Since 2024, iPhones and Android phones warn you when a Bluetooth tracker that isn't yours travels with you. What the alert looks like, how to make the tag beep, how to read who owns it, and why the same alert fires for a friend's keys.
Almost every screen you read has a hidden search box for the page you're on. Where it is in your browser, in a PDF, in Word, on both phones, and the one program where the shortcut forwards your email instead.
Most shopping scams now start with an ad in your feed for a real product at a price nobody else offers. Three free checks that catch the store before your card does, and why the card you pay with matters more than the padlock.
One line in an NSA guide says to power your phone off and on weekly. Here's what a restart clears, what it doesn't, and the buttons to press on every phone, including the one that makes you type your passcode afterward.
A stolen phone is a lost object or a lost life, and the difference is four settings you can only turn on in advance. Find My and Find Hub with their offline options, the theft mode your phone already has, the passcode, and knowing where the lock-and-erase buttons are.
Also: who can still see you in a private window, and the printer on your PC that makes a file instead of paper.
The app gets your name, your email address, and your picture. It never gets your password. What each button hands over, why the one-basket worry has a real answer, and the page that lists every app you have ever signed into this way.
Every device has a printer in its list that makes a file instead of paper. How to save a receipt, a confirmation, or an article as one PDF on Windows, Android, iPhone and Mac, and where the file ends up.
Private browsing keeps history, cookies, and form entries off the device you're sitting at, and that's the whole job. The websites, your internet provider, your employer's network, and any account you sign into still see you. What it's for, and what to use instead.
Your earnings record and your direct deposit already live behind a login at ssa.gov, whether you ever made one or not. How to create the account with Login.gov, what to look at once you're in, and the separate lock for anyone who wants the online door closed entirely.
Also: what a breach number actually counts, Ring's new encryption default, and the Snipping Tool button you have never pressed.
Two keys, drag a box, and the picture is on your clipboard. That part hasn't changed. What's new is everything sitting behind the buttons across the top, and most people have never pressed any of them.
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The FTC fined Cox Media Group and two partners $930,000 over Active Listening, a service they said could pick up conversations from phones, TVs and smart speakers. It never collected a second of audio, and the tracking that really explains those eerie ads is duller and harder to escape.
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A hacking group said it took millions of customer records. Somebody opened the file and counted. The first big number in a breach story is a count of rows, not people.
News
Ring's next encryption default destroys its copy of your video keys after 24 hours. That closes a door Ring left open for years. It stops at the moment an owner shares a clip.
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Loneliness gets compared to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. The researcher behind that number keeps a page on her own website correcting how people quote it. Here is where it came from, who is loneliest, and what the evidence says about your phone.
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Google's Results about you tool watches Search for your address, your phone number, and since February your driver's license and Social Security numbers. Here is what it pulls down and what it will not touch.
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Congress never gave the FTC the power to ban personalized pricing. What it can do is make stores admit to it, and it is taking comments until September 18.
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Amazon raised the list price on its own devices. Meta settled the teen social media case for $17 billion. Disney owes streaming subscribers a check by September 8. And a gas alarm sold under 18 names on Amazon can stay silent.
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Buffering at eight, a dead back bedroom, one laptop that crawls. Those are different problems, and the checks that tell them apart cost nothing.
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A laptop price tag is covered in letters and numbers that were put there to sell you. Four of them decide whether you still like the machine in five years, and the one that matters most is often not printed at all.
News
Take-Two is pulling the CyberLeek clips as fast as they go up. The "archives" filling the gap are malware, and the pattern is older than this game.
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Consumer Reports found kids GPS trackers that skip the second login step, and the cheapest watches run on shared platforms the buyer cannot name. Here is how to check the one on your child's wrist.
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USPS will email you a photo of the letters coming to your house that day, for free. Most eligible addresses have never turned it on.