Posted on 11/08/2014 6:15:11 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Is it bad to charge your phone overnight? What about charging an iPhone with an iPad adapter?
Despite how often we use devices like smartphones and laptops, we have plenty of questions about how those technologies works. And with so much information out there not all of it true it's hard to know if we're treating our electronics properly.
We've dug into some of the most common myths in consumer tech to debunk some of the biggest misconceptions out there.
1. Mac computers cant get viruses
Yes, Apple computers are susceptible to malware, too. Apple used to brag its computers aren't vulnerable to PC viruses, but the company quickly changed its marketing page after a Trojan affected thousands of Mac computers in 2012.
2. Private/Incognito browsing keeps you anonymous
Theres a misconception that incognito and private are synonymous with anonymous. If youre using Incognito Mode in Google Chrome or Private browsing in Safari, it simply means the browser wont keep track of your history, import your bookmarks, or automatically log into any of your accounts. It wont keep your identity anonymous so keep that in mind if youre visiting sites you shouldnt be.
3. Leaving your phone plugged in destroys the battery
If youre like most people, you probably leave your phone plugged in overnight long after the battery is fully charged. Some used to say this would hurt your phone's battery life, but in fact, there's no proof that this damages your phones battery in any way. Modern smartphones run on lithium-ion batteries, which are smart enough to stop charging when theyve reached capacity.
4. More megapixels always means a better camera
Whats the difference between 12 megapixel cameras and 8 megapixel cameras? Not much, as it turns out.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
bump
Agree with #4.
I have a Panasonic Lumix camera with 10 megapixels. It takes better pictures than my 16 megapixel Galaxy S5.
The difference: The Leica lens on the Panasonic.
Disagree with #8.
The most stress on electrical/electronic components is when you turn them on. As long as your computer is getting adequate cooling and ventilation, it will last longer left on. Think about when a light bulb almost always blows: When it’s turned on. You very seldom see one just go ‘poof’ when it’s been on for a while.
“2. Private/Incognito browsing keeps you anonymous”
Use the Tor browser if remaining private/Incognito is your concern - Tor is a Firefox derivative. It uses private servers. Those servers are sometimes attacked, but since the effort is private and voluntary, the responses are much quicker.
Tor (anonymity network)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29
The Tor browser
https://www.torproject.org/
If batteries have a limited number of charge cycles, wouldn't it make sense to wait until it was absolutely necessary to charge them, thereby extending its' life?
You may be correct if you mean your Smartphone cannot track another phone. However, there are devices and methods to locate or track your Smartphone even when it is turned off.
Of course it is a tracking device, and a great one at that.
I am amazed at the amount of personal data people willingly give up in exchange for convenience. To get directions, simply tell Google I am here and I want to go there. How much data does Google have about those two locations that they can combine with your data? What could they learn about you? Ultimately, who gets to see it?
The most frightening part of all this is biological data (fingerprints, eye scans, DNA, etc). You can't change those data like you can an account or a password. And once they're out there you can't recover them. No undo or delete.
Privacy is a very important element of freedom.
There's a reason the original, fixed-focus, point-and-shoot Yashica T-4 was carried by professional photographers as a personal camera, and a reason the camera became a cult camera.
There's a reason why photographers held exhibitions of photos they had taken with solely the Yashica T-4, an inexpensive plastic consumer camera.
There's a reason why you can sell the camera 20+ years later for more than its original purchase price.
The camera had a Carl Zeiss lens.
Macs don't get "infected." The user can, however, install an application that does something malicious that is not in the Application's description. That is what a Trojan is.
Sixteen years in the field. . . there still has not been a viable self-replicating, self-transmitting, self-installing computer virus or worm in the wild for Apple Mac OSX. Not one. In those sixteen years there were seven virus candidates. They all failed for lack of a viable vector for invasion.
The claimed "Flasback Trojan" in 2012 was "found" by Dr. Web, a Russian anti-virus vendor, the same week they announced their first Mac Business Anti-Virus product. They announced that they alone, of all the computer security firms in the world, who apparently had failed to notice it, had discovered the world's first Botnet made of Macs, comprising 680,000 "infected" Mac computers. They did this by "intercepting the infected Macs calling home to the 'Macbot's controlling server' in a 'honey-pot trap duplicate server' and recording their UUIDs." This, Dr. Web assured the Mac world, was proof of all those "Flashback" infected Macs phoning home. They even supplied an online tool to check if your Mac's UUID was on their honey-pot trap's list of infected Macs.
Only there are several problems with Dr. Web's claims. The "Flasback Trojan" is a JAVA Trojan that had been in the wild in 2011 and was already in Apple's XProtect built in blocking system for over a year. Flashback was a ludicrously simple Trojan when it was originally released in January 2011. OSX will warn users if you attempt to download, install, or run any version of a Flasback Trojan. Macs on the Dr. Web's list were found to be NOT infected. In fact, many of the Macs whose UUID's were on Dr. Web's list as infected machines had never had JAVA installed, so could never have run the Trojan, much less contacted the controlling server, or the honey-pot. Worse yet for the claim was the fact that many of the UUIDs belonged to Macs that had not yet been sold and we're still in the box. . . and in some cases, had not yet even been manufactured!
According to Dr. Web, to get infected, a user had to visit an obscure Russian Language character generation website in Siberia and download character definitions for a an even more obscure role-playing game. . . yet 95% of the honey-pot "infected Macs" were located in the United States and the rest were in the UK. Say what? The game itself had had fewer than 20,000 Mac downloads.
Over three weeks of searching, NOT ONE infected Mac Was found in the wild. At the end of the first week, the number of infected Macs had been dropped from 680K to under 270K, by the end of the second week, down to under 130K, at the end of week three, the news disappeared. Since then, in two years of looking, no examples have been found in the wild. It became obvious that Dr. Web had a random list of UUIDs that were assigned to Apple, but we're not at all part of some mythical Macbot. It was all a FUD campaign to sell their anti-virus product.
A month ago, Dr. Web announced they've found ANOTHER Macbot, this one a more modest 20,000 member in Russia. . . the same week as they're rolling out their new Dr. Web Anti-Virus Mac Home Edition. No one but Dr. Web has seen one of those either. That one did not even make a blip on the pundits radar screens: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
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