As Google+ hums along, releasing new updates and unveiling new features every few days, Facebook seems to be in panic mode. Every week, they've been revealing new features that seem suspiciously similar to Google+. Facebook Updates Makes Facebook Look a Lot Like Google+ Let' ...more
The dreaded moment you hope never happens—someone has stolen your laptop. You could have private information, pictures, or even private information belonging to the company you work for, all lost forever. It can cause you pain, money, or even a job. There are paid services th ...more
Both Google+ and Facebook are competing for your time and space, and your commitment to one social network. To make their spaces more attractive to you, they've both made it easier for you to deal with people you don't like or don't care for. Ignore People on Google+ In Goog ...more
Have you ever forgotten your password and didn't know how to get back on your computer? Or ever had an annoying roommate you wanted to play a trick on to teach them a lesson? Or perhaps overly religious parents who think the internet is of the devil and won't let you read onli ...more
Are you interested in beginning research of your family's history? I began this journey about 3 or 4 years ago and here is what I found. I've done almost ALL of my research online, and gotten farther, faster and more comprehensively than anyone else who has researched my famil ...more
If you're using or need to use Zoom, the popular video teleconferencing service, you've almost certainly heard about "Zoombombing" by now. While Zoom has been adding security measures to address the problem, there are other things you can do to prevent or stop Zoombombers in t ...more
The start of a new year is generally thought of as a chance to start over, a time to improve or "fix" things in your life. Yet most people who set stringent New Year's resolutions find themselves failing within weeks—or even days—of setting their lofty goals. Don't Miss: 6 Al ...more
One of the first orders of business after purchasing a new smartphone is to load up your shiny new toy with phone numbers, email addresses, and general contact information for all the important people in your life. Don't Miss: Android Basics: Get Started with Your New Smartph ...more
All kinds of people pretend to be someone they're not on the internet, including scammers, people attempting to wind others up, hackers and web predators. Almost all of these people will leave bases uncovered and they're all easy to expose when you understand how to. Here are ...more
For anyone using open source information to conduct an investigation, a balance between powerful tools and privacy controls are a must. Buscador is a virtual machine packed full of useful OSINT tools and streamlined for online research. This program can easily be set up in Vir ...more
Whenever you attend or remotely watch a major Apple event, you're likely to see Phil Schiller, the company's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, unveiling a brand new product on stage. Outside of an official event, Schiller is the second most likely person (after App ...more
So, you're on the way back from a restaurant and realize you left your iPhone there, but you're late for a meeting and can't go back yet. You may as well kiss that iPhone goodbye, right? Not yet, as long as the right person gets their hands on it first. But that potential do-g ...more
Everything you post on social media lives there forever — even if you delete it. Just ask anyone that's ever posted something stupid. Instagram does not provide built-in tools to save or download images and videos from other users, but there are workarounds. Third-party tools ...more
For all its faults, you can't say that Facebook hasn't been instrumental in connecting friends and family together, no matter where in the world everyone is. That's why one of its upcoming features — watching videos together with Facebook friends directly in Messenger — is so ...more
There are many ways to send and receive money on PayPal. You can use an email address, a phone number, or a PayPal.Me link, but if you're standing right next to the person you're trying to pay or get digital cash from, the easiest way, by far, is to use QR codes. Everyone who ...more
When you can't reach your iPhone or don't have it on you, how do you get help from emergency services? Unless you have one of those life-alert mobile triggers, someone nearby, or some amazing telepathy skills, hope might be the only answer — unless you wear an Apple Watch, tha ...more
As we move toward the end of the year, the wheels of the augmented reality space continue to shift in major ways. Facebook is currently facing yet another round of public and governmental scrutiny over its smartglasses product, but we propose a different scenario that might h ...more
Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 9, may not be the huge overhaul that iOS 8 was, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of new features. In fact, there are a ton of subtle changes that you may not notice right away. Here's a rundown of all the coolest new feature ...more
Dating websites allow you to see a person in a very intimate context, framing their successes and accomplishments in life to an important audience. The information contained in these profiles often can't be found elsewhere, offering a unique look into the personal life of the ...more
Apple's newest mobile operating system, iOS 8, is out for the general public, and we've got a rundown on the best new features you can use on your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. While there's not a huge visual change as there was from iOS 6 to iOS 7, there's still plenty of coo ...more
Every year, some overly ambitious neighbor down the street amazes the crowds with his DIY illusion costume. While these costumes certainly require more work than pulling a mask over your head, they do have that wow factor that others lack. These costumes illicit lots of doubl ...more
The Operative Framework is a powerful Python-based open-source intelligence (OSINT) tool that can be used to find domains registered by the same email address, as well as many other investigative functions. This reconnaissance tool provides insight about your target through ex ...more
While the security behind WEP networks was broken in 2005, modern tools have made cracking them incredibly simple. In densely populated areas, WEP networks can be found in surprising and important places to this day, and they can be cracked in a matter of minutes. We'll show y ...more
Now that we have our payload hosted on our VPS, as well as Metasploit installed, we can begin developing the webpage which will trick our "John Smith" target into opening our malicious file. Once he has, we can take over his computer. This part is more involved, but the first ...more
Identifying vulnerable devices and services on a target router can be difficult without leaving logs and other traces of an active attacker on the network. However, there is a way to covertly decrypt and view Wi-Fi activity without ever connecting to the wireless network. Whe ...more
In order to increase the security and harden the integrity of an email account and its content, you'll want to use PGP on your Windows, macOS, or Linux computer. This is usually the first thing security analysts do to protect communications with encryption, and everyone else s ...more
The calendar app is one of the unsung heroes found within your iPhone. It's the ultimate personal assistant that you've come to rely on to keep track of your schedule and ensure you never miss a class or meeting, all while reminding you of upcoming birthdays and deadlines to h ...more
If you need to hack an Android device, try a remote administration tool. Known more familiarly as a RAT, there are open-source RATs that are barebones and exorbitantly priced RATs that are more polished. There are also low-cost and polished RATs that aren't intended to be RATs ...more
It has become hard to decipher where your digital imprint ends and your true self begins in today's tech-dominated world. Scrolling through news feeds and endless updates is not conducive to a good night's sleep, nor does it help you lead a well-balanced life. An online prese ...more
In the UK, 20 percent of divorce filings include the word "Facebook." You may think you're being slick by using the site to chat with your ex, but the problem is that Facebook saves everything, and I mean everything. All someone needs is your login information and they have ac ...more
The week in AR business news started out with a bang with two bombshell reports that cast a shadow on the AR industry as a whole. First, we discovered that Magic Leap has pawned its patent portfolio as collateral in preparation for a Series E funding round. Second, word leake ...more
On Yelp, you have the option to check in to a business you're visiting. For you, broadcasting who you're with and where you're at is fun for social purposes, but for business owners, you're basically giving them free publicity. Well, almost free publicity. Since there's incent ...more
You've finally got an invite into Google+. Now what? At first glance, things can be a bit overwhelming. We've got some great tips to help you get started. 1. Fill your Circles The circles feature is the core of how Google+ lets you manage your online relationships with your ...more
Dirty SCRABBLE. Everybody likes to play dirty, but we're not talking bluffing with fake words or closing up the board—we're talking actual "dirty" and offensive words. Despite the exclusion of offensive words in the bowdlerized Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary (OSPD), the ...more
Welcome to the Google+ Insider's Guide to all things Google+. We're dedicated to keeping you updated with all the latest news, tips and tricks on Google+, and this official index will serve as a one-stop catalog of all our How-To articles, as well as all the news & updates we' ...more
Circles. They are both the best thing and worst thing about Google+. They're great because they allow you to fine-tune who you're following and who you want to keep in touch with, making it easy to keep your family and friends separate from each other. On the other hand, they ...more
The holiday season is here, and if you didn't already pick up a SCRABBLE set during Black Friday or Cyber Monday, then you still have time to buy the perfect gift for your lexical-minded friend. There's sure to be deals out there over the next couple of weeks, you just need to ...more
Apple's Mail app has always been a stylish yet simple way to check and send emails. Third-party apps up the ante with powerful tools and features to help keep junk and spam mail out of your eyesight. But with iOS 13, you don't need them since Apple gave the Mail app some much- ...more
Russian cyber disinformation campaigns have many missions, but one of particular interest is using technology to monitor, influence, and disrupt online communications surrounding culturally sensitive topics or protests. The ability to watch these events, and even filter positi ...more
Months before London-based Jonathan Moon would turn 30, he started musing over how to celebrate. While he had rung in past birthdays at home, he wanted to do something out of the ordinary as a farewell kiss to his twenties. A short ski vacation with friends felt like the perfe ...more
The easiest way around a security policy is to find users who don't follow it. The Have I Been Pwned database identifies accounts with information breached by major third parties like Yahoo and LinkedIn. With Maltego, hackers can locate breached accounts created using company ...more
According to Google at their 2018 I/O conference, Google Assistant is now available on over 500 million devices. Now that the assistant is available on iPhones as well, Google has to give iOS users a reason to switch to its assistant over the built-in Siri. Today, Google has e ...more
One of the most popular things to do on Snapchat is to earn a Snapstreak. This occurs when you and one other friend have sent snaps (not chatted) to each other within 24 hours for at least three consecutive days. One you've passed the three-day mark, then you and your friend w ...more
FaceTime has been around since iOS 4, and year after year, things stayed pretty much the same aside from a few small changes. In iOS 6, calls over cellular networks were finally possible, and audio-only calls were officially supported starting in iOS 7. But the one feature mos ...more
Your iPhone just went missing, and now you're panicking. You need it for work, to get around, to contact your friends and family, and pretty much everything else in your life. So, what are the chances you might get it back? The odds may be stacked against you unless it's just ...more
In the previous article, we learned how to set up our VPS, configure our PHP server, and developed an in-depth understanding of how the payload works. With all that taken care of, we can get into disguising our payload to appear as an image and crafting the note in the greetin ...more
There's always an iPhone in our list of top phones for privacy and security, due in large part to advanced security measures like Face ID, consistent iOS updates, and easy ways to prevent unwanted access and excessive data sharing. However, some of those options actually do th ...more
Smartphones are inherently bad for privacy. You've basically got a tracking device in your pocket, pinging off cell towers and locking onto GPS satellites. All the while, tracking cookies, advertising IDs, and usage stats follow you around the internet. So no, there's no such ...more
With the release of the Pixel 2 XL and the iPhone X, smartphones have hit a new high not just in price, but also raw processing power. These new flagships not only cost more than twice as much as an Xbox One or PlayStation 4, they have also become almost as powerful as far as ...more
In these times of social distancing, video calling is becoming the technological substitute for face-to-face connections. For those who carry an iPhone, the art of video calling defaults to FaceTime, the native app on iOS that is exclusive to Apple devices. But what do you do ...more
Facebook recently implemented "Vanish Mode" into Messenger and Instagram, which lets you have an end-to-end encrypted conversation in a chat that will disappear as soon as you leave the thread. As cool as it sounds, it's easy to enable accidentally, and a friend could force yo ...more
Despite the security concerns that have plagued Facebook for years, most people are sticking around and new members keep on joining. This has led Facebook to break records numbers with over 1.94 billion monthly active users, as of March 2017 — and around 1.28 billion daily act ...more
There's never been a better time for streaming videos on your phone. With so many options available (including a potential mobile-only Netflix tier) and so many new smartphones having large screens, there's a good chance you know someone who mainly use their phone for videos. ...more
I noticed the neon yellow sign at the new location of Pho Bar in Chinatown right away. The sweeping cursive yellow letters spell out "Crazy Rich Broth"; the same phrase printed on the back of servers' shirts. It's the kind of minimalist but colorful design feature that is espe ...more
Social media accounts are a favorite target for hackers, and the most effective tactics for attacking accounts on websites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are often based on phishing. These password-stealing attacks rely on tricking users into entering their passwords in ...more
Is there a certain someone whose pictures and status updates you would rather not see? Like, ever? Wish you could hide a person on Facebook without publicly defriending him or her? Your new best friend is a Michel Gondry-inspired Google Chrome extension named Eternal Sunshine. ...more
Back in the eighties, I used to hate television commercials, but I eventually got used to them. Had to, in order to enjoy my favorite shows. Then, the increasing number of billboard ads annoyed me in the nineties. They followed me everywhere I went—no escape—persuading me to b ...more
It seems like nowadays, whenever Facebook rolls out a new feature, it's immediately controversial. Social Ads put your name and face in the spotlight, Instant Personalization shared your information with partner sites, third-party apps were allowed to access your home address ...more
Don't want one of your Facebook "friends" knowing your status updates? Prefer to keep a few of those "friends" out of your photo albums? Would you like to prevent a few "friends" from accessing your address? The simple answer would be to remove all of those so-called friends— ...more
Facebook is at it again. First they invaded your privacy with Instant Personalization, now they plan to take it a step further with their controversial plans to share users' home addresses and mobile phone numbers with third-party developers and websites. Due to user feedback ...more