Your iPhone passcode is the only thing standing between you and your personal information. Here’s how to make it better and safer.
When you enable a passcode on your iPhone, you essentially lock your device so that only you can access the information stored on it. By default, you can set a four-digit numeric password, which is mostly quite secure, but it’s not the most secure option.
All it takes is a little luck for someone to guess your iPhone passcode, especially if you have an easy passcode setup. Also, any brute force attack, if it gets to the point, can guess your password in a matter of minutes.
Instead of using just a four-digit passcode, you can further secure your iPhone passcode by entering more than four digits and even adding letters.
We’ll show you how to enable this feature on your iPhone in iOS 9 and provide some tips on how to create a more secure password in the first place.
Enabling Your iPhone’s Complex Password Feature
If you want to be able to enter a password that is more secure than a four-digit numeric selection, follow these simple steps to do so:
From there, you will now be able to change your password and it will automatically default to a six-digit password, but you can tap on it for any other password types you may have. You can revert to a four-digit password or create a custom-length password with numbers and/or letters.
You will enter your new password twice and after the second time your new password will be applied and finalized immediately.
Now, when you go to enter your password, you will enter your new complex password which is much harder for others to guess. Also, any brute force attack takes significantly longer. Of course, due to the iOS wait time between attempts after three false attempts, brute force attacks are unlikely, but still, consider this:
Using an alphanumeric password greatly increases the possible combinations. Since there are 204 characters available on the iPhone keyboard, even a simple four-digit alphanumeric passcode will result in over 1.7 billion possible combinations.
Creating a Better Password
Again, the reason a passcode is enabled on your iPhone is because unauthorized users cannot access the passcode. Enabling and setting a password is the first step, but you also need to make the password secure and hard to guess.
The new six-digit password option makes password cracking even more difficult.
You have a simple four-digit password set, you want to at least make sure it’s hard to guess, which means it should be this or not, or something more random like. Better yet, tie your password to something memorable to you, like a birthday, your lucky numbers, or a pattern that you can easily remember.
If you have a complex password enabled, treat it as a regular password for your online accounts. I hope your email password is a bit complex and not something simple, instead use . Use the same complexity with your complex passcode on your iPhone.
Is a Complex Password Required?
While creating a complex password on your iPhone can improve its security, is it really necessary to do so?
It’s probably not entirely necessary, but now that Touch ID is becoming more common, there’s no reason not to create a complex passcode, especially if you use Touch ID most of the time. This added complexity shouldn’t even matter.
Also, if you can increase the difficulty of having someone else guess your password, that’s probably in your favor. If anything, upgrade it to a simple six digit numeric password as this will be much more secure than a four digit password.
