With the holiday season just passed, I would expect a lot of people now have new electronic devices in their hands. While getting new devices set up is considered a pain for many folks, making sure that they’re set up securely is growing increasingly important.
A shiny new mobile phone is a joy to behold and once it’s out of the box everyone wants to take it for a spin and see what it can do. Step one is always to get the phone paired to an Apple or Google account to get the email connectivity out of the way and from there playtime commences. With that initial set up complete, it’s always a good idea to take a look through the advanced settings to see what it going on in there before enjoying the new bells and whistles
Many people aren’t aware that pairing a phone to a Google account, for example, allows the phone to act on your behalf across all of Google’s services as well as simply delivering email. That first test photo taken with an Android device can cause it to immediately stamp the photo with the time and date, as well as the location where the photo was taken, and then transfer the photo to a Google + account and share it with the world. Without digging into some of the more advanced settings all of this could be happening quietly in the background without the user’s knowledge.
The potential risks of letting new technology function in the manner that the manufacturer decides is best can pose a risk to the privacy and safety of the user. It’s worth taking those few extra minutes to make sure that we decide what our equipment does for us and how it goes about it.
published in Business Venture ~ ventureguelph.ca
