Warning to iPhone users about common mistake in Settings app that can cause a protection feature to crash

A warning has been issued to iPhone users about a common mistake in the settings app that can cause a protection feature to completely crash.

If you haven’t updated your device to the latest iOS in the last few months, you might want to do it now.

This is because iOS 17.6, which was released at the end of July in 2024, fixes a specific protection issue.

Your phone could be at risk if it's running an old operating system (sarayut Thaneerat/Getty Images)

Previously, some Apple users complained that they got an error message when trying to activate Advanced Data Protection.

Other people said that the feature appeared to be disabled when they tried turning it off.

The Advanced Data Protection for the iPhone is used to encrypt photos, passwords and home data.

However, if the phone hasn’t been updated, whether that’s because the user doesn’t have automatic updates turned on or because they weren’t connected to WiFi when it was rolled out, then their data may be at risk.

If you’re wondering whether your phone has been updated, then head to the settings app and you should be able to see the build number ‘21G101’.

In settings, you can click on ‘general’ and from there, head to ‘about’.

In that section, it will show you what iOS version your phone is running.

Anything earlier than 17.6 won’t have fixed the data issue.

People are being urged to update their phone's iOS (Filip Radwanski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The tech firm hasn’t offered any additional information as to what caused the issue and on its website it said that it won’t ‘disclose, discuss or confirm security issues until an investigation has occurred and patches or releases are available’.

But the Apple has said that there’s no evidence of hackers exploiting the data issues as of yet.

Speaking to Forbes, Sean Wright, who is the head of application security at Featurespace, said that while users shouldn’t be panicked about security issues, it is still a good idea to ‘update as soon as you can’.

Further Apple updates to the operating system have been rolled out in recent months to introduce Apple Intelligence.

The new AI was first made available with the release of iOS 18.1 and some of its functions include Image Playground, which will allow you to create your own animated images.

There is also a custom emoji called Genmoji and Siri is integrated with ChatGPT to give the virtual assistant a richer language understanding as well as taking on more vocal commands.

However, in order to access Apple Intelligence, you’ll need to have an iPhone 15 or later as the feature isn't available on older models.