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First Siri starts doling out personal info when your phone is supposed to be locked, and now an even bigger security oversight has been discovered in iOS5 for iPad 2 owners.
Anyone with a Smart Cover can get into your iPad 2, reports 9to5Mac, even if you’ve been careful and locked it with a password. That sound you hear is a thousand Apple programmers facepalming at once.
Here’s how it works: if you’ve locked your iPad 2 with a password, just hold the Power button to take the device to the power down page, but don’t slide the bar to shut it down. Instead, pull the Smart Cover over the screen, open it up again, and click Cancel, and you’ll be taken to the homepage, or last web page or app you were using when you locked the device.
Bad news, especially if you lose your iPad after locking it with a confidential message open.
Whoever uses the Smart Cover won’t have full access to your device, as they won’t be able to unlock it, but they will be able to use the program you were last using, or if on the homepage, play media and adjust settings.
However, there is a solution. Go to ‘Settings>General’ and disable Smart Cover Unlocking, and you should be fine. It’s only a temporary get out though, so let’s hope Apple has a proper fix on the way.
On Thursday it was revealed Siri can be told to carry out actions on your behalf by anyone while the handset is locked. Just hold down the Home button and start speaking, and it’ll do as you say — send a text, email, anything. Not very secure, though again you can disable it in the Settings.
What do you think of iOS5’s security? Flawed, or tighter than Fort Knox? Or somewhere in between? Answers on our Facebook page.
