Today’s Tech Sightings: Child Uses Sleeping Mom’s Fingerprints to Buy Pokémon Gifts Biometrics are supposed to offer better security for your mobile devices. But no one probably expected that Bethany Howell’s six-year-old daughter, in Arkansas, would borrow her fingerprint while she slept to buy $250 of Pokémon Christmas gifts. The child, Ashlynd, later admitted she had […]
How NORAD Has Been Tracking Santa for 61 Years
Posted December 23rd, 2016 at 11:30 am (UTC-5)
Every Christmas, for the past 61 years, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, looks to the skies, tracking Santa as he distributes gifts and good cheer to children everywhere. Techtonics talked with NORAD volunteers last Christmas to learn how this is done. Here’s an updated rerun of the story. Millions of people are tracking […]
Apple Eyes Production in India; Thieving Russian Botnet Exposed
Posted December 20th, 2016 at 1:21 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: WSJ: Apple in Talks With India to Manufacture Locally Apple has been in communication with the Indian government to explore manufacturing its products locally in India. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple sent a letter to New Delhi to lay out manufacturing plans and request financial incentives. India’s Prime Minister, Narendra […]
Taking Your Data to the Cloud? Read the Fine Print First.
Posted December 16th, 2016 at 1:00 am (UTC-5)
Every time you reach for your smartphone to access your social media feed or dig up a contact, you are tapping into remote servers that house your data, also known as the cloud. And while most people probably don’t give this a second thought, they should – if they want to keep their information private […]
One Billion Yahoo Accounts Hacked; Messenger AI Gets Bigger Role
Posted December 15th, 2016 at 12:50 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: One More Time:1 billion Yahoo Accounts Stolen in Biggest Hack Ever Yahoo announced Wednesday that one billion user accounts were hacked and stolen in 2013 – the largest hack ever and the second for the beleaguered company. In September, Yahoo revealed that up to 500 million user accounts were compromised. The breach […]
Evernote Takes Liberties With User Data; Drone Deliveries Makes History
Posted December 14th, 2016 at 12:00 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Evernote ‘Privacy’ Policy Update Allows Employees to Read Your Notes If you are using the Evernote app to take notes, you might want to reconsider. Evernote’s latest update to its “privacy” policy lets some of the company’s employees read your notes in the interest of improving machine learning. It bears mentioning that […]
‘Pokémon GO’ Goes to India; ‘Popcorn Time’ Redefines Ransomware
Posted December 13th, 2016 at 10:17 am (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Reliance Jio Brings ‘Pokémon GO’ to India Starting Wednesday India is about to catch the Pokémon GO craze – beginning Wednesday. The country’s 4G-LTE carrier, Reliance Jio, has partnered with Niantic, Pokémon GO’s publisher and developer to bring the game to the Indian masses. Unofficially, however, many Indians have already been busy […]
For Developing World, 2016 Brought Education, Drones, Big Data
Posted December 9th, 2016 at 11:18 am (UTC-5)
2016 opened new technology frontiers for developing countries in education and healthcare, thanks to mobile devices and a little help from nonprofits and tech giants. In parts of the developing world, mobile technology has been bridging the gap where there is spotty or no traditional internet connectivity, a lack of teachers, limited school resources, and […]