to train its AI, you need to disable the setting for each app. They've made it tedious so people don't do it, but I've done it. You need to go to each app setting and disable: Improve Siri & Dictation. Then Apple can't use your data to improve their AI, and you get to keep your privacy 100%.
Significant Location History has to be turned off. Majority of the users do not even know that their iphone quietly amasses a history of their entire physical whereabouts with time and frequency of visit. The feature drives customized notifications and better maps directions but the price of the feature in the context of privacy is ludicrous. Apple keeps this information in your machine and constantly synchronizes it in iCloud (when it is active). Any person who has access to the physical states of your phone or the passwords to your iCloud would see very clearly where you travel, how frequently you visit particular addresses and even how long you spend there. It can be disable within less than a half an hour. The next step involves launches the Settings, tap Privacy and Security, then tap Location Services, scroll to System Services at the bottom and ensure that Significant Locations is off. You can still use your phone to navigate, access and use apps to retrieve location as long as you allow but location tracking is disabled. My team performs regular audits of client devices and locates history of millions of years with hundreds of the logged addresses such as home address, work address and sensitive visits (hausaces eventually) such as hospital or law firm visits. The risk is even more severe in case one loses his or her phone or becomes a victim of an account compromise. The power of convenience is not enough not to make one keep a permanent track of his whereabouts.
Stop the tracking of frequently visited places. The iPhone you have should not secretly record in detail every place that you have visited - this record, unfortunately, can be stored in backups, be accessed by apps without your knowledge, or be available if your account has been hacked. By turning the feature off, your phone is prevented from collecting information about the places that you visit regularly, which is the removal of a significant privacy risk that requires no user interaction. It is the kind of privacy victory that people miss because it is not visible - but after deactivation, you will rest better.
A setting I recommend turning off is **Significant Locations** (sometimes called "Frequent Locations"). By default iOS quietly logs the places you visit most often to improve suggestions in Maps and Photos. It's buried under **Settings - Privacy & Security - Location Services - System Services**. For most users the convenience of seeing a suggested drive time to a place you often go isn't worth having a detailed location history stored on the phone. Disabling it reduces constant GPS polling and keeps sensitive travel data from being collected, which is better for both battery life and privacy.
Under Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services, I suggest that everyone turn off the "Significant Locations" setting on their iPhone. The iPhone keeps track of and stores the places you go most often without you knowing. Why? Even though Apple encrypts this data, it still makes a very detailed log of your daily activities, such as where you live, work, and travel. If your phone is hacked or shared by accident, this information could be made public. Most people don't need this feature and turning it off gets rid of a sensitive dataset without affecting core functionality.
Turn off Siri recommendations and application projections systemwide. Apple is gathering usage patterns to resurface apps and actions before the user observes them but this feature consumes battery and sends behavioral information to cloud servers without clear user value. My group registered a 14 percent battery increase upon disabling every layer of Siri suggestion due to the system always tracking when an app is started and the location altered. The setting conceals itself in a number of different menus where the user loses sight of it when the privacy customary audits are in place. Go under Settings and turn off Siri and Search and of suggestions in search, suggestions in look up and suggestions in lock screen. If an app is installed, repeat this step with each one since Apple defaults each one of those apps to transmit data to Siri. The per-app toggles must be manually altered and in this way, most users feed usage pattern back to Apple by default. Battery waste is not the only issue related to privacy concerns. Siri suggestions are synchronized on iCloud so when turned off on one device they will continue to record data when other Apple devices are on. According to my practice, 89 percent of users do not audit such settings after initial device set up. Disabling suggestions everywhere will also make Apple stop creating behavior graphs, which may direct ads placement and recommendations made in apps.
I recommend disabling the "Significant Locations" feature in Privacy > Location Services > System Services to everyone I advise. The feature records your locations and visit frequencies without your awareness as it tracked my frequent visits to that Lisbon bistro. The main issue stems from performance problems rather than privacy concerns. The accumulation of this data leads to performance issues and battery drain because your iPhone needs to continuously log and sync your location information. You can disable this feature because it serves no purpose other than creating a digital tracking log which you should disable for better performance.