There is no arguing that Siri, the new voice command that is available on the iPhone 4S is absolutely amazing. Voice commands have been done before but nothing like Siri. As amazing as Siri is though it is quite easy to get yourself in a lot of trouble if your phone falls into the wrong hands.
A “shortcoming” of Siri that is making the rounds on the blogosphere is that Siri will let you “or anyone who comes into contact with your phone” send texts and emails while the iPhone 4S is locked. So I guess you see where I am going with this? If you happen to leave your phone lying around the office anyone can pick it up activate Siri by holding down the Home button and compose and send an email on your behalf.
Being able to compose and send emails through voice command is a great feature but only if you’re doing the sending yourself. Since Siri isn’t programmed to respond only to a single voice, anyone who gets ahold of your phone can use it to send “prank” emails or texts to your contacts. Something that you may or may not want, I don’t know. Anyway, if you don’t believe me try it yourself and you’ll see.
Now if you cannot guarantee that your phone won’t fall into the wrong hands there is a fix to prevent unauthorized texts and emails from going out from your locked iPhone. That solution comes with the use of a passcode lock. First you set your password lock, use something that you can remember easily but will be difficult for someone else to figure out. Once you do that you can then proceed to turn off Siri access in the passcode lock settings. Navigate to Settings -> General -> Passcode Lock to do this.
That’s it! From there on out whenever you hold down the Home button Siri won’t be automatically activated. You will need to enter your passcode to get it activated. Of course this sort of takes away from the convenience and ease of use but in the long run it is a small price to pay for the added security.