Your iPhone’s Personal Hotspot password is displayed as a string of text in the Settings app, which means anyone can look over your shoulder and figure out your password without you knowing.
A new freejailbreak tweakcalledMaskedHotspotPassby iOS developerAndreas Henrikssonhelps to do away with this problem by concealing your Personal Hotspot password from the preferences pane.
I use thePersonal Hotspotfeature on a daily basis, and as a result, this is something I can relate to on a personal level. After turning Personal Hotspot on when I intend to use it, I’m always self-conscious about people around me seeing my password; I feel the same way when I re-visit the preferences pane to turn it off when I’m done tethering.
As shown above, MaskedHotspotPass solves the problem by masking your Personal Hotspot password withsecuritydots rather than allowing it to be being exposed to the elements as a string of text. This effectively prevents over-the-shoulder sneak attacks from people who want free access to your wireless data without your permission.
If my daily driver, an iPhone 7 Plus, had a jailbreak available for the firmware it’s on right now, this is one of those small (but necessary) jailbreak tweaks that I’d jump on immediately because it’s such a major improvement over the stock function. This is somethingApplecould fix with a flick of their fingers, but for whatever reason, it has gone unchecked for so long.
If you’rejailbrokenand are more paranoid than the average iPhone user like I am, you can grab MaskedHotspotPass from Cydia’s BigBoss repository for free. The tweak doesn’t have any options to configure and takes effect immediately after installation.
For those interested in seeing what makes MaskedHotspotPass work, the developer hasopen-sourced the tweak on GitHubfor your viewing pleasure.
Do you have a problem with the way iOS displays your Personal Hotspot password so easily to the public? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
