Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Did you know YouTube maintains a list of every search you’ve ever made via YouTube’s search box?
And did you know they also maintain a list of every video you have ever watched on their site?
This might not seem like a big deal to some folks, especially if the things they search for and the videos they watch aren’t controversial in any way.
However, you might consider it a huge deal if you go to great lengths to protect your online privacy.
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The ingenuity of hackers, thieves and other miscreants is unlimited it seems.
Every day they come up with new ways to scam, hack and break into computers in order to steal bank account and credit card numbers, photos, addresses, phone numbers and other pieces of sensitive information.
One of their most devious tricks is hacking into people’s computers and spying on them via their own webcams. [Read more…]
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By default, a sneaky Windows service that’s constantly running on your PC watches your every move and sends the data it collects about your computer usage back to Microsoft.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of serious issues with this… [Read more…]
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By now you’re probably aware that Facebook and other popular social media sites are favorite playgrounds for the hackers and scammers of the world.
Unfortunately, those same miscreants are using Facebook’s hugely-popular Messenger app to perpetrate their evil deeds as well.
I’ve written about several dangerous Messenger-related scams and hoaxes in the past, and I’ll continue bringing you the information you need to avoid the new ones that will inevitably pop up in the future.
But today I want to tell you about a valuable resource that Facebook has created that can help you recognize many new scams the first time you see them pop up in your Messenger inbox.
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Do you own (or plan to acquire) one or more ‘smart devices’ such as a smart speaker, an IP camera, a video doorbell, etc.? If so, here’s a little tip for you…
Virtually all smart IoT devices that connect to the Internet collect various types of data about you, your home and/or your family’s activities and send that info back to the company that made the device.
Of course some data collection and transfer activities are essential in order for the device to serve its intended purpose (an IP camera capturing video and sending it to your remote smartphone, for example), but depending on the device and how it is used some of the data that’s collected can be quite intrusive. [Read more…]