If you use Facebook, you may have seen an option in the Settings menu under Protect to download the Onavo Protect app for Android and the iPhone. Don't. It is basically an app that allows Facebook to spy on you, even more than it already does. The app is a Virtual Private Network or VPN. In simplest terms this will encrypt and route all your network traffic through a server in addition to the one your ISP provides. This allows you to appear to be somewhere else, so you can watch, say, local content there for free and it will stop most agencies from spying on what you might be doing.
When you turn on the Onavo product it routes all of your phone, not just the Facebook stuff, through Facebook's servers, where it is decrypted. This allows them to mine all your data, not just what you post or view on Facebook. They are not shy about this, essentially telling you what the app is doing i.e. "we collect all the info that is sent to, and received from, your mobile device. This includes info about: your device and its location, apps installed on your device and how often you use those apps, the websites you visit, and the amount of data you use" and "we also use this info to improve Facebook products and services, gain insights into the products and services people value, and build better experiences". So, if you don't want Facebook to see everything you do then use another VPN, one that states they will not do this. If you don't care, then Onavo does provide the service.
Not long after you read this, the Samsung S9 series will be out. Based on the specs leaked so far, there are not many external changes apart from moving the fingerprint reader to a better place and a new lilac colour option. The S9 has a 12MP dual aperture system camera with F1.5 and 2.4 versions for night and day shots. It also has a slow-motion system supporting up to 960 images per second. At the front is an F1.7 8MP camera. The S9+ will have a dual camera, one the same as the S9 and the second with a fixed F2.4 lens. The speakers by AKG have also been improved. The screens are the same size but with a SuperAMOLED 2960x1440 pixels and a "diamond pixel matrix". The S9 has 4GB and the Plus has 6GB. CPUs have been updated and dual-SIM versions will be available. Android 8, waterproof and microSD support round out the models that seem to be more incremental than wowing in nature.
Sometimes, people ask me stuff. So, what is an IP Address? You may have heard this term a few times, or a lot. If you have set up a home network with more than one computer then these will typically be set up for you by your modem, if it is the right kind.
In the simplest terms an Internet Protocol (IP) address is used to uniquely identify a device on a network. This can be anything from your toaster to a full-blown server. On your internal network this will often look something like 192.168.1.12. It is always four numbers and they can range from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. The number 255 represents an eight-bit number so in binary it's 11111111. This is handy because while we work in base 10, most computers work in binary.
The first three numbers identify the network and the last one the device or host. If you are confused, in the TCP/IP or internet protocol world, a device is called a host. Think of the network part being similar to a street and the host a house. No city has the same street name, or at least in the same postcode, and each house number is unique, or the postman would get very confused.
To work out which part is the network ID and which is the device, something called a subnet mask is used, again in the home this is traditionally 255.255.255.0, but in a more complex network this can change. The bit with the zero tells your device how to work out device numbers for a given address. Next time, we'll take a look and other parts of your network and how IP addresses fit in.
Google has a system that, using an eye scan, can predict heart disease. It uses a series of algorithms against known conditions that when applied to your eye scan has a chance of determining a number of factors. These include sex, if the person is a smoker, has high blood pressure and hence the possibility of a stroke, and other factors like age. The accuracy is in the 70% range so far and uses over 1.6 million retinal scans taken from 284,335 patients. This is a developing technology that will get better over time. Sometime in the future you will be able to use your mobile phone to check your eyes for several conditions.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
