Facebook has dealt with several issues this year, and almost all of them are connected to data collection and privacy in some form. It got so bad that other companies and their executives started talking publicly about the entire situation. The criticism was widespread, but there was one specific interview that reportedly set off Facebook’s leading man. Immediately after Apple CEO Tim...
The next time you’re browsing YouTube and you find a video you want to watch—perhaps a Let’s Play or iPhones XS review—try this cool trick. With the arrival of Chrome 70 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Google has introduced a new picture-in-picture feature that will overlay YouTube videos on your desktop. By doing this, the video you’re watching will always be in sight, allowing you to...
Hackers are always looking for new ways to scam you, and the latest one takes an old password you’ve used and tries to convince you that you have been recorded watching porn. As with all online scams, there are some different variants making the rounds, but almost all of them will start off with an old password you’ve used in the subject line. It will then go on to say in the body that...
Nearly twenty years into the 21st century, we are losing the battle for online privacy. Some would say that privacy, in general, is under attack. The counterpoint, as always, is that nobody is "forcing" us to use the technologies through which our information is so often exposed. Going back to a life without email and social networking tools seems practically medieval now, even though...
Qualcomm has been working behind the scenes to make mesh routers a possibility. Its technology, after all, is what powers the Google Wifis and Eeros of the world. Its latest move is to make this technology much more accessible to casual customers by partnering up with internet providers and Plume Design Inc. to create a mesh router solution. The news, announced today at Broadband World...
You might’ve heard word going around that WPA2, the encryption method used to secure just about every wireless network around the world, has been hacked. And indeed, Belgian security researchers have discovered a vulnerability in the WPA2 protocol that theoretically puts just about every wireless router out there at risk. So, is this the next big hack? Do you need to worry about it?...
Did you watch the 2013 movie Gravity? Then you know what space junk is capable of. Not only did it ruin Sandra Bullock's day, it knocked out communications worldwide. Space junk is just that – little bits and pieces from dead satellites and the like still orbiting our planet, but doing so at 17,500 miles per hour. That's something like 10 times faster than a speeding bullet. There's a...
The US Senate isn't very interested in our privacy. Yesterday, our elected representatives voted 50 to 48 to overturn rules set in place in October of last year that would've required ISPs to obtain our permission before selling our data to advertisers or anyone else. The vote was entirely along party lines. "Every American should be alarmed by the very real violation of privacy that...
We already knew Smart TVs were capable of spying on consumers, but it’s even worse than we thought. According to CIA documents obtained by Wikileaks, via The Intercept, hackers within the government agency made sophisticated software capable of turning your Smart TV into a listening device—all unbeknownst to users. Apparently, a program known as “Weeping Angel” gave the CIA access to...
Check your calendar for me. Yours says March 2017 too, right? Because the Patent Office just awarded IBM a patent on an out-of-office email system. Actually, they awarded it about six weeks ago. United States Patent No. 9,547,842, the “Out-of-office electronic mail messaging system” started from an application back in 2010. The abstract for the patent – the rough description of the...