Smart devices. They’re growing more popular by the day. Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod and all sorts of smaller brands are all jumping on the bandwagon. The main reasons they’re doing so is both to tie customers into their wider suite of services as well as to deploy artificial intelligence straight into people’s homes, where it can use data effectively to develop as quickly as possible.
Updating your devices, whether that’s a desktop, laptop or a phone may seem like a real hassle. Being nagged by a notification every hour or so is really annoying, especially when you have lots to do. It’s so much easier just to ignore or delay those updates. No harm in putting it off until later, right?
Face-scan unlocking. Seems like magic. No more remembering passwords or having your thumb used to open your device when you’re unaware. This is the future, right? Well, yes, but just because there’s this new-fangled biometric security doesn’t mean you can stop being vigilant. Nevertheless, this new technology opens up debate on the usefulness of various authentication measures for devices. I’m going to focus on one particular factor: convenience.
We all fear it. Dropping our phones. Seeing the tell-tale signs of a massive crack across the screen, or even worse; the phone failing to boot up at all. Our first instinct in these horrible situations is to try and get it fixed. After all, no one wants to pay hundreds of pounds to rectify what can be solved with a fraction of that, right?
You’re probably being tracked right now. Your location, your preferences, your political beliefs, what you search for, who you communicate with, what you communicate about. The possibilities and (and data) are practically endless. And this process is accelerating rapidly. Essentially, companies all over the globe are trying to build a dossier on you with all of this data and then sell it to the highest bidder. They want to treat you as a guinea pig which they can monitor and test at will. Seems a bit degrading? Don’t worry; there’s a solution.
