My friend pulled me aside and, in a hushed voice, told me that he was worried his device was listening to him when he spoke to his wife at home. He said he had mentioned something in a live conversation, that he swears he had never typed, and then he started getting ads for it. The nervous question came “Is my
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Every handheld device knows where it is, pinpointed via cell towers, WiFi, and connected apps. This used to be called Global Positioning Service (GPS) and was primary used to identify your location on a map on your device. Today it is referred to as Geolocation, or Location Based Services (LBS). This location data is now sent from your device to other services so
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When I think of computer games as a kid, I have fond memories of playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and I still remember spending holiday money on Super Mario Bros 3 for my Nintendo. When I got older, first person shooter games like Duke Nukem and simulations like The Sims hit the scene. Though variations of these games abound,
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I spend a lot of time immersed in articles, studies, and research on social media and internet use. In the past years I have created a “trends” article for the new year that highlighted new tech, new evolutions of social media, and better use of tools making a play in the online space. Things feel a bit different this year.
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With the growing reach of the internet and our connected lives, monitoring and guiding this generation of kids has become increasingly difficult. No matter what your opinion is on parenting – from free-range to helicopter – some guidance is required to get kids on the right path while online. Though I would love to recommend a single tool to do
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In our digital world, any club, team, or group, should have a Social Media policy. I spend a lot of time teaching people about how to protect and craft their own online identities. Since we are each responsible for managing our personal online reputation, we each get to decide on the rules about what we want to post. So what happens when you
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It may sound complicated but Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) is not only simple, it is becoming necessary in an increasingly digital world. What is it? To log in to to any digital platform, you are required to provide something to identify yourself as the owner of the account. Usually this consists of a unique identifier such as a username (or email
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It’s all fun and games online until you run in to a jerk, or in internet slang, a troll. Trolls are people who put up abusive or inflammatory posts with the intention of upsetting others or starting arguments. We can also expand the definition to include people that impersonate someone else online or post inappropriate content. Though the term “troll”
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The ease of access for digital data has blurred the lines between what is an invasion of privacy and what is free for the taking. Edward Snowden opened the floodgates in 2014 when he revealed that the FBI had been using data from cell companies and social networks without users consent. This was rectified by stringent security created by the device
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The minimum age for most social networks is 13 years old. Why 13? Much like 16 is the minimum age for driving, 13 was selected as the age whereby children could consiously post data that would be permanent and potentially public. It is also the age at which they could view ads and make real decisions about the products. This age
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