Somewhere in the past few months I heard Merlin Mann talk about setting his iPhone to lock — not just “Slide to Unlock” but actually have to enter a 4 digit PIN to open it up.
Now, I’m a fairly cautious person — well, let me clarify: by “I’m a fairly cautious person” I mean “Someone once told me that if he was going on a cross-country trip, he would want me to plan it, because I would make a contingency plan for every pothole along the way.”
(That person was my therapist. I’m not making this up.)
I have a distinct memory of thinking “Oh Merlin, you crazy paranoid man. Realistically, what are the chances that I’ll lose my iPhone? I mean, if they sell 10 million of them, how many people will lose them? And I’m going to plan to be one of them? Plus, how annoying would it be to have to enter that PIN every time I want to use my iPhone?”
Merlin added that every bit of personal contact info you have is probably on that phone. It’s a privacy issue not only for you, but for everyone in your address book.
“Oh Merlin, you crazy hippie, no one cares about my contact information. They’d probably just wipe all my information off the phone, or use it to call their friends in Russia.”
But despite all my protestations, I really am a cautious person, so I started locking my iPhone.
It is every bit as annoying as I’d thought it would be.
I may have even thought about disabling the PIN lock.
Then, last week, I left my iPhone behind at the courthouse when I went in to vote early.
My first thought was “Whew, at least it’s locked.”
So there it is.
A locked iPhone is not only more secure for your own data, but it’s also less useful for a casual thief who happens to find it after you left it somewhere. Can the lock be by-passed? Perhaps if someone had the technical know-how.
But most people who stumble across an unlocked phone will either poke around it, maybe use it, or maybe turn it in to lost-and-found.
A locked phone is almost certainly going to just get turned in with a “Hey, I found this sitting over there”.
So thanks, Merlin, for being slightly more paranoid than I was about this.
Now, does anyone know how to make an iPhone wallpaper that has “If Found Please Contact” information on it?