Friday 1 July 2016

Become An iPhone Pro With These Interesting Hacks



Check out these interesting tips and tricks to use your iPhone like a pro

Smartphones these days have features more or less features like PC, which coupled with fast internet connectivity makes it easier to work while on the go. As a result, we end up spending most of our time on smartphones. In spite of that, many of us do not know the hidden tricks to use our smartphones in the best possible manner.

You may be owning an iPhone since 2007, the day it was launched but chances are that you dont know many hidden features that Apple has incorporated into it. In this article, we bring you some handy tips that will allow you to use your iPhone like a pro.

1. Keyboard: Double tap the space bar for a period at the end of the sentence in order to start a fresh sentence with a capital letter.

2. Ear plug: Do you know that you can click a selfie without touching your iPhone? All you need to do is press the + button of your ear plugs to click a picture without losing the focus.

3. Home-screen: Want the home screen of your iPhone 6 or 6 plus to lower down further? Just double tap the home button (do not click it) and the menu will drop down by a few centimetres.

4. Volume: Many a times, we end up adjusting the volume while listening to music to avoid the disturbing background noises. Not, anymore. Just, go to Settings > Music > EQ > Late Night and enjoy your music in peace.

5. Browsing: You can save yourself from the hassle of saving your email in drafts in order to copy the content from another email in your inbox. All you need to do is, tap in between Cancel and Send to minimize the New Message window. Now, you can easily scroll through your email and return to the New Message window at the bottom of the screen.

6. Keyboard: You notice a mistake in the sentence formation after typing the entire text. What to do? Just shake your phone to undo typing and write a fresh text without wasting a minute.

7. Reading: Many times we are bombarded with low storage notifications from our smartphone. You have to cut your app list reluctantly. Here is how you can save some storage space in your iPhone.

Avoid installing Dictionary app, as your iPhone already has an inbuilt dictionary. While reading, long press the word whose meaning you want to know. Click on the ‘define’ option from the list of options and improve your vocabulary.

8. Maps: The international mobile data pack makes a huge hole in the pocket while traveling abroad. So, if you wish to browse maps on the go, cache maps for offline use. Zoom in the location you are about to visit, type OK Maps in the search bar and your map will be saved for further reference.

9. Browsing: At times, while checking a webpage on our smartphones, we end up scrolling the page too far. Now, you can scroll to the top in a click only. Tap the status bar (the bar which mentions time and signal strength) and you will be redirected to the top of the webpage.

10. Keyboard: Do you find switching back and forth numeric keypad and alphabetic keypad hectic? Press and hold ‘123’ button on your keyboard and slide to the character you wish to input. The alphabetic keyboard will be resumed, as soon as you release the button.

How To Secure Any Android App With Your Fingerprint



Learn how you can keep your any Android app safe and private with your fingerprint

Google has now added fingerprint scanning support natively to Android ecosystem so that its own devices, Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P could use this fingerprinting facility. Luckily for Android smartphone owners, Google also added the fingerprint scanning support to its stock Android AOSP project making the Fingerprint API available for anybody who can use it.

The bad luck is that your smartphone needs a fingerprint scanner to make full use of this API. Since Google made the Fingerprint API available for Android smartphones, many developers started to implement this facility into their Apps. Once such developer is Rick Clephas, who used the API to provide superb locking system for Android Apps. Using his App will now allow Android smartphone owners to set their fingerprint as passcode to open any App on their mobile.

In this article, we shall show you how you can lock any app using your fingerprint to keep away your pokey friends and ensure privacy.

Requirements:

• Fingerprint scanner
• Android 6.0 Marshmallow or higher

(Note that Samsung devices running Android 4.3 to 5.1 will still work using Samsung’s API, and those on Marshmallow will use Google’s API)

Step 1: Install FingerSecurity by Rick Clephas

FingerSecurity is a free app that will allow you to block access to the Apps of your choice on your device using your fingerprint.

Step 2: Installing the App

You will get a quick feature tour when you first launch FingerSecurity. On the second page of this tour, you will get a chance to double-check your device’s compatibility. Tap “Check Compatibility” here, and if you see a big green check mark, then proceed further.

From here, the next page of the feature tour will ask you to register fingerprints in your smartphone’s settings under “Security” if you have not done it before. Then, you will be prompted to create a backup password. Lastly, FingerSecurity will ask for “Usage Access.” So, tap “Open Settings” on the screen, then press “OK” on the following menu.

Step 3: Enable Additional Security Options (Optional)

Once the essentials are done, you might think of making your security stronger by enabling a pair of additional options. If you would like to avoid access to only certain screens within your apps, enable the “Improved protection” option in FingerSecurity’s Settings tab. Then, tap “Enable” on the popup, and select and enable the FingerSecurity entry on the following screen, and press “OK.”

Next, to stop someone from being able to bypass the fingerprint lock on your apps, enable the “Advanced security” option, and then press “Activate” on the next screen. This will turn FingerSecurity into a device administrator, which means that the app cannot be uninstalled or closed unless you open this settings menu, scan your fingerprint, and disable this option again.

Step 4: Locking Apps that you want to remain private

With all of the bigger options configured, the only thing left to do is select the apps you would like to lock with your fingerprint. From the Apps tab in FingerSecurity’s main menu, tap the floating action button in the bottom-right corner. Next, choose any apps you would like to lock, then enable the first toggle switch on the subsequent screen.

If you chose to enable the Improved Protection feature in Step 3, you will see a second toggle switch on the same menu. Enable this option to only lock certain screens within the app, and you will notice a popup. The entries in this list are activities, which mean that their names are not simple to decode. However, after the last period in each entry if you concentrate on just the words, you will get an improved idea of what each activity is.

Step 5: Unlock Apps with Your Fingerprint

Now that everything has been configured, your apps will be locked by default. When you open any of the apps you selected in Step 4, you will be greeted by the lock screen. All you need to do is simply scan your fingerprint to access them.

Rick has also released a premium FingerSecurity App which will give some some additional features over and above the free version.

Man sues Apple for $10 billion for ‘stealing’ his designs for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch



Florida man sues Apple for $10 billion for ‘stealing’ his iPhone designs from 1992

Apple’s lawsuit woes don’t seems to be ending anytime soon. A Florida man, Thomas S Ross has filed a lawsuit against Apple accusing the tech giant for stealing and using his own hand-drawn designs for an ‘Electronic Reading Device’ (ERD) that he conceived in 1992 for the design of its iPhone, iPad and iPod. Now, Ross man is suing Apple for over $10 billion (£7.5 billion). He also believes that he is owed “a reasonable royalty” of 1.5pc of all of Apple’s future sales.

Ross had filed a patent for an ERD, a rectangular, hand-held gadget with a screen, in 1992. In his lawsuit, he claims that he was “the first to file a device so designed and aggregated as to have created a novel combination of media and communication tools… whose identity was, since then, hijacked and exploited by Apple’s iPhones, iPods, iPads and others.”



Included in the lawsuit filing are drawings of Ross’s original patent conceived between May and September 1992. Ross claims Apple’s own reproductions “are substantially the same as his technical drawings of the ERD, and that Apple’s three-dimensional derivative devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad), embody the non-functional aesthetic look and feel”.


Among his submissions are a design for a further device – or likely a combination of two devices, known as the ‘Cypher-Text’, a ‘reading device’; and the ‘Cypher-Note’, a ‘writing device’ (shown below).

Ross’s patent was never actually approved, since he failed to pay the appropriate fees to the US Patent and Trademark Office, and the application was declared abandoned in 1995. However, he claims Apple resorted to “dumpster diving” when designing the iPhone and subsequent devices.



“Instead of creating its own ideas, Apple chose to adopt a culture of dumpster diving as an R&D strategy,” Ross’s lawsuit says.

It quotes Steve Jobs, who once said that “we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas”, and claims that Apple has caused Ross “great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money”. However, he may struggle to convince a jury that Apple pinched his concept.

Ross is demanding a jury hear a trial in the Florida Southern District Court. Ross v. Apple, Inc. was filed with the Florida Southern District Court on June 27. The case number is 0:2016cv61471.

Hacker fools Facebook into allowing him to access to someone else’s FB account



Hackers get access to someone else’s Facebook account by tricking the social networking giant itself

Hackers fool Facebook users through social engineering and phishing to hand over their login credentials but what would you do when Facebook itself is fooled to hand over access to your account to a hacker ? Shocking right?

That’s what happened when a hacker deceived Facebook gained access to someone else’s account. The hacker posing as a user reportedly got in touch with Facebook to seek assistance to access his account, as he was unable to do so. He provided them with a fake ID and requested the tech giant to turn off login approvals. It was no surprise that the hacker was able to get Facebook to grant access to the account.

The victim in question is Aaron Thompson, a 23-year-old Michigan resident, who woke up on June 27 to find himself locked out of his own Facebook account, with the email address and phone numbers that were associated with it had been changed, according to a report by Motherboard. When panicked Thompson checked out his email and figured out what happened. On checking his email, Thompson found was a series of email between Facebook’s customer support and the hacker who had got control of his account.

“Hi. I don’t have anymore access on my mobile phone number. Kindly turn off code generator and login approval from my account. Thanks,” the hacker, posing as Thompson pretended to have lost access to the phone linked to the account, told the tech giant. Facebook’s automated response informed the hacker that if he couldn’t get in by using Code Generator (part of Facebook’s two-factor authentication system) the only other way was to send a photo ID to prove this was really Aaron Thompson. The hacker then sent what looks like a scanned photo of a fake passport.

That scanned image was also forwarded to Thompson’s email account with the response: “Thanks for verifying your identity. You should now be able to log into your account. We’ve also turned off login approvals to help prevent you from getting locked out of your account again in the future.”

According to Thompson, none of the details other than the name in the passport were accurate. Apparently, the fake image was then accepted by Facebook as sufficient proof and got the hacker complete control over Thompson’s Facebook account.

Upon discovering the scam, Thompson attempted to contact Facebook, in efforts to get back control of his account. He informed the tech giant that he was in fact the owner of the account and that previous emails and the passport ID had not been sent by him but the imposter.

“Please look further into this, it will be easy to see the account has been hacked. They sent a fake ID to Facebook’s help team to reset the email, and password,” he wrote.

Thompson, who claimed to have several pages on his Facebook account, which he used for business purposes, was reported feeling “pretty devastated” at having his online identity breached in such a way.

“It’s blatant harassment,” he said.

Thompson also claimed that the hacker allegedly contacted a few of his friends and even his fiancé, who he sent obscene pictures, called her names and even asked for nude pictures. He spent almost an entire day trying to get back control of his account and went to Reddit to explain his frustration.

However, the good news is that Facebook has understood their mistake and gone ahead by securing Thompson’s accounts and pages, and is also working on re-establishing his regular access. A Facebook spokesperson admitted: “Accepting this ID was a mistake that violated our own internal policies and this case is not the norm.”

In the end, this incident only highlights no matter how many security measures you put on your online accounts, it can by fairly simply bypassed by cybercriminals by creating mayhem on innocent victims.

Hacker Takes Over Oculus CEO’s Twitter Account, Announces New Boss



Oculus CEO’s Twitter account hacked, Hacker announces new Oculus CEO through it

An unknown hacker hacked Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe’s Twitter account on Wednesday. The hacker then used the hacked Twitter account to promptly announce a new CEO for the Facebook owned virtual reality company.


The hacker also changed Iribe’s Twitter bio to read, “im not testing ya security im just havin a laugh.”

This is just the latest in a string of tech CEO’s having their Twitter accounts compromised, however this hack doesnt seem to be the work of OurMine which has in the past hacked accounts of Travis Kalanick, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and Dick Costolo.


The hacker told Techcrunch’s Lucas Matney that he accessed the password via last month’s MySpace breach. The hacker added that he almost managed to hack into Iribe’s email account if not for two factor authentication enabled by the Oculus CEO.

The hacker also used the hacked Twitter account to send some quirky messages :


The hack was fairly brief. By Thursday morning, the hacker’s tweets had been removed and Iribe’s bio was restored.

Inventor creates a ‘ghost phone’ that can be seen only using smart glasses


This ‘ghost phone’ screen can be seen using only smart glasses

How would you like your smartphone to be read only by you through a set of glasses. If somebody else views it, he/she could see just a blank screen but you can see all the Apps through smart glasses. Is this possible? Yes it is! A Turkish inventor has created a ‘ghost phone’ that can only be seen using smart glasses. In other words, the messages on your smartphone are meant for your eyes only. The smartphone has an altered screen combined with glasses and the display appears to be white to the naked eye with no content.

The thought came to Celal Göger from Diyarbakir, Turkey, when he was going around on crowded public transport in Istanbul, and felt strangers’ eyes looking over his shoulder at business messages on his smartphone. He then decided to create a way to hide iPhone information using a special screen used with glasses.


He came up with the ‘ghost phone’ in just four months, which he wants to name C.COGER I. The smartphone is altered utilizing a chip which makes the screen look white. A second chip in a pair of glasses then interfaces with the smartphone, making the screen noticeable to the wearer.


In spite of growing up in a small village without no electricity, Mr Goger has a technology studio where he invented this way of concealing his screen from others.


Mr Goger said: ‘I think I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘If I had been born in the UK I think I would have gotten a lot more support to move this project forward and start mass production of my invention.’


‘On the off chance that I had been conceived in the UK I think I would have gotten significantly more backing to advance this anticipate and begin large scale manufacturing of my development.

‘Somebody’s telephone is an exceptionally individual thing and I believe it’s amazingly discourteous when other individuals gaze at it.


‘When I completed my innovation I began educating individuals concerning it however no one trusted me.

‘They thought it must be some sort of enchantment trap until they saw my development which left them totally gobsmacked.

‘In the event that I can get financing I am wanting to take this anticipate advance and introduce an on/off catch on the telephone which implies that the client chooses whether to actuate the capacity.’