The Tablet Problem: Too Risky To Share


Tablets are great around the house for quickly checking email, reading a book, killing some time with games or watching a video. ). However, the fact they’re built on the same basic structure as their smartphone siblings means they’re inherently designed as personal devices. Using them communally is a massive pain.

What’s The Problem?


Most of the time, your smartphone stays in your pocket. That means it’s not a problem to use it to store your email, your social network credentials, or any other personal information. You’re the only who has access to it. A tablet, however, often sits on a coffee table or other communal location. Even if you don’t share it with a significant other, a tablet is likely to get picked up and played with by visitors. It’s a public device that can contain a lot of your private data.

Even leaving privacy aside, sharing a tablet isn’t easy because most apps are still built with the single-user smartphone ideal. Few apps have an option for multiple user accounts, which means you’re always sharing and mixing up your data with whoever else uses the app. If you and your significant other both want to use Simplenote, you have to share the same settings and cloud storage. The same goes for reading apps like Kindle, which can only hold one user’s library and bookmarks at a time.

Games can’t even be shared amongst two people because you don’t get multiple save files and high score tables. In short, tablets, and apps that are built for them, assume they’re only being used by one person. Increasingly, that’s not the case.

Unfortunately, right now fixes to the problem are half-baked at best. Multiple account switching is rumoured to be coming for Android soon, but for now, Android tablets and the iPad remain single-user devices. Photo by whity.

The Solutions That Exist Right Now

I’ll be blunt: whatever method you use, you can’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy on a tablet. While you can certainly use private browsing for your surfing , most other apps — and anything else you do — will always be accessible to anyone who picks up your tablet. It is possible to lock some your data, and if you’re willing to jailbreak or root, you can create multiple user accounts, but nothing seems perfect.

Apps for Dealing with Multiple Webapp Accounts

If social networking and webapps are the only thing you share on your tablet, then it’s relatively easy to set up a system where everyone gets a little privacy. On iPad, you can use an app like Our Pad or Passtouch Web Browser to create multiple user accounts and store your private web data under different profiles. This means you only have to log in once and your credentials are loaded up. When you log out of the app, you log out of the services.

I wasn’t able to track down any similar options available on non-rooted Android devices (let us know if you know of any), although, as mentioned above, multiple account support is rumoured to be on its way in the next version of Jellybean.

Parental Controls and Encryption to Hide Apps and Data
If you’re handing your tablet to a child, you don’t want people messing with your stuff. Thankfully, parental controls are easy to set up. When you enable these, you can hide specific apps so no-one else can use them.

The other option is to lock down your data completely and set up per-app passwords. If you’re jailbroken you can password protect each app. On iPads, we like Applocker for locking down apps. For Android, APP Lock does the same thing, and doesn’t require rooting.

Jailbreaking Or Rooting For Multiple User Accounts
If you’re willing to jailbreak your iPad or root your Android device, you can add user account switching easily.

For iPad, we’ve walked you through setting up the jailbreak app iUsers before. With iUsers installed, you get the same kind of native user account switching you would on Windows or Mac. Each user gets their own app data, home screen and everything else you’d expect.

For a rooted Android, we like SwitchMe. You can create multiple profiles for each user so everybody gets their own apps and data.

It all boils down to one simple fact: tablets need multiple account options. Tablets are not just large smartphones. Tablets are shared amongst family and friends. Most people can’t afford to have more than one, and keeping a public device around with your private data is never a good idea.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


15 responses to “The Tablet Problem: Too Risky To Share”

Leave a Reply