7 Best Apple Watch Security Features to Protect Your Privacy in 2023

The Apple Watch can store a lot of information even with its little size. This information can be anything from your health records to your financial details. In today’s world, where everything is being stored digitally, your private information is more likely to get hacked. To protect your privacy, there are a lot of Apple Watch Security Features you must know about.

The Apple Watch security features protect your privacy from two kinds of threats. Firstly, it protects your information and data if somehow your iPhone gets stolen or misplaced. Secondly, it protects your information from the apps on your iPhone. Everyone knows that the apps on our devices keep collecting our data. So the Apple Watch helps to tackle this problem as well. 

You need to be ready to protect your information from both these kinds of threats. To help you with it, I will be sharing 7 Apple Watch security features to protect your privacy.

7 Basic Apple Watch Security Features

Apple Watch provides you with a ton of high-end security features. But before using these advanced features, one must check if they have applied the basic security features to protect their private information.

1. Set a Unique Passcode

A passcode is the most basic Apple Watch security feature any digital device would offer. Without it, you would be practically serving your information to the hacker on a platter. You can either set a four-digit passcode or you can set a complicated password with five to ten digits.

To set a four-digit passcode on Apple Watch, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Settings app on your Apple Watch.
2. Click on Passcode.
3. Click on Enable Passcode.
4. Enter your desired Passcode.

To set a complicated passcode on Apple Watch, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Click on Passcode.
3. Choose Turn Passcode On.
4. Turn off the Simple Passcode tab.
5. Set your desired passcode.

2. Enable Notification Privacy

Technology has made everything very convenient in today’s age. You can easily check notifications on the small screen of your Apple Watch just with a tap. However, having in-depth notifications pop on your screen can be a security issue.

There are times when a notification may carry private details like your bank account or something else. To protect your information, you can enable the notification privacy option.

To enable the notification privacy option, you need to follow these simple steps:

1. Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.
2. Click the ‘My Watch’ tab.
3. Tap on Notifications.
4. Turn on Notification Privacy.

Best Apple Watch Security Features to Protect Your Stolen Apple Watch

Having your information stored in a small device can be very useful. However, there are some downsides to it as well. What happens when your device gets stolen? You need to make sure to take precautions if something like this happens.

Let me tell you some apple watch security features that would help you to protect your privacy even if your watch gets stolen.

3. Find My Apple Watch

This Apple Watch security feature comes as a savior if you lose your Apple Watch. It helps you to locate your watch on a map. The best thing about this feature is that it does not require your watch to be connected to the internet to work.

To turn on the find my watch feature, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings on your Apple Watch.
2. Click on your name.
3. Scroll to devices.
4. Select the watch and tap Find My Watch.
5. Turn on Find My Watch and Find My Network.

Note: You can only find your watch (if stolen) only if you have turned on this feature. Since precaution is better than cure, you need to activate this feature as soon as you buy an Apple Watch.

4. Activation Lock

This feature is an additional benefit of enabling the Find My Watch feature. The Activation lock feature does not let you reset the Apple Watch without entering your Apple ID and password. 

So, as soon as you click on The Find My Watch option, your watch will be locked. This renders the stolen watch useless.

5. Automatic Data Erase

If someone tries to get into your stolen watch even before you can mark it as lost in the Find My option, this feature will protect your information. Apple Watch gives you an option to erase your data after 10 failed attempts.

Even if someone is determined to get into your watch, they will only have 10 chances. After ten failed attempts, all the data on your watch would be erased. To do this, you have to follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Click on Passcode.
3. Turn on the Erase Data option.

Important: If your Apple Watch gets stolen or lost, you can follow a step-by-step guide given by Apple.  

Best Apple Watch Security Features to Protect Your Data From Apps

It is not a surprise to know that all the applications on our devices store our data. Even though they take permission before it, we still don’t know how much of the information they are extracting.

To protect your data from being used by some apps, Apple Watch has given some security features.

6. Manage the Fitness Tracker Privacy

Apple Watch has many uses, but the major reason most users buy it is because of its Fitness features. It lets you track your daily activity, sleep, heart rate, oxygen level, workouts, and much more. It also lets you share your activity and health records with your friends, family, doctor. 

Now, this is some important data. You cannot risk sharing this data with some random apps. For stopping your health data from being shared with some random apps, you can follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Click on Privacy.
3. Click on Health.
4. You will see the list of apps that can access your data. 
5. From this list, delete the apps you don’t want to be using your data.

7. App Privacy Report

There are two ways in which Apple protects your data from apps. Firstly, the App Store privacy labels warn you about which data an app can access. The second way is to use App Privacy Report.

This report shows you when an app used your data. When enabled, the App Privacy Report tracks the activity of the Apple Watch apps as well and tells you when an app on your watch is using your data. To turn on the App Privacy Report, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Click on Privacy.
3. Tap on App Privacy Report.
4. Click the Turn On App Privacy Report option. 

Wrapping Up

You won’t disagree with me if I say that an Apple Watch is an expensive gadget, but it seems worth the money! Still, you need to be ready for the worst and know how to protect your data if you ever lose the watch. It is time to wrap up. In this article, I have told you 7 Apple Watch Security Features that help you to protect your data. If you have not enabled any of these features, do it now!

Frequently Asked Questions