TechTalk Archives

The Smartphone and Digital Camera MASH UP

Does this make a Smart Camera or a Smarter Phone?

As the smart phone’s camera megapixels increase and the LED flash becomes brighter, and the touch screens becomes the interface of choice, gradually, the point and shoot digital camera will not be as necessary to have. Phones are always with you, you will not need a cable to save your images. You can email them as you shoot away, fast and convenient, they are ready for sharing with a friend, yourself or a relative.

Remember the PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistant) of the 90’s?  They displaced the paper based Personal Planners of the 80’s. But, then the Smart Phone came along, and the PDA merged into the cell phone. I see the digital camera following a similar path. Actually, PDA’s are still in use, just in specialized applications, though. And the professional digital cameras will always have their place.

So enjoy your photo and video taking filled summer of activities.

Phishing

When browsing the internet, it should be a concern that the information shown to you may not be exactly what it looks like. You may have heard of phishing, but what is it?

Phishing is a scammer’s attempt to look like a legitimate business or service that you subscribe to. A scammer will make a web page that looks identical to the real website. When you try to connect to that business, it will take your username and password and provide it to the scammers running the racket.

Here’s a scenario. You receive an innocent looking email from your bank that tells you need to change your password for security purposes. You click on the link in this email; and it sends you to a website that looks exactly your bank’s real website. You type your username and password, and then scammers have access to your bank account. Not good.

It’s not just an email that may contain a redirect to a nefarious page; it could come in the form of an answer on yahoo answers, or even a banner ad on any page, to name a few.

When you log into a website, just about all of them will require a https connection. This just means that the data is encrypted, and deciphered on the server side. In this system it is not feasible for a hacker to have enough processing power to decrypt these data packets.

This means that when you go to a website to log in, look at the web address. If it says for example, https://www.bankofamerica.com, then it is very unlikely to be a scam.If it says just http://www.login.yahoo.com beware!! Look for the https://...

When you receive an email, it can be possible to have a link that may say https: but this may really just be a trick. An easy way to avoid this is to right click a link and click copy, and then paste the link into the address bar.