If you’ve updated to iOS 7 — or purchased a shiny new iPhone 5c or iPhone 5s today — it’d be wise to fix up an issue that can give unscrupulous types access to your photos even when your iPhone appears to be otherwise locked down.
Jose Rodriguez’s video runs through the issue, which basically pertains to the multitasking view being accessible after a few simple steps. If you’re curious — and I’ve tested this on units ranging from an iPad Mini to an iPhone 5s — you do this:
Swipe up from lock to access the control panel
Open the stopwatch
Switch over to the alarm clock
Hold the power button until the “Power down” prompt comes up
Hit cancel and quickly double tap the home button.
This allows you to see but not open recently used apps, except for the camera, which is accessible — and this includes the photostream, which is otherwise blocked if you just open the camera from the lock screen.
Presuambly Apple will update to fix this — I’d hope so, and iOS 7.0.1 is downloading right now so I can test this — but in the meantime, the solution is pretty simple; disable the Control Center from the lockscreen. To do this, open Settings, then Control Center. Toggle the “Access on Lock Screen” switch to off (not green, in other words, as in the picture above), and the loophole slams shut.
Update: Switching to iOS 7.0.1 does appear to fix the issue — which is to say on a test iPhone 5s that could be unlocked previously, things appear to be tightly locked down. If you’re on a device that can’t update (the 7.0.1 update appears to be iPhone 5s/5c only for now), though, disabling lock screen Control Center is still a wise bet.