Techno babel, decoded.

Did you know that your phones can track you even when you have the GPS OFF. Even with both GPS and WIFI off, many phones can and do still track your location.  You agreed to this in the terms and conditions of use when you didn't read them and signed your contract.  All modern cell phones are capable of this, and it will depend on the company how and when they collect and use that data.  SO be aware that you are being watched.  This is part of big data.  Tracking your movements and using your location to target advertising to you based on your preferences and your location. The goal for businesses is to sell you more things and make money off that data. 

Sorry for the hiatus but 1 autistic kid and a new baby meant no free time, or brain power to spare.  So upon the last update to my Moto X pure the phone became so slow I was starting to curse it all the time.  My wife was having the same problem only worse.  We DON'T install a lot of junk apps, and we know how to id and disable them.  Well, after some tweaking the performance improved (a very SMALL amount.) I understand that updates help protect against vulnerabilities and there were some serious vulnerabilities which required major OS level patches on the last round but the phones became almost unusable for someone trying to run a business from it.  So we decided to upgrade and get some top of the line phones so we could hopefully last 2 years without an upgrade this next go around. My wife's was phone was worse than mine and we were going to replace hers first and then mine a paycheck or two later. That didn't work out as expected.  We settled on the Pixel 2 XL

There has been a lot of press about the Russian hackers and the VPNFilter malware infecting home routers. Well, Symantec made a tool to check if your Router is infected.  I would recommend checking your home router even if you have a different model router than the known infected list as the investigators are slowly discovering more models and the hackers are working to spread the infection. If you are infected, it will mean a little bit of work for you.   You will need to do a Hard RESET on your router (usually a button that you need to use a paperclip or pen tip to push.)  Then you will need to download the latest firmware from the manufacturer website. My posting schedule has been off due to major projects at my day job eating up a tremendous amount of my time as well as a 6 year old and a newborn. See my previous post FBI Warning for more details. Thanks for Reading. Please Stay Safe on the internet. URL of the Symantec Tool:   http://www.symantec.com/filtercheck/