DuckDuckGo has been building a reputation as the "go to" search engine for folks who are privacy conscious. Unlike many other search engines, DuckDuckGo doesn't track you or keep records of what you've been searching for. But aside from being privacy focused, what else does DuckDuckGo bring to the table? Here are our tips and tricks.
Apple's embarrassing FaceTime flaw, that was discovered by a school kid playing Fortnite, has finally been fixed. Apple has issued iOS 12.1.4 and macOS 10.14.3 to users through their software update tools a little later than expected. Here's what's fixed and how to apply the updates.
As Apple releases iOS 12.1.4 to fix the FaceTime issue that basically turned iOS devices into listening posts, another major issue is emerging. A number of apps are effectively acting as key loggers, collecting every tap and swipe you make. And the apps can do this without requesting permission.
If you plan on selling or donating your smartphone, make sure you do more than just factory reset through the phone's operating system. Security researchers picked up several phones "wiped" this way, and found loads of data.
A little while ago, it was revealed that Mark Zuckerberg and other high-level Facebook execs had access to a special feature that allowed them to erase messages they had sent to user inboxes. So, if The Zuck sent you a message, you might find it gone days or weeks later. Last year, Facebook said a similar feature would be made available to everyone. That new feature as now arrived in Facebook Messenger for iOS and Android. Here's how it works and how to use it.
Genealogy site Family Tree Now made waves when people discovered it can be used to look up almost anyone's personal information, even if they'd never heard of the site before. Addresses, family members, and known associates are free for anyone to find. Here's how to protect yourself from Family Tree Now, Whitepages, Spokeo, and other popular free people search engines just like it.
As you’ve probably heard by now, Facebook — in its infinite wisdom — has been running a program that pays your kid (aged 13 to 35) a whopping $20 worth of gift cards each month in exchange for near-unlimited access to the data on their Apple or Android devices. By installing a custom root certificate, Facebook can see what websites they browse, what they say to their friends, and what they write in their emails, to name a few privacy-shattering examples.
In this week’s tech-advice column at Lifehacker, I’m tackling the internet’s greatest annoyance. Not screaming YouTube influencers or people who are better than you at Fortnite—I’m talking about targeted ads.
Does the entire world really need to see where you’re tweeting from? I usually don’t think about how much location data I’m sharing on Twitter, because I don’t think anybody cares about my 1) tweets and 2) where I tweet. However, a new report from Wired has made me rethink my approach. As it turns out, it’s not that difficult to pinpoint exactly where you live via your tweets.
In the modern internet era, it’s safe to assume that there’s at least one company watching everything you do on the internet at all times, poised to profit from that data.
Yes, that includes porn.
Welcome to the first Lifehacker tech-advice column of 2019! This week’s question from Lifehacker reader Mike is something that many of us have had to deal with at one point in our lives: the irritating balance between technology, one’s personal life, and the demands of one’s professional life.
The Weather Channel, an app drawer staple for many of us, may be using your location data without your consent. The city of Los Angeles filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing Weather Channel owner The Weather Company, as well as IBM, its parent company, of using location data acquired through the app for targeted ad sales and marketing without permission. When installed, the Weather Channel app requests access to your location data to give you local weather reports, but does not mention that the data will be used for advertising or could be sold to a third party.
Project Bali might sound like a way to do some holiday planning while you're in the office but it's also the codename Microsoft has given to an initiative designed to give us back control of personal data that's collected about us but that we typically don't get a lot of control over.
It’s a new year, folks, but there’s still one last data leak from 2018 we need to discuss. If you spent any time online over the holiday break, you’ve probably seen someone on Facebook or Twitter posting photos from Popsugar’s Twinning app, which uses facial recognition to tell you what celebrities you may kind of, sort of look like a little bit.
None of us like to think about our death or the death of a loved one, but it's important to prepare for it. You don't want to be stuck trying to get into a loved one's Gmail or Facebook account to shut things down. This graphic shows you what you're in for, and what you and your loved ones should have ready.
Finding a great VPN service can be a challenging task—and that’s putting it mildly. It’s not hard to find any VPN service. There are plenty of apps that promise to encrypt your connection by shuffling it through a third-party server, causing your requests to appear as if they’re coming from said server (even if its halfway around the world) rather than your more easily identifiable device.
A typically geeky holiday might sound something like this: You wake up on the morning of December 25, run down to your Christmas tree, unwrap everything in a frenzy, plug in all your long-awaited gadgets, connect them to your wifi, and speed past the installation screens (or manuals) to start having all kinds of fun.
What’s worse than Carpool Karaoke? Getting Carpool Karaoke notifications on your iPhone when you haven’t watched it in a long, long time.
Another day, another tech company being disingenuous about its privacy practices. This time it’s Microsoft, after it was discovered that Windows 10 continues to track users’ activity even after they’ve disabled the activity-tracking option in their Windows 10 settings.
Apple, like most of the tech giants, collects a lot of data about you. Not as much as everybody else — since it’s not the single search engine you rely on for everything — but you can’t use Apple products and services without leaving some kind of digital footprint.
