How to Protect Your Family Online

How Apple can and will keep your family safe.

- Benjamin Kerry & Gavin Lenaghan

PRIVACY MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER AFTER SAN BERNARDINO

The recent furore involving the FBI and Apple with the former asking the latter to build what the Cupertino firm’s CEO Tim Cook described as a “backdoor” to an iPhone in order to reach the information of one of the perpetrators behind the San Bernardino terrorist atrocities - has sparked a whole new national debate around security. Post-Snowden, it seems that few of us are quite as safe from our own government as we once thought we were - so as an iDevice owner, what can you do to better protect you and your family right now?

A TRULY FAMILY-FRIENDLY TECH GIANT

The good news is that Apple has never exactly been a slouch in this department, and it all starts with its basic provisions for helping you keep track of where your family members are and what they are doing, as well as - if desired keeping you all together.

These include the Find My Friends app, which is available on iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices running iOS 8 or later indeed, it is automatically installed on iGadgets running iOS 9. As the name suggests, it’s an app for locating your friends with your iDevice, and it couldn’t be easier to add friends and family members - as many as 50, in fact.

You’ll also find the Reminders feature in iCloud handy for keeping tabs on family members, the ability to share reminder lists with other iCloud users enabling you to keep relatives abreast of, for example, that allimportant dentist’s appointment, get-together at the cousin’s house or when one of you will be finishing work for the day.