One of the reasons I have an iPhone rather than an Android device is that I feel it’s more secure. Everyone—except maybe the bad guys—likes more security, of course, but not everyone is willing to pay the price to get it. In the case of the iPhone, that price is mostly being willing to live in Apple’s walled garden. Principally that means you have to get your apps from the App Store rather than having a choice of sources as Android users do.
Apple can not, of course, filter out all the bad actors but they mostly do. That, for me, makes the trade off worthwhile. Others have a different calculus.
Still, the iPhone isn’t safe out of the box. There are some steps you should take to help keep your data and yourself safe. From John Cook’s excellent Data Privacy twitter feed, I found a pointer to this:
iPhone user? @jmorse_ has 7 privacy-focused steps to protect personal data on your phone, including:
• Revoke location, mic, & camera access from apps that don’t need it
• Enable “Limit ad tracking”
• Disable lock screen message previewshttps://t.co/vqtZykpkNV— DuckDuckGo (@DuckDuckGo) June 20, 2019
If you follow the link, you’ll find an article that recommends 7 specific settings you can make to your iPhone to help keep the snoopers away. They’re easy and you probably already have many of them set but if you’re an iPhone user, it’s definitely worthwhile taking a look at the article and checking your own settings.