How to Tell If a Direct Message Is a Scam Before You Click Anything
You get a DM from a friend’s account asking if you got the money they sent, or a message from “support” saying your account will be suspended in 24 hours. Your stomach drops a little, and your thumb is already moving toward the reply box. That split second, the one between seeing the message and […]
What Wearable Fitness Trackers Know About You, and Who Else Can See It
That band on your wrist knows when you wake up, how well you slept, where you went for your run, and roughly how stressed you were during that meeting that ran long. It probably knows your resting heart rate better than you do. None of that is sinister on its own. But it’s worth asking […]
Choosing a Strong Password That’s Actually Easy to Remember
A site tells you your new password needs a capital letter, a number, a symbol, and at least one character that doesn’t exist on a standard keyboard. So you type something like Tigers2024! and feel briefly clever, right up until you try to log in three weeks later and can’t remember whether you capitalized the […]
Why You Should Turn On Automatic Updates, Even If They’re Annoying
That little notification pops up right as you’re about to sit down and watch something. “Restart now to install updates.” You click “remind me tomorrow” for the fourth night in a row. It’s annoying, it’s badly timed, and it always seems to want a restart at the exact wrong moment. It’s also one of the […]
Setting Up a Family Media Agreement for the New School Year
The backpack is new, the shoes still smell like the store, and somewhere in the first week the phone question comes up again. Can I bring it to school. Can I have it at dinner. Why does my sibling get more time than I do. If your house doesn’t have clear answers to these by […]