Category: News You Can Use

This map tells you if you live in a ’15-minute city’

Posted on by esimantiras

Find out if you can meet all your needs within a 15-minute walk from your house.

source:  fastcompany.com

In a “15-minute city,” it’s possible to meet your basic needs within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. Instead of sitting in traffic during a rush-hour commute, you can work at home or walk to an office nearby. You can walk to get groceries, go to the doctor, take your kids to school, or run any other everyday errand. Housing is affordable, so a barista could live in a walkable neighborhood as easily as a lawyer. It’s a concept championed by the mayor of Paris and, more recently, pitched by a global network of cities as a tool for helping urban areas recover from the pandemic—and improve sustainability and health as people start to get more exercise while conducting their day-to-day activities.

In the U.S., car-dependent sprawl is more common. But a new tool lets you map out local services to see how close your neighborhood comes to the ideal.

 

Click here to try out the tool:

https://app.developer.here.com/15-min-city-map/

“The global pandemic has highlighted the importance of location and proximity,” says Jordan Stark, a spokesperson for Here Technologies, the location data platform that created the map. The company typically creates maps for businesses, such as delivery companies that need to route vehicles, and built the new tool to demonstrate how developers could work with its data. While the current version maps out amenities like grocery stores, transit stops, and medical care—along the lines of Walkscore, another tool—the company says it might later create an iteration that considers how far residents might have to travel to get to an office.

The map also shows how many services can be accessed by car from an address. “We wanted to show, especially in the U.S., the contrast in the accessibility between walking and driving,” Stark says. “And as you can imagine, there are a number of communities where you have all of your essential items within a 15-minute drive, but potentially less than one essential location in a walk. So it was a way to show that contrast in spatial makeup.”

While pockets of American cities are walkable now—the map tells me that my own neighborhood in Oakland qualifies as a “15-minute city”—it’s possible that more neighborhoods will move in this direction as cities begin to use it as a framework for urban planning. Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development is one of the latest to say that it is exploring the concept of 15-minute neighborhoods.

“We wanted to show, especially in the U.S., the contrast in the accessibility between walking and driving,”

Do Everything Faster With These Keyboard Tricks

Posted on by esimantiras

source: wired.com

Wanna see me cut and paste a large block of text without formatting? Wanna see me do it again?

IT MAY NOT seem like a second or two would make a big difference in your workday. But seconds add up to minutes, and the momentum of being able to strike a few keys and keep typing makes an impact that’s difficult to quantify. That’s why I try to avoid using my mouse whenever possible: the more I can do without taking my hands off the keyboard, the quicker I can keep plugging away on the important stuff.

The Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know

Let’s start with the basics: learn as many keyboard shortcuts as your brain can store. You probably know a few (Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste, for example), but there are dozens of others that can replace the clicks you make all day long. Here are a few I can’t live without:

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8 Tips to Tighten Up Your Work‑From‑Home Network

Posted on by esimantiras

8 Tips to Tighten Up Your Work From Home Network

source: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/

“If you connect it, protect it.”

Every time you hook up a poorly-protected device to your network, you run the risk that crooks will find it, probe it, attack it, exploit it and – if things end badly – use it as a toehold to dig into your digital life.

Criminals who figure out how to commandeer a vulnerable device inside your network can use that device to map out, scan and attack your laptop – the one you’re using right now to work from home – as if they were right there beside you.

In addition, certain elements will be centered on mobile devices and tablets and aligned to the left or right on a desktop display. You can adjust the layout for each Block at three different device widths – desktop, tablet, and mobile.

work from home

“A blockquote highlights important information, which may or may not be an actual quote. It uses distinct styling to set it apart from other content on the page.”

You will find in any penetration tester’s toolbox.

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The Best Privacy-Friendly Alternatives to Google Maps

Posted on by esimantiras

source: wired.com

GOOGLE MAPS IS used by more than a billion people every month. And those people send in more than 20 million suggested updates each day. Better directions for you, more data for Google.

There are reasons why so many people use Google Maps: It’s arguably the easiest mapping service to use and has the most up-to-date data available. But it wouldn’t be a Google product if it didn’t collect lots of data about you. This can be collected through the Maps app, but also the GPS location settings of the phone that’s always in your pocket. As a result, there’s a lot Google knows about your whereabouts.

The extent of what Google knows can be seen on your location timeline. All the little red dots shown on the map reveal where you’ve been and when. For me, it shows 461 places that I visited before I turned the location settings off at the start of 2019. (The most common: predictably, my home and WIRED’s London office.)

If you want to turn off location data you can do this through your Google account here. There are also options to auto-delete future location history every three or 18 months. This will stop Google from gathering data about your location when you’re not using its services.

You may also want to turn off web tracking and activity, as other Google services and products can gather information about your location. “Location data may be saved as part of activity on Search and Maps when your Web & App Activity setting is on, and included in your photos depending on your camera app settings,” the company says.

Location data is different from the other types of data Google gathers about you: Using mapping services without giving away your location is pretty difficult. There’s one thing you can do on your phone to limit how much data Google Maps gathers: limit when Google Maps can access your location. Through Android and iOS settings you can limit Maps’ ability to access your location to when the app is in use, rather than at all times.

A truly private maps service doesn’t really exist for every platform. But there are other options out there that don’t store and gather as much of your data or feed it back into a larger profile of you. Here are the alternatives you could consider, and we’ve highlighted where there may be potential privacy trade-offs you have to make.

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of apps—it’s built by the people who use it and all the information is open data, meaning anyone can reuse the maps for anything. It’s kept up to date by people using GPS devices, aerial photography, and other free sources of information. If you go somewhere and the map isn’t correct, then you can create an account and suggest changes.

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Windows 10 Users Can Now Run Android Apps on a PC. Here’s How

Posted on by esimantiras

source:  cnet.com

 

You can access certain Android apps on your Windows 10 device, thanks to an update to the Your Phone app,
rolling out this week.

 

Certain Android phone users can now access Android mobile apps directly from their Windows 10 ($158 at Amazon) PC, thanks to an update to the Your Phone app that Microsoft is rolling out to the general public this week. 

The update, first announced during the Samsung Unpacked event on Aug. 5, lets you pin your favorite Android mobile apps to the Taskbar or Start menu on your Windows 10 PC for quick and easy access. The apps will open in separate windows from the Your Phone app, letting you use them basically the same way you would on your phone. With many people still working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, the ability to access phone apps on a larger desktop or laptop screen, with a mouse, pen or touchscreen, could help with multitasking. 

What’s required to run Android apps on your Windows 10 PC?

Other than a Samsung Galaxy phone (at least for now), you’ll need a PC running the Windows 10 October 2019 Update or later. Check what version you’re running on your PC by going to Settings > Updates & Security > Check for update. (If you need to upgrade, you can still download Windows 10 for free.) 

You’ll also need the latest version of the Your Phone app, and Link to Windows. On your phone, you’ll need to be running Android 9.0 or greater, with the Link to Windows integration. 

Finally, your phone and computer must be on the same Wi-Fi network for the feature to work.

How to run Android apps on your Windows 10 PC

Once you have everything you need and your phone and computer are connected, the Your Phone app window should appear on your desktop. To open your Android apps on your desktop: 

  • Click the Apps shortcut from the menu on the left. You’ll see a list of all the apps on your phone. 
  • Click the app you want from the list, and it will open in a separate window on your PC. 

Note that not every app will work with your mouse or keyboard, but many will. 

And here are a few more tips for interacting with your mobile apps on your desktop with your mouse and keyboard, according to Microsoft: 

  • Single click will behave the same as any single touch/tap interaction.
  • Right click anywhere on your phone screen to navigate to the previous page.
  • Click and hold will behave the same as a tap/hold interaction.
  • Click and hold and drag to select content.
  • Mouse scroll to move between pages vertically or horizontally.

 

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR PRIVACY IN CHROME, SAFARI, FIREFOX, EDGE & BRAVE

Posted on by esimantiras

source: cnet.com

 

 

Privacy is now a priority among browser makers, but they may not go as far as you want in fighting pervasive ad industry trackers on the web. Here’s a look at how you can crank up your privacy settings to outsmart that online tracking.

Problems like Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal have elevated privacy protection on Silicon Valley’s priority list by showing how companies compile reams of data on you as you traverse the internet. Their goal? To build a richly detailed user profile on you so that you can become the target of more accurate, clickable and thus profitable advertisements.

Apple and Google are in a war for the web, with Google pushing aggressively for an interactive web to rival native apps and Apple moving more slowly in part out of concern those new features will worsen security and be annoying for users. Privacy adds another dimension to the competition and to your browser decision.

James Martin/CNET

Apple has made privacy a top priority in all its products, including Safari. For startup Brave, privacy is a core goal, and Mozilla and Microsoft have begun touting privacy as a way to differentiate their browsers from Google’s Chrome. It’s later to the game, but Chrome engineers have begun building a “privacy sandbox” despite Google’s reliance on ad revenue.

For all of the browsers listed here, you can give yourself a privacy boost by changing the default search engine. For instance, try DuckDuckGo. Although its search results may not be as useful or deep as Google’s, DuckDuckGo is a longtime favorite among the privacy minded for its refusal to track user searches.

Other universal options that boost privacy include disabling your browser’s location tracking and search engine autocomplete features, turning off password autofills, and regularly deleting your browsing history. If you want to take your privacy to the next level, consider trying one of the virtual private networks CNET has reviewed which work with all browsers. 

Chrome

Unfortunately, the world’s most popular browser is also generally thought to be one of the least private when used straight out of the box. On the plus side, however, Chrome’s flexible and open-source underpinnings have allowed independent developers to release a slew of privacy focused extensions to shake off trackers. 

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HOW TO PASSCODE-LOCK ANY APP ON YOUR PHONE

Posted on by esimantiras

source: wired.com

YOU ARE, WE hope, already protecting your phone with a PIN, a fingerprint, or a face (or all three), but sometimes you’ll want to add an extra barrier to particular apps—if you’re lending your phone to a friend, say, or if your kids or partner are always borrowing your phone for whatever reason.

How you want to apply this additional protection is up to you. Some apps come with it built in; in other cases you’ll need to enlist the help of a third-party app. The process is also different depending on whether you’re using Android or iOS, and so we’ve split our guide up into two sections.

Locking Apps on iOS

Apple doesn’t give third-party apps quite as much leeway on iOS as Google does on Android, so you won’t find any general-purpose locking tools in the App Store. Instead, you’re relying on the individual apps themselves—many apps that can hold sensitive information will give you additional options.

Apple’s own Notes app for the iPhone is one example. You can lock individual notes by tapping the Share button (inside a note) or long-pressing on a note (on the notes list) and then choosing Lock Note. Notes are locked using Face ID, Touch ID, or a PIN code, and you can set this via Notes in the iOS Settings app.

screenshot from Dropbox

You can lock Apple Notes individually on an iPhone.DAVID NIELD VIA APPLE

WhatsApp has protections in place as well to keep prying eyes out of your messages. From the main screen, you need to tap Settings, Account, Privacy, and Screen Lock—you’ll then be able to set up Touch ID or Face ID to guard access to your conversations. If either of those methods fail, you’ll get pushed back to your phone’s lock screen passcode.

Another third-party app with this same security measure is Dropbox, which is handy if you don’t want your toddler accidentally wiping all your files with an ill-judged finger push. Tap Account, then the cog icon (top left), then Turn Passcode On. When you’ve set a passcode, you’ll also be given the option to use Touch ID or Face ID as well.

We can’t guide you through every app on iOS, but have a look inside your favorite ones to see if an extra security layer has been included. Evernote, Amazon, and PayPal are three other apps that can be locked with Touch ID or Face ID, and many banking apps now have the same feature too, so even if someone gets access to your phone (with or without your permission), they can’t access all of your apps.

screenshot from iphone

Dropbox is one of the apps that supports Face ID and Touch ID on iOS.DAVID NIELD VIA APPLE

You have a couple of other tools you can turn to in iOS: They weren’t primarily intended for securing apps, but they can do the same job. The first is Screen Time, which you can access from Settings: If you tap Use Screen Time Passcode to set a passcode, then select App Limits and set the daily limit for an app to zero hours zero minutes, you’re effectively locking other people out of the app without the passcode.

Your second option is Guided Access, which you’ll find in the Accessibility menu in Settings. Once you’ve enabled it, open an app and triple-tap the side button or home button—you then won’t be able to switch to any other app without entering the phone’s passcode. It’s ideal if you want to let one of the kids play a game, but don’t want them to venture onto any other apps.

 

Locking Apps on Android

Android does let third-party apps control access to other apps, so you can install one of these app lockers and block access to any apps you don’t want other people snooping around inside. A passcode is usually required to gain access, though some locking tools can work with fingerprint sensors or face recognition.

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PHISHING ATTACKS: BEST PRACTICES FOR NOT TAKING THE BAIT

Posted on by esimantiras

source: securityweek.com

 

image - phishing

The easiest way for a cyber-attacker to gain access to sensitive data is by compromising an end user’s identity and credentials. Things get even worse if a stolen identity belongs to a privileged user, who has even broader access, and therefore provides the intruder with “the keys to the kingdom”.

According to a 2019 study, 74 percent of respondents whose organizations have been breached acknowledged the incident exploited privileged account access. This number closely aligns with Forrester’s estimate that 80 percent of security breaches involve compromised privileged credentials. By leveraging a “trusted” identity a hacker can operate undetected and exfiltrate sensitive data sets without raising any red flags. As a result, it’s not surprising that most of today’s cyber-attacks are front ended by phishing campaigns. So, what can organizations do to prevent their users from falling for the bait of these attacks? 

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security defines phishing as “an attempt by an individual or group to solicit personal information from unsuspecting users by employing social engineering techniques. Phishing emails [or text messages] are crafted to appear as if they have been sent from a legitimate organization or known individual. These emails [or SMS messages] often attempt to entice users to click on a link that will take the user to a fraudulent website that appears legitimate. The user may then be asked to provide personal information, such as account usernames and passwords that can further expose them to future compromises. Additionally, these fraudulent websites may contain malicious code.”

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ZOOM OR NOT? NSA OFFERS GUIDANCE

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source:  defenseone.com

The crypto agency has a list of questions for federal employees and contractors to ask as they choose a collaboration tool.

Video conferencing platforms Zoom and Microsoft Teams are both FedRamp approved, but while Zoom offers end-to-end encryption, Microsoft Teams does not, according to the National Security Agency. 

These are just two of nine factors the NSA cites in creating a guide to help federal workers choose commercial telework tools for “safely using collaboration services,” as necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The guide, which NSA released Friday, applies only to commercial applications, and one strong recommendation from the agency is that, when possible, workers use U.S. government services such as Defense Collaboration Services, Intelink Services and others, which were designed specifically for secure government communications. But government workers still need to interact with external entities which might be sending them invitations via commercial applications, and the NSA has detailed a number of factors for them to weigh in deciding which ones to facilitate:

  • Does the service implement end-to-end encryption?
  • Are strong, well-known, testable encryption standards used?
  • Is multi-factor authentication (MFA) used to validate users’ identities?
  • Can users see and control who connects to collaboration sessions?
  • Does the service privacy policy allow the vendor to share data with third parties or affiliates?
  • Do users have the ability to securely delete data from the service and its repositories as needed?
  • Has the collaboration service’s source code been shared publicly (e.g. open source)? 
  • Has the service and/or app been reviewed or certified for use by a security-focused nationally recognized or government body? 
  • Is the service developed and/or hosted under the jurisdiction of a government with laws that could jeopardize USG official use?

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10 IOS SECURITY TIPS TO LOCK DOWN YOUR IPHONE

Posted on by esimantiras

source: darkreading.com

 

Mobile security experts share their go-to advice for protecting iPhones from hackers, thieves, and fraudsters

 

Now more than ever, we depend on smartphones to keep us connected to each other, to our employers, to our finances and healthcare providers. We use our phones to shop, bank, and access corporate applications and information. But are our iPhones as secure as they could be?

“iPhone owners tend to feel more confident in the security of their phones than Android owners, and for good reason,” says Randy Pargman, former FBI computer scientist and senior director of threat hunting and counterintelligence at Binary Defense.  

But that doesn’t mean iOS is immune to security issues. Back in April, we learned attackers has been exploiting two unpatched iOS vulnerabilities since at least January 2018. Last year, researchers discovered more than 20,000 iOS apps were published without App Transport Security (ATS), a set of rules and app extensions Apple built as part of the Swift development platform. ATS is turned on by default; without it, critical information was being transported without encryption.

“It’s true that iPhones and the whole Apple ecosystem keep customers safer from malicious apps, but that doesn’t mean that all the data stored in the apps is safe from theft,” Pargman continues. “Many apps store sensitive information on servers operated by the app developer or transfer the information unencrypted over the Internet. As soon as your information leaves your iPhone, it is outside of your control to protect it.” 

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