How Europe’s New Tough Data Collection Laws Affect Canadians

How Europe’s New Tough Data Collection Laws Affect Canadians

In the last few weeks, you may have found yourself inundated with emails from many of the apps and online services you use. They’ve been informing you of new terms and conditions, and asking you to “opt in” to continue using their service. Back on May 25th, the General Data …..

Screen Snooping: How to Safeguard Your Data From Shoulder-Surfers

Screen Snooping: How to Safeguard Your Data From Shoulder-Surfers

If you don’t have enough to worry about; from criminals trolling for your passwords or social media borrowing your personal data, you can now rest assured that on top of that, basically everyone is curious about what you’re doing on your smartphone. And most people have absolutely no problem glancing …..

Emergency Alert Testing On Mobile Devices

Emergency Alert Testing On Mobile Devices

If you hear a strange alarm go off on your mobile device next week, not to worry, it’s just officials testing Canada’s emergency alert system.  Publicly branded as Alert Ready, the system is designed to deliver emergency alert messages that warn the public of threat to life situations. Test signals …..

How To Reduce Targeted Ads & Feel More Secure While Online

How To Reduce Targeted Ads & Feel More Secure While Online

We’ve all been there. You’re searching for a camera, a pair of shoes or a kitchen gadget online and then you see an ad for it immediately on social media. Online targeted advertisements use data from your browser to make marketing more personalized. Special algorithms then look at your website …..

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

With two billions users Facebook is a modern day technology treasure trove of private and personal information. Even though the company has been under intense scrutiny for previous privacy issues,  people keep logging in, sharing, liking and posting their personal information. Now a new privacy scandal has emerged motivating a …..

Online Translation Privacy Risks

Online Translation Privacy Risks

Say you need a quick document translation. You choose an online tool like translate.com or Google Translate, pick the language you want, copy your text, drop the text in, and presto! In moments you can read a version in your desired tongue. Great, right? Not if your translating personal, private, …..

Is Your Smart Device Eavesdropping On You?

Is Your Smart Device Eavesdropping On You?

You’re scrolling through your social media feed or cruising your favorite website when there it is — staring back at you, an advertisement for that obscure item you just casually mentioned in conversation with a friend. You didn’t Google search it, or even write about it in a text. While …..

Email Trackers

Email Trackers

In past episodes we have discussed how smartphones and their corresponding apps are able to track your location down to a very fine detail. Well, it now looks like your email can do the same and that old time honored excuse “I didn’t get your email’ does not apply anymore. …..

Be Careful; Your Apps Are Watching You

Be Careful; Your Apps Are Watching You

Turns out that many of your popular mobile apps contain hidden 3rd party trackers built into them where a single app can contain dozens of these trackers without you ever knowing they are working in the background.  Digital researchers from Yale’s privacy lab conducted an investigation into hundreds of popular …..

Meltdown and Spectre bugs: How to protect your devices from the security chip flaw

Meltdown and Spectre bugs: How to protect your devices from the security chip flaw

A set of security flaws being called Meltdown and Spectre that have been found in most modern devices could allow hackers to steal personal information from your computer, smartphone and tablet. Researchers at Google and other academic institutions discovered the problem last year but have only disclosed it earlier this …..

Smart Online Shopping Tips For The Holidays

Smart Online Shopping Tips For The Holidays

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, but if the thought of hitting a swamped mall puts you in a less than festive mood, fret not. It’s not too late to get your shopping done online, from the comfort of your home. First thing you need to do if …..

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