What a sitting-room tablet should be signed into
Decide, deliberately, which things stay signed in on a tablet anybody might pick up — and take the two or three that should not be off it in five minutes.
This is not about mistrusting your family. It is about a machine that lives where visitors sit, and gets handed to a plumber to show him the furnace, and goes to the neighbor’s while you are away.
The question is not "is it secure". It is a simpler one, asked of each thing on it: if a stranger held this for ten minutes, would that matter? Some answers are no. Two or three are yes, and those are the ones to deal with.
Key points
- Judge each app by what a stranger holding the tablet could actually do
- Leave the paper, the weather and the library signed in without a second thought
- Sign out of banking, and remove a saved card rather than the whole shop account
- Put a passcode under the lot, with your face to make it bearable
What to remember
- Nearly everything is fine. Banking, email and anything holding a card are the three to think about, and there is no fourth.
- Signing out of an app never deletes anything. Your account, your money and your history are all with the bank, not on the tablet.
- Signing out is nearly always safe — the account lives elsewhere, and the app is only a way of looking at it. Just make sure you know how to get back in first.
Try this
Pick up your own tablet and open the three apps you would least like a stranger to see. If any of them opens straight away with no passcode and no face, that is the one to deal with this evening.
Practice: What a sitting-room tablet should be signed into. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.