You may not pay much attention to the Wifi settings on your phone. Unless you are in a new space and need to connect to that place’s Wifi, this may be a setting you rarely consider, even when you’re out and about. But there’s one Wifi setting on your iPhone that can pose a majority privacy risk without your knowledge. Before you visit another cafe, airport, or public space, quickly check your settings to make sure this one risky Wifi setting is turned off: Auto-Join.
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What Is Auto-Join?
Auto-join is a Wifi setting that, if enabled, prompts your phone to join any open Wi-Fi network that it can find. This means you may be in a public setting and your phone will latch onto the first open Wifi, even if it’s an unsecured public network that could be used by hackers to gain access into unsuspecting users’ data. If you join one of these networks, you put yourself at risk for nightmares like man-in-the-middle-attacks, in which someone is just waiting to intercept details like your credit card info, passwords, and personal messages (which can reveal a lot about you).
The last thing you want is to leave your phone in control over which networks it joins.
How To Turn Off Auto-Join
The good news is that it’s easy to disable Auto-join on your iPhone. Head over to Settings > Wi-Fi > Auto-Join Hotspots. You can also disable Auto-join for individual networks. To keep your phone better protected, only join password-protected networks and use a VPN anytime you plan on scrolling on public Wifi.
