Developer: Trail of Bits Inc
Price: $3/£3
Size: 46.4 MB
Version: 5.0
Platform: iPhone & iPad
iPhone users like to think that we own the most secure platform in town, and to a certain extent, we do. But as Google discovered mid-way through 2019, there remain weaknesses that can be exploited by malicious parties.
iVerify is an app that looks to scan your iPhone and identify the signs of an attack, and also to help close off as many of those security loopholes as possible.
It does this in a couple of ways. One is to scan your phone for the typical signifiers of such an attack. The app does this quickly upon loading up, and will subsequently alert you of any indications that you’ve been compromised (provided you turn on notifications).
The other part of the iVerify offering is aimed at educating you on the various weak points that are inherent to iOS. It then instructs you on how to mitigate these vulnerabilities.
iVerify presents you with seven main areas of concern from the hub page, such as ‘Secure your online accounts’ and ‘Network security (advanced)’. Tap on each section and you’ll be given multiple steps to take within iOS, along with illustrated step by step guidance.
This can be as simple as advice to ‘Use a Password Manager’ or as involved as guidance on how to ‘Look for suspicious Apple Profiles’. Once you’ve performed one of these steps, the app encourages you to mark them as checked. You’ll then be given a rundown of how protected you are for each area.
As such, iVerify is really more of a preventative education app than an outright antivirus app. But it’s a pretty informative one, and it casts light on many of the settings and concessions hidden within the bowels of iOS that many wouldn’t even know existed.
Elsewhere, the app combines these two approaches (instructional and direct intervention) to serve as a Content Blocker within Safari. With a little delving around in Apple’s browser’s settings, you can authorize iVerify to protect the privacy of your web usage when using a public Wi-Fi hotspot. It doesn’t offer the customization of a dedicated solution like 1Blocker X, but combined with the tips and alerts it makes for a very handy one-stop security shop.
As all of this suggests, iVerify isn’t a perfect magical shield you can simply fire up and forget about. The very nature of Apple’s nailed down mobile platform (Apple doesn’t like third party apps rummaging around) means that you’ll have to do much of the leg work yourself if you really want to shore up your iPhone’s defenses.
But this is one of the most enlightening apps we’ve seen in a too-little-understood field. The truth is your iPhone isn’t quite as secure as you’d like to think it is, but Trail of Bits’s app can help you make it a lot more watertight.