Recently an episode of an investigative television show highlighted a case about a Florida woman who had been kidnapped and a ransom placed on her head. Through the many twists and turns of the story, eventually the clue that would break the case wide open found its way into the hands of police. The piece of evidence was a picture taken from an iPhone, which had been geotagged automatically by the internal GPS unit of the phone. While the case went on later to expose the woman as having staged her own kidnapping, the technologies
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While e-mail may be the new snail mail to the iPhone generation, the fact is that it is the most-used conduit for communication in our world today. E-mails routinely contain business deal discussions, social security numbers, bank account information, and personal information intended only for the recipient. Along with its convenience, e-mail also carries certain liabilities. Though we immediately think about virus protection for our computers, many of us fail to realize e-mail is the easiest and least-noticed backdoor for hackers. That doesn’t mean you need to avoid using e-mail because it isn’t 100 percent
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Facebook is at it again! Just when you thought you had everything figured out, they’ve gone and changed things. While the most obvious change is to the news feed that appears as your homepage when you log in, there are a number of other settings that were changed behind the scenes. These changes affect your personal privacy as well as your access to the information your network puts out. Here are a few of the things to be sure that you check to guarantee your Facebook account is set up just the way you really
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“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The above words are ones that all Americans should know by heart. They are the body and the text of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, from the Bill of Rights. These are the fundamental protections that we were all given
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It is difficult to see our parents advancing in age. The same two people who raised you and did their best to provide a comfortable home, a moral and spiritual foundation, a good education, and a loving environment are now getting up there. And whether they and you admit it or not, the tables are turned and now they need you. Although a natural process, they are no longer as physically (and sometimes mentally) agile as they once were, and right before your eyes they change from the mom and dad who were once strong
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When we go online, it seems as if we are operating in a private, protected world. Everywhere we go, we are required to use passwords, and we can go just about anywhere and talk to anyone without revealing anything about the details of our lives if we so choose. But this is an illusion. All around us are unscrupulous operators who want to exploit us by invading our privacy and stealing our personal information for their own use. There are companies that sell software that allows their clients, usually online merchants, to surreptitiously track everything
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As anybody who has been watching the news already knows, the folks at News Corp are facing quite a bit of trouble these days. Even Rupert Murdoch himself, the normally elusive media mogul and controller of politicians everywhere, has been called on the carpet to answer questions about the dirty dealings that went on at
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What a person does on his or her own property, and certainly in the privacy of his or her own home, should be sacrosanct, yes? One would think so, but one would be wrong. Ordinarily, a police officer needs probable cause to initiate a search or seizure (or to procure a warrant). Simply believing that
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Protecting your most valuable personal files is a challenge. How can you save photos, family videos, important documents, and other precious or irreplaceable items?  While lockboxes and external hard drives are one answer to protecting files around your home, the recent tornadoes scattered those solutions far and wide. Floods, windstorms, and fires can all wreck
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Financial calamity can be brought on by many things. Natural disaster, runaway inflation, unexpected illness, and stock market collapse are just a few of the ways you could suddenly find yourself in trouble and seriously short of funds. Unfortunately, there is little you can do to protect yourself from most of these situations, perhaps outside
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