James' World 2

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If you’re a WhatsApp user, you will have seen the alarming stories warning about the messaging platform’s surprise privacy changes, many suggesting you switch to alternatives. The good news is you don’t need to do that—WhatsApp is still okay to use. The bad news, though, is that you do need to change these critical settings to stay safe.

WhatsApp is changing. The messaging platform has now confirmed changes first announced in October, that open up further data sharing with Facebook. This last week has been the toughest for WhatsApp since the damaging spyware revelations in 2019. The idea that the world’s largest private messenger will share data with the world’s most ruthless data machine has prompted a backlash. Installs of rival messengers are soaring, up hundreds of percent in the last few days.

Time for some perspective. Your most private and sensitive data on WhatsApp, your messages, will remain private to you and the people you communicate with; messages are end-to-end encrypted as they’re sent—only you and the other side of each message can decrypt its content. Even WhatsApp has no means of accessing the content in transit, while the messages on your phone are protected by the security of your device.

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All of those obnoxious marketing emails that crowd your inbox aren’t just pushing a product. They’re also tracking whether you’ve opened the email, when you opened it, and where you were at the time by using software like MailChimp to embed tracking software into the message.

How does it work? A single tracking pixel is embedded into the email, usually (but not always) hidden within an image or a link. When the email is opened, the code within the pixel sends the info back to the company’s server.

There have been some attempts to restrict the amount of information that can be transmitted this way. For example, since 2014, Google has served all images through its own proxy servers, which could hide your location from at least some tracking applications. And extensions such as Ugly Email and PixelBlock have been developed to block trackers on Chrome and Firefox.

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Emails being tracked

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When the pandemic upended our lives, many of us were forced to stay home and shift our work and hobbies to the internet. Office meetings and classrooms were replaced with video calls. We binged on Netflix, played more video games, and shopped online.

The result: We slammed our home Wi-Fi networks with more devices that were doing more than ever before. Our congested internet connections, which contributed to spotty video calls and sluggish downloads, became the No. 1 tech headache.

Now a new generation of Wi-Fi, known as Wi-Fi 6, has arrived to solve this problem. It brings faster speeds and broader coverage. Most important, wireless technology does a better job sharing a data connection more efficiently across a large number of household devices, like phones, tablets, computers, smart speakers, and TVs.

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Credit…Glenn Harvey

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