Online Shopping Safety

Some years back when one would have felt the need to shop, stores or shops within certain proximity from their homes were the destinations. Now with the blessings of technology a person who is sitting in the remotest corner of the world can buy anything from anywhere around the globe. Geographical constraints have completely vanished. If you have access to internet, everything from everywhere is reachable for you. Sometimes while shopping online people encounter some problems with payments or with thefts. Here are some easy to remember tips to make ensure online shopping safety.

Getting To Know If The Site Is Secured

The huge variety which is available while shopping online can give you butterflies in your stomach, but you have to make sure that the site is secure for you to enter all your valuable information. There are different aspects to security and everyone shopping online must be aware of those. One should limit the shopping to secured sites only. URL can be helpful for you to know if the site is secured or not. Secured sites have their URL’s start with HTTPS:// while the unsecured ones may have it like HTTP://. In addition to this a small lock icon will be visible on the lower right corner of the screen.

Shop Through A Secured Computer

To ensure you online shopping safety, use a computer which is protected from virus attacks through an up to date anti-virus and a strong firewall system. You can avoid using computers in the library or at cyber cafes or in your office as it is a shared computer and your card details can be stolen. You will almost never be aware of any spyware or malware which has affected your computer.

Use A Credit Card Instead Of A Debit Card

For online billings it’s always wise to use a credit card instead of a debit card. Credit cards can safeguard you against identity thefts that debit cards don’t offer. In much simpler words when using a credit card, the liability for any unauthorized or fraudulent charge is limited to $50. If while using a debit card someone gains access to your card details, all your account will be wiped clean before you even noticing that something is wrong. It’s only a possibility that your money will come back at all.

Keep The Records Safe

For any transaction online the receipt should be saved for references. This electronic receipt will help you in tracking your order as well as will give you a proof of your payment.

 Prefer To Sign Up

If the shopping site is giving you an option to sign up, prefer that. With signing in your transaction will require on extra password to authorize your deal. Verified by visa or a master card secure code will give your transaction added protection.

Keep An Eye On Your Statements

All the documents should be cross checked as soon as they are received from the bank. Any unknown transaction should be reported immediately. Any written card details should be carefully shredded.

As the technology is helping you in shopping worldwide, its also helping people in their fraudulent deeds through internet. The only way to be safe is to be aware.

source: http://itselectricblog.com/blog/tips-tricks/online-shopping-safety/

How to take care of your Gadgets

Are you a proud owner of a precious gadget?

Do you have a laptop or a mobile phone or a tablet or a music player which is now a priced possession for you?

For most of you the answer will be affirmative. Everybody owns almost every gadget mentioned above. You buy it and you have a passion to treasure it for as long as possible. For making it practical we are providing you with certain tips on how to take care of your gadget.

Laptop

The exterior case of a laptop keeps its looks fresh and new. You can clean the exterior case with a damp cotton cloth. The same can be used to clean the clean keyboard. Compressed air can also be used if the keys have dirt, hair or dust in between. It’s very important to use a cotton swab to clean the case openings because if excess dirt gets accumulated in there, it may cause the laptop to overheat.

Screen is the next big thing on your laptop which needs extra care. The screen of your laptops should not be sprayed directly with liquids. A dry microfiber cloth or a soft cotton cloth can be used to remove dirt. If the dry cloth is not sufficient, then rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol can be used. Always apply even and gentle pressure to the cloth. Too much pressure can damage your LCD screen. Remember never to press your fingers against the screen.

Smart phones

While cleaning a smart phone, it’s always smart to turn off the phone. A cotton swab dipped in diluted rubbing alcohol can be used to start cleaning the keypad, if you have one. Do not remove the screen guard if you have any major cracks on the screen because it will make the screen moist and the phone repairable. After cleaning the outside of the phone with the cotton swap you can use dry cotton to remove any dust which is under the battery cover. Camera lens should be cleaned with cotton swab damped with water. After attaching the battery cover back dampen a microfiber cloth with water and use a single motion from the speakers to the microphone to clean the screen. Circular motions can cause round scratches. A cracked screen wiped with pressure can cause the crack to get bigger.

Tablet

A tablet can cleaned using the same techniques as a smart phone. It’s important to use a microfiber cloth on a tablet’s screen as the other materials can damage the screen.

All the gadgets are prone to moisture. So you have to keep in notice that they don’t come in contact of excessive moisture while cleaning.

Alternatively, if you want your gadgets to be protected you can always find things which can make your cleaning easier. See thru speck products can protect your notebook from all the scratches. Its online offers you a wide range of products which can protect your worthy gadgets.

source: http://itselectricblog.com/blog/tips-tricks/how-to-take-care-of-your-gadgets/

10 Great Social Networking Tips and Tricks

Finding Smarter Ways to Use Social Media

By Leslie Walker

These 10 social networking tips and tricks will help you build a stronger network and take your online presence to the next level. All are designed to make you think strategically and take advantage of timesaving tools to boost your effectiveness.

Here are 10 ways to boost your social standing online.

1. Listen to Your Audience

   The three most important factors in social networking are audience, audience, audience. Identify what kind of people you're trying to reach and pay attention to what they're saying. Build RSS feeds and monitor conversations using listening tools like TweetDeck, Social Mention and Seesmic. (Take this 10-step tutorial on how to use Social Mention to monitor many social networks at once.) Learn the basics ofsocial metrics, or what to measure and why.

2. Participate and Collaborate

   Set goals for engaging your contacts and monitor how much activity your efforts generate. How many retweets do you get on Twitter? How many reposts does your blog generate? Use third-party tools like Retweetist and the Retweet iPhone App to measure your social media influence and impact on networks.Klout is one such tool that lets you track your impact on multiple social media networks.

3. Join Specialized Networks

   Whatever your passion, there is a specialized social network for you. Try Digg if you're a social newshound, Kickstarter for fundraising, Last.fm for music, deviantart.com for artists, fanvibe for sports, or ozmosis for doctors. To find your niche network, run a Google search on "yourtopic and social media."

4. Use Social Media Dashboards

   Save time by using tools like HootSuite to manage your accounts and activity across different social media services, including Twitter, WordPress, Facebook, Foursquare and others. HootSuite lets you post and read messages, track mentions of you, and lets you prepare posts and updates for automatic posting later at pre-scheduled times. Most of the best Twitter clients, for example, also let you manage other social networks.

5. Ask Lots of Questions

   Asking questions is a great way to engage your contacts, attract fresh links and learn new things. When people reply to your questions with comments or posts, it boosts the visibility of your content on that particular network. But take care to read and respond to answers.

6. Link, Link, Link

   Links equal love in social media. So liberally add links to your posts, status updates, tweets and other content. Cross-link to your tweets from your blog and vice versa. On Facebook, you can tag your pals to hyperlink their names. All it takes is adding the "@" symbol at the beginning of your friend's name when you write your status updates. You can also upload files and link to them. Try the TwileShare app, for example.

7. Time Your Tweets

   Noon Eastern Standard Time is a great tweeting time to reach bigger audiences. American West Coasters are showing up for work then, while East Coasters are starting lunch breaks. If you really want to expand your audience, check out this guide to writing good tweets.

8. Use Mobile Helpers

   If you have a smart phone, install special helper applications to send and receive information faster on your favorite social networks. Instagram, for example, helps iPhone users spice up their cell-phone photos and share them quickly across different networks -- Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and others. There are plenty of Twitter helpers for cell phones and tablet computers. Trickle, for example, displays tweets on the iPad one at a time.

9. Create a Visual Identity

   Tweak your Twitter profile and other social network home pages to create a unique visual identity. Create a custom Twitter background to add more bio information and give your Twitter presence personality. Many custom backgrounds are available for free downloading at sites such as MyTweetSpace.com.

10. Back Up Your Virtual Self

    Once you've taken time to build a strong social network, don't let your social identity go up in digital smoke. Make use of available tools for backing up your profiles, photos, and status updates. Facebook's backup tool is under "download your information" in Account Settings. For Twitter, try a third-party tool like TweetStream or TweetScan. WordPress lets you export your posts to a downloadable XML file, which you can save and import later into a new blog in the event that one of your best social blogs accidentally get zapped into oblivion.

source: http://personalweb.about.com/od/easyblogsandwebpages/a/10-Great-Social-Networking-Tips-And-Tricks.htm

Apple gadget tips & tricks

• March 28, 2014
• Apple
•  Leave a comment
• by Andy Halliday

The Macworld/iWorld event, the self-proclaimed “best place for all things Apple”, is taking place in San Francisco March 27th–29th. Attendees will be treated to a host of tech talks, which will see expert speakers share cool tips about making the most out of iPads, iPhones and iPods.

Figuring most of you couldn’t quite make it to California this weekend, we thought we’d put together this list of Apple lifehacks so you fellow fanboys can harness the full potential of your gadgets. Check them out below, and make sure to share any handy tips you know in thecomments section or on Facebook!

Apple App Store tips

Whether you have an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad, you have access to the Apple App Store. This is the one million–strong virtual marketplace of downloadable software, which features tools that can significantly expand the functionality of your phone and games that will keep you entertained for hours.

You can browse the selection via the pre-installed app on your device, or through iTunes on your computer. Purchases made on your Mac or PC will automatically be downloaded to your gadget over Wi-Fi or iCloud if you have syncing preferences set accordingly. Check out the Apple help guide here.

Share content across your Apple devices and PC using iCloud

Remember that you can get great apps without paying a penny by looking through the Free category, but you can also use tools like Apps Gone Free to get paid apps for free.

Advice for parents with Apple gadgets

If you ever let a child use your device, it’s a good idea to set up safeguards that prevent accidental purchases. Go to Settings>General>Restrictions and change the Require Password option to Immediately, so that password entry is always required for an app download. Also, disable in-app purchases to avoid horror stories like this.

Guided Access is also a useful tool for parents, as it allows you to “temporarily restrict your iOS device to a particular app”. That means you can leave your little one to play a game without worrying that they will accidentally delete your emails.

iOS at bedtime

If you like to use your iPhone or iPad before turning in for the night, it’s a good idea to invert colours through Settings>General>Accessibility, as this reduces eye strain. You can also use this feature to help you view your screen in bright sunlight.

Do you enjoy falling asleep to music? Take advantage of the sleep timer that’s built into the Clock app, and your device will stop playback or switch off after the allotted time.

Another useful night-time function is Do Not Disturb, which can be activated in Settings. This allows you to silence certain notifications, so late phone calls and the like don’t wake you up. However, you don’t need to be concerned about being unconnected in the event of an emergency, as the Repeated Calls option means your phone will ring if the same person calls twice within three minutes.

Apple device accessories

There are some accessories that are useful with almost any type of modern Apple gadget. One example is the Bluetooth keyboard. All iPads, iPhone 3GS or later, and fourth-generation iPod touch or later can connect to these wireless keyboards to create a laptop-like setup.

Xenta Bluetooth Keyboard

Second-generation iPod Touch and later, iPhone 3G or later, seventh-generation iPod Nano and later, and all iPad models work with standard Bluetooth speakers. This means you can enjoy high-quality sound without the need for cables.

Sony Portable Speaker

Another handy accessory, especially for Apple tablets, is the stylus. This enables more precise control over the screen, which is ideal if you’re note-taking or drawing. We particularly like the Sandberg product below, which combines a stylus with a screen-cleaning kit.

Sandberg 3-in-1 Touchscreen Cleaning Kit

We could go on forever: Apple includes a plethora of neat little features in its operating system that are only found after a little digging, and there are plenty of accessories and tricks that allow you to adapt your iPad, iPhone or iPod to your lifestyle.

If you want to make sure you’re not missing out, the first thing to do is read your manual thoroughly. Apple should have bookmarked the relevant page for you in Safari, but you can also find it here. It’s also worth going through the settings to see what you can change — just don’t fiddle with anything you’re not sure about!

source: http://www.ebuyer.com/blog/2014/03/apple-gadget-tips-tricks/

11 Tips to Boost Your Android Phone's Battery Life

• BY JAMIE LENDINO
• MAY 1, 2014
• 9 COMMENTS

Today's Android phones pack big bright screens and high-end features that suck plenty of power; here's how to squeeze the most juice out of your battery.

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Top-notch Android smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S5$149.99 at Amazon andHTC One (M8) are powerful, but unfortunately, they don't have endless battery life. In fact, many Android phone users would be happy to make it through a single day, hoping that a nightly recharge is sufficient.

Sadly, it sometimes isn't. A number of factors have conspired to reduce gadget endurance over the past several years. Thinner designs with less room for batteries, larger and brighter screens, faster quad-core processors, more software that runs in the background, and power-hungry GPS radios all share responsibility. The move from 3G to 4G networks a few years ago—particularly of the LTE variety—has also taken its toll.

But there's much more to poor battery life results than that. Fortunately, there's plenty you can do to stem the flow of juice from your Android device. To write this article, I used a Google Nexus 5$443.00 at Amazon, as it's running the latest version of Android 4.4 KitKat with no extra interface enhancements, but these tips should apply across just about any Android phone. Try these tips to extend your handset's battery life:

1. See what's sucking the most juice. Navigate to Settings > Battery to see an organized breakdown of what's consuming your phone's battery. Applications and features will display in a descending list of battery hogs. If you see an application you barely use or a feature you never use, you'll want to uninstall the app or turn off the feature.

2. Reduce email, Twitter, and Facebook polling. Set your various messaging apps to "manual" for the polling or refresh frequency, just as a test, and you'll instantly extend your device's battery life by a significant amount. Once you see what a difference that makes, try re-enabling just the most important ones, and possibly reducing their polling frequency in the process.

3. Turn unnecessary hardware radios off. It's great that today's phones have LTE, NFC, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, but do you really need all five activated 24 hours per day? Android keeps location-based apps resident in the background, and the constant drain on your battery will become noticeable, fast. If your phone has a power control widget, you can use it to quickly turn on/off GPS (the largest power drain), NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE. On stock Android, swipe down to bring up the Notification bar, and then tap the icon on the top right corner.

4. Use the extra power saving mode if you have it. The aforementioned Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8) both have Ultra Power Saving and Extreme Power Saving modes, respectively, that limits the phone to texting, phone calls, Web browsing, and Facebook. This can squeeze extra hours or even a day of standby time out of just a few remaining percentage points of battery.

5. Trim apps running in the background. From Settings > Apps, swipe to the left; you'll see a list of apps that are currently running. Tap on each one to see what they're for; you can stop any apps that you don't need running in the background all of the time.

6. Dump unnecessary home screen widgets and live wallpaper. Just because they're sitting on the home screen, seemingly inactive, doesn't mean they're not consuming power. This goes for widgets that poll status updates in the background, as well as ones that just sit there but look pretty and animated—not to mention animated live wallpaper. (But don't dump everything, as part of what makes Android great are the home screen customizations; just remove the ones you don't use.)

7. Turn down the brightness and turn off Automatic Brightness. It's probably obvious at this point, but you'll be surprised by how much this one alone helps to improve battery life.

8. Update your apps. Applications often get updated to use less battery power, so you should make sure your apps are up to date. Even if you configured the phone for automatic updates, some apps still require that you manually install updates. Check for app updates in Google Play by hitting the menu key and going to My Apps.

9. Keep an eye on signal strength. If you're in an area with poor cellular coverage, the phone will work harder to latch onto a strong-enough signal. This has an adverse effect on battery life. There's not much you can do about this one, but keep in mind that this could be the culprit behind a seemingly weak battery; it's worth popping the phone into Airplane mode if you don't need data or voice calls.

10. Check the reviews. We conduct battery life tests on every single Android phone we review. Unsurprisingly, the results vary widely between handsets, even on the same network. When choosing a phone, make sure that real world talk time is sufficient. You can't go by what the manufacturer says; we see variances on the order of several hours of usage in both directions on a regular basis.

11. Buy a battery case or larger extended battery. Battery cases combine a hardware enclosure, which protects your phone, with an extended battery that can double your phone's endurance. You can find models compatible with popular Android phones from a variety of manufacturers, such as the Mophie Juice Pack and Incipio Offgrid Battery Backup Case (both for the Samsung Galaxy S4).

SOURCE: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367542,00.asp

China Plans Security Checks for Tech Firms After U.S. Indictments

By CHRIS BUCKLEYMAY 22, 2014

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HONG KONG — A Chinese state agency that threatened retaliation after the United States obtained indictments of five People’s Liberation Army officerson charges of cyberespionage announced plans on Thursday for tighter checks on Internet technology companies that do business in China.

The agency, the State Internet Information Office, said the Chinese government would establish new procedures to assess potential security problems with Internet technology and services used by sectors “related to national security and the public interest,” reported Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

The announcement came three days after United States prosecutors laid out charges against the five Chinese military officers, accusing them of stealing sensitive commercial information over the Internet to benefit Chinese state companies. The indictment drew harsh denunciations from the Chinese government.

“I don’t think any of these things are coincidence in terms of this particular topic, because they’re looking for retaliatory measures,” Mr. Clark said in a telephone interview from Beijing. “But already, especially since Edward Snowden’s accusations, they’ve been increasingly concerned about Internet security.”The proposed vetting rules appear to have been under preparation for some time, but the timing of their unveiling is unlikely to be mere chance, said Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, which advises investors on the Chinese high-tech and Internet sectors.

The procedures will “stipulate Internet security assessments for important Internet information technology products and their suppliers entering the Chinese marketplace,” Xinhua reported, citing Jiang Jun, a spokesman for the State Internet Information Office. The move is intended to “prevent product suppliers illegally controlling, interfering in or interrupting user systems, or illegally collecting, storing, handling or exploiting information about users,” Xinhua said.

“Products and services that do not meet security requirements will be excluded from use in China,” Xinhua said.

Disclosures by Mr. Snowden, the former National Security Agency consultant, about the scale of United States intelligence gathering over the Internet showed that “without cybersecurity, there can be no national security,” said Mr. Jiang.

“The vetting will focus on I.T. products and services used in communications, finance, energy and other key industries that concern national security and public interests,” Li Jingchun, an engineer with China’s National Research Center for Information Technology Security, told Xinhua.

The companies affected could include Cisco Systems, IBM and Microsoft, suggested a commentary about the new policy on the website of China Daily, a state-run newspaper. The new procedures may oblige such companies to share sensitive data and technology, like encryption processes, a demand that has been a source of trade and commercial friction with China in the past, said Mr. Clark.

“It could be quite broad,” he said. “We have the equipment layer, we have the software lawyer, but we also have lots of applications and encryption.”

The move is potentially a major headache for companies that sell Internet hardware and services in China, especially to arms of the government. The reports suggested that such foreign companies were colluding with espionage and illegal data collection agencies.

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“The foreign companies are already being hit really hard,” said James McGregor, chairman of the greater China region for APCO Worldwide, who advises companies on investment and dealing with government in China. “It was getting tough already, but since Snowden it’s gotten tougher.”

On Monday, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment that named five members of the People’s Liberation Army and charged them with breaking into the networks of Westinghouse Electric, the United States Steel Corporation and other companies to obtain information about technology, commercial negotiations and trade disputes.

The latest reported comments from the State Internet Information Office did not describe the security checks as retaliation for the indictments. But on Tuesday, an official from the same office, who did not give his name,raised that threat.

“The United States’ indictment of five Chinese military officers over so-called cybertheft is pure nonsense, an entirely false accusation, and it is a case of a thief yelling ‘stop thief,’ ” said the spokesman, according to a report from Xinhua. “If the United States continues to willfully pursue its own course, China will take measures to resolutely counterattack.”

The Internet in China, and companies who do business with it, are already under the regulation of a plethora of state and Communist Party agencies. The State Internet Information Office was established in 2011 to “supervise online content management and handle administrative approval of businesses related to online news reporting,” a report at the time said.

China plans to strengthen internet security to foil 'hostile forces'

Technology

Sunday 18 May 2014 - 12:20pm

China plans to strengthen its internet security because "overseas hostile forces" are using the internet to "attack, slander and spread rumours." Picture: AFP PHOTO / BULENT KILIC

BEIJING - A Chinese official in charge of regulating the internet has said Beijing must strengthen internet security because "overseas hostile forces" are using the Internet to "attack, slander and spread rumours", state media said on Sunday.

Wang Xiujun, the deputy director of the China National Internet Information Office, said political security is fundamental, reported The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

"Now, overseas hostile forces are using the Internet as a main channel to penetrate and destroy (us)," Wang was quoted as saying. "Using the name of 'Internet freedom' to repeatedly attack, slander and spread rumours in an effort to undermine our country's stability and national security."Wang's remarks coincide with a broad crackdown on online freedom of expression that has intensified since President Xi Jinping came to power last year. The crackdown has drawn criticism from rights advocates at home and abroad.

Winning "the struggle for ideological penetration" would "decide to a great extent the future of our party and country", Wang said.

In February, Xi took the reins of a government body for Internet security, saying he aimed to turn China into a "cyber power". He said then that working on public opinion online was a long-term responsibility and the Internet could be used to "spread discipline".

The party renewed a campaign on online discourse last year, threatening legal action against people whose perceived rumours on microblogs are reposted more than 500 times or seen by more than 5,000 people.

China maintains tight control over the media. Censorship is widespread and Internet users cannot access information about many topics without special software to circumvent restrictions.

Wang said China wants to strengthen its security of networks and information systems in part due to intrusions in cyberspace by foreign governments, according to the People's Daily.

The case of former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden showed that "a few countries have used their superiority in Internet resources and information technology to conduct large-scale Internet surveillance and to steal a large volume of political, economic, military and corporate secrets", Wang said.

He did not name any country but questions over cyber-espionage have long cast a shadow over China-U.S. ties, with each side accusing the other of spying.

The Defence Ministry said in March China would beef up its internet security after the New York Times and Der Spiegel reported that documents leaked by Snowden said the U.S. National Security Agency accessed servers at China's Huawei Technologies to obtain sensitive data and monitor executives' communications. 

-Reuters

source: http://www.enca.com/china-plans-strengthen-internet-security-foil-hostile-forces