Buying a new Computer
I’ve just bought a Dell desktop system and how surprised was I to learn that the thing had no sound. Was it a fault? No, I needed to supply my own speakers or headphones for sound output. I had a word with Mumbai and discovered that only Dell laptops have sound. Mumbai said that no producers were supplying PC desktops with sound output. Dell systems do have Waves Maxx Audio on board, so with the speakers plugged in, the sound is good. Dell’s technical person was good enough to explain to me how to plug my speakers into the computer. I thanked her but I managed to figure that out for myself.
The absence of sound was not my only surprise. This was the first computer I have ever bought that forced me to create a Microsoft account before it would allow me to use the computer. No one on this planet needs a Microsoft account.
So, if you are thinking of buying a new computer, buy an Apple system, it will cost you three times as much but it will not keep updating you on a daily basis.
Dystopia – it’s only a few clicks away
Those wise guys that own big tech are only interested in monetising your use of the Internet. They may spout on about building communities but all they really care about is building a rocket and flying off to Mars to escape the mess they have made here.
The algorithms Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organise your access to political and social information. And did you know that your email can be read by anyone, from spooks to scammers, who want to learn about your decision making.
Encrypted email
However, it’s time to start rejecting all big tech’s nonsense, before the Oxford Dictionary considers removing the word Privacy from its pages. Believe it or not some very clever people at CERN, the agency that gave us the WWW, have had enough. They are providing Proton mail free. Proton is a web based package and so you log in through your net browser. The software provides you with end-to-end encryption – meaning, the only person who can read the email contents is the person you are sending to (as long as they also have a free copy of Proton).
Get yourself a VPN
Also, if you really want to go private and go undercover and visit places on the Web that you don’t want others to know about, you can get yourself a VPN – Virtual Private Network. Proton will let you have one of those for free as well.
Anything with Smart in the name should not be trusted
Smart speakers are listening to you and not just when you wake it up with a key word. There has been much in the press on the spying activity of Amazon’s Echo speaker, housing a disembodied female called Alexa.
Alexa listens to everything, the speaker is always on. However, you can stop her snooping. You can turn the microphone off . You can also fiddle around with her settings and turn off the default permission that allows Amazon to listen for Alexa training and to also enable Amazon to improve the product. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.
Alexa, Siri, Cortana and Google Assistant are all examples of ‘narrow AI’. In short, they are not really that bright. They are all in the same business, collecting information about you to sell on to the ad’ men.
They are using your phones as well
It’s not just your speakers that are tracking you, your phones are too. Apple devices including the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV box have a unique ID known as the “identifier for advertisers” (IDAF). Android has a similar tool known as the Android Advertising ID (AAID).
Apple has plans, when it finally launches iOS 14 (its new operating system, delayed to 2021) to introduce privacy features, to end the tracking by apps. Data trawlers like Facebook are wetting themselves. Apps will have to declare what data they collect and how they track people in Apple’s App Store.
.