There’s never a bad time to delete your Facebook account: Chances are good you use it less than ever, and every time you do log on you’re greeted by a slurry of reheated viral news and life updates from two or three distant acquaintances. Now, though, feels like an especially good time to pull the […]
I’d been meaning to beef up my online security for years, but I dragged the task undone from one to-do list to the next, year after year. Until, finally, the lockdown gave me time to research available password managers, buy one, and populate it. Thinking that I was doing my husband and teenage son a […]
Despite being the default way that you get into most of your digital accounts, passwords aren’t really that secure—certainly not compared to a fingerprint or a device that can act as a physical key. If someone gets hold of or guesses your password, they can pretend to be you from wherever they are in the […]
Apple’s iOS 15 has dropped. The latest version of the mobile operating system, and its iPad equivalent iOS 15.5, is rolling out around the world. Apple made the download available after announcing the iPhone 13 at its annual hardware event last week. Even before it was even released iOS 15 proved controversial. Apple’s child safety […]
NAS drives are able to run their own applications too, so you could have a NAS that’s connected to your Dropbox account, or one that runs a custom VPN (Virtual Private Network) for you. Another popular option for NAS drives is Plex, which lets you store audio, video, and images on your storage and stream […]
Another day, another nag from your iPhone and Mac that an update is ready. And from Chrome. And for Microsoft, it’s patch Tuesday, so that’s another round of installs on your plate. As tempting as it may be to kick these down the road—why not just wait for iOS 15 in a few weeks?—you’ll want […]
Your phones and computers hold more than you might realize. The files that you can view by default on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS are by no means everything that’s stored on those systems. These hidden files are typically used by the operating system and the applications you’re running to store data that you don’t […]
Most mystery and spy movies are based on the premise that you can send messages that self-destruct, but you don’t need to be an international secret agent to do the same with your own texts. In fact, most popular chat apps now include some kind of disappearing message feature—which means that if you don’t want […]
Google is introducing a major shift in the way that apps work on Android—and while the changes might not be too noticeable to consumers, it’s important to be aware of what’s happening and why, if you’re a user of Google’s mobile operating system. Starting in August 2021, developers wanting to publish new Android apps on […]
Next year Verizon will join AT&T and T-Mobile in preloading Android phones with Messages by Google as the default texting app. It’s a big win for RCS, the chat protocol that Google has been pushing us all to adopt. But what exactly is RCS, and why do you need it? The short version: It’s an […]