How it works on your wireless devices

Your iPhone as well as your WiFi+ Cellular iPads are connected to the internet almost constantly. These devices also come with a built-in GPS receiver that can pinpoint your exact location. So they not only know where they are, they also can communicate their location to the iCloud.

To configure your iOS device, all you need to do is the following:

• Launch the Settings app and go to the iCloud section.
• Switch on the “Find my iPhone,” “Find my iPod,” or “Find my iPad” setting.
• Goto the Privacy settings and select Location Services.
• Switch on the “Location Services” and switch on the “Find My iPhone,” “Find my iPod” or “Find My iPad” setting.

How it works on your Wi-Fi devices

For Apple devices that only have Wi-Fi capabilities — say an iPod touch or iPad without cell service or your Mac — the way they communicate their position is a little different. They utilize what is known as the MAC address (or machine address) of the Wi-Fi access point that they are connected to. This is then used to search a database where most, but not all, Wi-Fi access points have their locations stored. When these Wi-Fi only devices establish internet connectivity, they will assume that they are at the pre-determined location of the Wi-Fi access point. So while these Apple devices may not know where they are exactly, they can figure out where the Wi-Fi access point they are connected to claims to be located.

To configure your OS X device, do the following:

• Launch the System Preferences application and go to the iCloud section.
• Switch on the “Find my Mac” setting.
• Go to the Security and Privacy settings, click on Privacy and select Location Services.
• Check “Enable Location Services.”

Locating all of your stuff

This is where using a shared account for all of your family’s Apple devices can pay off. The iCloud account that you use for the Find My iPhone service does not have to be the primary iCloud account that you use on the device.  If you have turned on the Find My iPhone service using the same iCloud account on all of your devices, then you will be able to track and locate all of your devices using that same account.

To locate any of your devices, you must use the iCloud account that you enabled the “Find My” services with. You can then use the Find My iPhone iOS app on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, or you can log on to the iCloud service through Safari on your Mac. Once logged on, the list of devices being tracked with that particular iCloud account will each update their location on the map.

What to do after you have found your stuff

If it is not where you expected it to be, you do have a few options. Here are some of them available using various iCloud services:

Notify When Found –  If the device is not able to locate itself, or connect to the internet, you will not be able to find it.  Rather than constantly monitor the screen until it shows up, you can have a message sent to you when it does come online and has an updated location to report.  Simply check “Notify Me When Found” for the device you are trying to locate.

Play Sound - If it is lost and nearby, you can use the iCloud service to have your device play a loud sound until you find it.  The sound will be audible even if you have muted your speakers or turned down the volume.  This will work if the device is online, even if the location of the device cannot be determined.

Lost Mode (iOS only) – This is new. For your iOS devices, you can send a message to the device hoping that if someone reads the message, they will give you a call and let you know everything is alright.  This will also lock down the device using the passcode you have already established on the device, or let you lock the device remotely with a new passcode.

Lock (OS X only) - For Macs, you can still lock down the device, but you cannot send a telephone number accompanied by a message.  This makes sense since the lock screen on OS X does not have the ability to display a message like the lock screen on iOS devices.  So this option is really more handy if you leave work in a hurry, and didn’t log off before you left.  Be sure you can retrieve the device once you do decide to lock it remotely.  After that, your Mac cannot be erased until it is unlocked.  And the only way to unlock is by having the device in your hands.

Erase - There are those unfortunate occasions where your device has either been stolen, or is in a location that you do not trust and cannot get to quickly. In such instances, you can elect to erase the device entirely.  Once erased, the files and configurations on the device cannot be restored except from a backup of the device.

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Find My Mac uses known Wi-Fi tower location databases to pinpoint a Mac’s whereabouts, as it doesn’t have access to cell tower triangulation and GPS technology the way an iPhone or 3G-capable iPad does. Still, it seems to still be fairly accurate, and it also provides users whose Macs have gone missing with the option of locking the screen with a four-digit PIN and erasing the contents of the hard drive remotely. Find My Mac also lets Mac owners play a sound through their Mac’s speakers, and display a message of their own creation on the device’s screen. Even if your Mac is off when you send these commands, they will take effect the next time it’s online.

Once Find My Mac is enabled on a user’s Mac, they can view its location on a map using iCloud.com, and also perform any of the actions listed above from the website. It’s very likely that Macs with the service enabled will also eventually show up in the Find My iPhone apps for iPhone and iPad, too, based on how it works in the browser.

Making Find My Mac a part of the free suite of iCloud services is a smart move by Apple. Because of its role as a data security and anti-theft measure, it should help draw even single-device Mac owners who aren’t interested in email and information syncing features to iCloud, and adoption is going to be crucial to the ultimate success of iCloud. Apple is likely hoping that iCloud will not only attract new users to the Mac and iOS platforms, but also keep them there. Having all your data, purchases, email and documents associated with an account designed to work best on Macs and exclusively on iOS devices should provide lots of motivation not to go looking at competitor products.

Business strategy aside, having the ability to remotely track and wipe your Mac, which is a much more expensive loss than an iPhone, and one that is probably more likely to hold sensitive info for most, is a great boon to Apple customers. Look for it to go live alongside the rest of iCloud this September.

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Set a Passcode

If a thief can’t unlock your device, they can’t access your data, so setting a passcode lock is a good idea. Once set, the passcode will need to be entered each time in order to unlock the device. To set one, tap Settings, General, then Passcode Lock. At the top is a button labeled Turn Passcode On.

Tap that, and you’ll be prompted to enter a four-digit passcode. Type the passcode in twice, and some additional settings will become available.

You can change how long the device has to be inactive before the passcode is required again. By default, this is set to require the code immediately, but you can set it to a range of durations such as after 1 minute, 5 minutes or 15 minutes. Shorter times are more secure, since it gives someone else less time to pick up your device before they’ll need to enter the passcode.

If you don’t think a four-digit code is secure enough, you can also use a more complex password with numbers, letters and symbols. To do so, turn off the setting called Simple Passcode. After turning that off, you’ll be asked to enter your current passcode, if you have one set, then your new password twice. Once you have done that, in order to unlock your device, the password you set will be required, which is more secure than a four-digit number.

One final security measure you can add is the option to erase all the data on the device if the passcode is entered incorrectly 10 times. This ensures someone can’t methodically try every number until they hit upon the correct code, since chances are the data will be wiped before they get there.

Be Sensible With Your Data

Obviously you can’t just rely on passcodes to keep information secure. You have to make sure you aren’t careless; leaving addresses or phone numbers in the Notes app means they’re available for anyone using your iPhone to see. Similarly, don’t store important information such as credit card numbers or pin numbers on the device at all, unless you are 100 percent sure the data is encrypted and secured using a password. The best way of storing extremely sensitive data like that is in your memory, rather than keeping it stored somewhere accessible.

Also be wary of using password managers designed for iOS. Some of them don’t encrypt your data at all, and only hide it behind an insecure passcode. Other services store your information on their own server rather than on your device, which means it’s susceptible to data theft if the service gets hacked, which is what just happened to LastPass, for example.

Wipe the Data Remotely

If your iOS device does happen to fall into the wrong hands, you can use Apple’s free Find My iPhone service to locate the device and wipe any data on it. Find My iPhone is available to all MobileMe subscribers, and is also available to non-subscribers with an iPhone 4 or an iPad. To set up Find My iPhone on your device, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and choose Add Account. Then enter either your MobileMe credentials or your Apple ID (the same one you use for the iTunes store) and choose to turn on Find My iPhone.

Now if your device gets lost or stolen, you can find where it is, and if necessary, wipe everything on it. To do so, open the MobileMe website, me.com, in your browser, log in and go to the Find My iPhone tab. You’ll see a list of the devices that you have set up with Find My iPhone, and you can click on a device’s name to show its location on a map.

You can then click the blue triangle icon next to the name on the map to see more options. To completely wipe the selected device, choose Wipe. Everything on the device will be erased, and it’ll be as if it were new — nothing is left behind. Don’t worry, if you then get your device back, you can restore from a backup using iTunes.

Got any other tips for securing data on your iOS devices? Share them in the comments.

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Apple is no stranger to the fact that a growing majority of its customers own more than one Apple product. Seeing numbers like two million iPads in two months and 600,000 iPhone 4′s in the first day only add weight to this argument. To make it easier for users to keep up with their iDevices, Apple introduced the Find My iPhone feature in MobileMe that can use GPS (or Wi-Fi if the device is on) to locate your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

If you haven’t had a chance to use it or if you’re not a MobileMe subscriber, it’s a very compelling reason to consider Apple’s cloud-based service. Beyond just being able to locate an iOS device on a Google map, you can also remotely lock it, remotely wipe it, or push a message notification and sound to the device. Maybe you lose your prototype iPhone 4 at a bar and you need to remotely lock it or push a message to it saying “Please don’t post this prototype iPhone on Gizmodo.” MobileMe’s Find My iPhone service has you covered.

Some people do criticize the service for not pinpointing a super accurate position of where the device is located, so this is a great opportunity to point out a few technical limitations (such as GPS does not work indoors). However, if you’ve ever had your iOS device stolen, locating your device on a map is still very useful.

Apple’s MobileMe solution is great, if you happen to have access to a web browser to make use of it. But for those times where you are on your iOS device, logging into MobileMe and navigating to Find My iPhone can be time consuming. Apple’s free Find My iPhone app eases the burden.

The first Apple app to natively support the iPad, besides iBooks and the iWork apps, the Find My iPhone app keeps track of all iOS devices attached to your MobileMe account and brings the same great features like remote lock and remote wipe to your iOS device.

Find My iPhone on the web has also seen some updates, including a refreshed interface and displaying locations on a full screen map.

Check out the free app from the app store and let us know what you think! Is Find My iPhone the reason why you use MobileMe? Have you ever used the Find My iPhone message and sound notifications to help you find your iPhone under a pile of dirty laundry in your apartment? Or as a way to send free text messages to your spouse’s iOS device?