technology | Shweta Taneja

June 16, 2017June 1, 2017

7 signs that you are addicted to social media

Feel you are addicted to social media? Here are the signs to look out for and what you can do about it.

Notifications are taking over your life

Brr. Boing. Beep. Your phone keeps calling, blinking, beckoning you, and you oblige again and again, while you’re studying, working, eating, dating or sleeping. It’s stressful and you have Fomo (fear of missing out) attacks in the middle of the night, when you wake up to check yet another beep. A study, conducted by a team of professors from the University of Southern California, US, in January 2016 and published in the journal Psychology Reports: Disability & Trauma, looked at people’s brains while they surfed social media and found that they responded to notifications much faster than they did to traffic signals. Ofir Turel, the professor who led the study, rated the need to check almost as high as cocaine addiction.

Change it: “We speculate that addictive behaviour in this case stems from low motivation to control the behaviour,” Turel said in a press release. Try switching off all push notifications on social media apps. Head to Settings>Notifications>Off for each application. This way, you will have to make the effort to open an app to see the notifications.

The 11th Like makes your day

Getting more than expected likes on Instagram and Facebook can give you a high—and you may feel depressed if the response is tepid. According to a report by Britain’s National Health Service, released in September, social media posts are responsible for a spike in depression and anxiety in a quarter of women aged 16-24. Continue reading “7 signs that you are addicted to social media”

March 3, 2017February 19, 2017

Report a bribe or file an RTI – All through your phone

If you wish to be involved with the process of your government, as any citizen should, you do not necessarily need to wait for the UMANG app. There are already many apps that allow you to ask questions, offer suggestions and get involved in government initiatives. Till the government comes out with UMANG, we suggest a few other apps you can try.

Participate in policymaking

Are you very vocal about government policies? If yes, head to MyGov (free on Google Play, Mygov.in), an online portal of the Union government where different departments seek suggestions and advice. Over the last year, the site saw discussion on ideas such as simultaneous elections and open data use licence and invited suggestions on a draft policy note on value capture finance. It also allows you to take part in logo-making and design competitions. If you want the Prime Minister to talk about an issue on his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ show, you can give your ideas on this site. So just log in and air your ideas.

Since its launch, the app has seen more than 500,000 downloads, though it is a bit slow to load and hasn’t been updated since 2015. The website offers the best experience.

File an RTI

Continue reading “Report a bribe or file an RTI – All through your phone”

February 3, 2017January 23, 2017

The 8 best translation apps for travellers

What are the best translation apps for travellers? When Douglas Adams invented the Babel Fish, “a small, yellow, leech-like odd thing” that would help you instantly understand anything said in any language in the whole wide universe, in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, little did he know that 39 years after the radio comedy was first broadcast, such technology would actually exist. New devices and updated translator apps are making it easier to understand a foreign language and are much simpler than “plugging in a fish into your ear”. Though the technology of machine translation still needs the wrinkles ironed out, it’s fun to try out some of these apps and devices when you’re travelling. Here’s a list of some of them. However, do expect errors and misunderstandings—up to 40%, in fact.

WayGo

Heading to China, Korea or Japan and want an app to read the signboards and menus for you? WayGo fills this need by giving you the English translation for street signs, menus or anything that you point your smartphone camera at. All this without the use of the Internet.

Free for 10 translations per day and a one-time payment of Rs418 for the Pro version. Available in Google Play and App Store. Waygoapp.com.

iTranslate voice

iTranslate Voice 3 translates conversation between two people using smartphones. So if you’re speaking to someone in Spain, you hear English, and the other person hears you speak Spanish. The feature, called AirTranslate, needs two people talking on two iOS devices. Last updated in December, the app also offers text-to-speech, offline and text translation in 40 languages.

$6.99 (around Rs480) in Google Play and App store. Itranslatevoice.com.

SayHi

Talk into your iOS devices and hear what you’ve said in a different language. SayHi is designed for instant communication. You can have a conversation with anyone without switching languages, even type rather than speak. The app works for around 40 languages, including Arabic, French, Italian, English and Spanish.

Free in App Store. Sayhitranslate.com.

Read the complete article on livemint.com

January 6, 2017December 8, 2016

Make time travel with time-lapse video apps

A sunset crunched in 3 seconds. A party shortened to a few minutes. Time-lapse videos used to be a pain to shoot but now with smarter apps they’re as simple as, well, taking a selfie. Here are a few apps to turn you into a video pro.

Hyperlapse

If you’re an Instagram workhorse, Hyperlapse is the app for you to capture a speedball video. The app smoothens hand-held videos using a fantastic image-stabilization software that uses data from your phone’s gyroscope to measure and remove frames that are shaky. Run, walk, jump, fall, drive and take a video and get a cinematic feel without lugging around a selfie stick or a tripod. All you need to do is hold the phone camera up, shoot a video, choose how fast you want it to go (it can speed up your videos up to 12 times)and upload. The only downside of the app is that it is available only on iPhones.

Free on iPhone and iPad. Hyperlapse.instagram.com

Microsoft Hyperlapse

One of the few apps to create timelapse on Windows Phone, the Microsoft Hyperlapse Mobile comes with a simple, easy-to-use interface. It offers 32x speed, so you can crunch hours of videos into a few minutes. And you’re not limited to just the app. You can import any video, taken anywhere and speedball them up. What we also loved is that it can record 1080p videos. That’s pro- quality video for free and just right to be seen on the biggest screen in your home. This app can also stabilize videos, though that happens only if you choose 1x speed.

Free on Windows Phone and Android. Research.microsoft.com

Framelapse

Build by Noida-based computer engineer Nishant Singh as part of his project in the last year of his B.Tech course, the app comes loaded with features to take a hyper video. You can adjust the frame interval, speed, zoom, autofocus, adjust white balance, choose the front or back camera, set video resolution and take a video in landscape or portrait. You can also set up a video duration to stop recording automatically. So just place it in a corner of a party and let it do all the work while you mingle. The Pro version, which costs $2.99 (around Rs204), has added advance functions like sleep mode that reduces battery drain while recording and customization of the length of the video, exposure and frame interval.

Free on Android. Neximolabs.com

Read the complete article on Livemint.com

December 27, 2016December 8, 2016

6 gadgets to replace your old-fashioned switches

Dim the lights, set the mood and prepare for sparkles that you can control with your voice or a smart device. There are lights that help you sleep, lights that act like burglar alarms and fairy lights that twinkle in rainbow colours. We tell you of the best gadgets out there that can help you say goodbye to old-fashioned switches.

iDevices socket

The Socket Wi-Fi-enabled light-bulb adaptor enables you to control any standard light bulb remotely. You can change the illumination power using voice commands on your smartwatch or phone. You can design a custom lighting schedule, convert the bulb into a night light or control the ambience of the room. It works with the iDevices app, iPhone’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa voice assistants.

$59.95 (around Rs.4,000, shipping extra); idevicesinc.com. Continue reading “6 gadgets to replace your old-fashioned switches”

November 11, 2016October 27, 2016

Seven quick and nutritious breakfast fixes

Looking for a recipe of a perfect breakfast? Most traditional Indian meals, like poha, upma and idli, are high in starch and calories, which is great if you need a shot of energy— but what you also need is a healthy dose of protein to keep you going for the day. Choose what Madhuri Ruia, founder of Integym, Mumbai, and a Mint columnist calls “first-class proteins”. “Egg white, paneer, chicken or fish ensures balance in blood sugar and insulin levels,” she says. And when it comes to carbohydrates, adds Ruia, “opt for grains like oats, muesli, nachni (finger millet), bajra rotior multigrain roti, which give you energy but keep you feeling full for longer”.

The body needs essential nutrients like calcium, iron and vitamin B, as well as protein and fibre in the morning, says Shikha Sharma, founder and managing director of Nutri-Health, a Delhi-based wellness clinic. She says an ideal breakfast should be split into three parts: “One-third should be carbohydrates, another third should be filled with proteins and the remaining portion should be fruits and vegetables.”

It is also good to add variety to your plate. “It’s like exercise. If you keep doing the same set of exercises again and again, your body stops responding,” says Mumbai-based sports nutritionist Deepshikha Agarwal. A variation will ensure you don’t get bored—and that you consume different types of vitamins and minerals.

Agarwal suggests choosing between idli-sambhar with fruit, milk with cornflakes, vegetable poha, pancake with a milkshake, or a vegetable omelette with a bran muffin and orange juice.

7 RECIPES THAT ARE EASY TO MAKE

Continue reading “Seven quick and nutritious breakfast fixes”

November 4, 2016July 25, 2016

Your smartphone is a memory machine

Here are some apps to help you remember everything—from billion-dollar ideas to baby-diaper changes

Constantly juggling meeting schedules, travel dates and hotel stays on business tours, Mumbai-based Rajesh Nambiar, a business-to-business tour operator, was beginning to lose track— so he started looking for a solution.

“All my time was being spent in checking my flights, informing clients and vendors on when I will be in their city and coordinating,” says the 42-year-old, who travels as frequently as eight times a month, both domestically and internationally, on tours, as well as for negotiations and business meetings. That’s when he came across WorldMate (freemium on iOS, Android and Windows phone), a travel app that automatically creates an itinerary after you feed it your flight and hotel details. All Nambiar had to do was forward his travel and hotel bookings to WorldMate’s email ID and get a chronological itinerary for the whole year.

“Now if someone asks me when I’m reaching Dubai, I just check my WorldMate and tell them. I can also access what time I’m travelling, where I’m staying, the address of the hotel, the PNR of my flight and other details one tends to forget, all with a single click,” he says, adding that he liked using apps for schedule reminders so much that he has synced his personal and office calendar with WorldMate updates using Google Calendar (free on Android and iOS). “The Google Calendar app has replaced the need for a personal secretary for me. All I have to do is open it and I know my meeting times, travel time, dates and all the things I have to do in a day,” he says. It gives him the feeling of having a few hours extra each day.

Something similar happened to Bengaluru-based Nimisha Bhadauria Shivam, a mother of two, who wanted to organize her life. She decided to use Feed Baby Pro (Rs.100 on Android, free on iOS), an app that tells her when it’s time to change her child’s diapers, feed her, track her weight and growth. “When my first child was born five years ago, I did the same thing in a diary, which was much more cumbersome. An app makes it simpler,” says the 37-year-old, adding that she has also installed Water Drink Reminder (freemium on Android), an app to remind her to drink water regularly. “My friends make fun of me, but with two children to manage, it’s hard to remember to do things for yourself,” she says. The self-confessed app addict also uses Google Calendar for bills and payment reminders and has recently been looking for a good money-tracking app. “It’s less stressful if you know what all is needed to be done in a day,” she adds.

Mumbai-based author Samit Basu likes to key his “billion-dollar book ideas” into his phone or laptop. He uses Evernote (free on iOS, Android, Windows phone and Web). “I just add in random ideas, article links, research points and reviews to my Evernote, which then syncs this information to all my devices,” he says. Every few months, he scans all his ideas to see which ones he would like to turn into a book. Except that he cannot decipher his own notes sometimes. “Now I’m waiting for a reminder app that will explain to me what I meant when I wrote the billion-dollar idea a few months ago and hopefully can also write the book,” he says with a smile.

While Basu waits, we have listed some apps for you to remember the things you need to do.

Multitasking on the go

Make checklists, add tasks and sync them across all devices, all with simple gestures of swipe and click. You can set alarms to tasks, share tasks and lists, choose to get time- or location-based reminders, set recurring tasks, attach notes or attachments to your tasks, even add a to-do by sending an email. You can print, export or share your lists and add in sound recordings or photos. There are many apps that offer these features. Choose from Any.do (Any.do), Wunderlist (Wunderlist.com), Todoist (Todoist.com) or Evernote (Evernote.com), most of which have apps for iOS, Android, Windows phone, Kindle Fire and the Web. The smartphone apps are free to download, with optional in-app, or additional feature, purchases.

Remember the toothbrush

Packing for a trip can be stressful—you will invariably forget something as important as a toothbrush. PackPoint (freemium on Android and iOS) makes an automatic checklist after you tell it where you’re going, and why. You can share this list with fellow travellers and help them out too. Apps like Tripcase (free on Android and iOS), Tripit (freemium on Android and iOS) and WorldMate make your itinerary automatically once you forward your hotel, flight, car rental and restaurant confirmation emails to them. You can view the itinerary, tweak it or even save it offline.

Never forget the pill

Take the stress out of daily medication with Medisafe (freemium on Android and iOS), which not only reminds you when you have to take medicines but also tells you which one to take when, and sends you a reminder if your parent or child has missed theirs. You can also track blood pressure, weight and other parameters and get reminders when you need to buy new medicines. Lady Pill Reminder (free on Android) can remind you to take birth-control pills. Install Aqualert (free on Android) or WaterMinder (free on iOS) to remind you to drink water. Then there are Clue (free on Android and iOS) and Glow (free on Android and iOS), which can keep track of menstrual cycles.

October 28, 2016July 25, 2016

Revisit your digital past with these photo memory apps

Do you remember what you did last summer? Now you can relive your past, one photograph at a time, with these apps

Take a deep breath and try to recollect what you did last year—which flower you photographed, how a mundane Saturday became beautiful because you sighted a sparrow, or that dessert you ate at the restaurant whose name you don’t recall. Now you can relive your past, one photograph at a time, with these apps.

TIMEHOP

Timehop.com

Free on iTunes and Google Play

Delve into digital nostalgia with Timehop, which shows you what you were doing this day, exactly a year ago. Once you’ve downloaded the app and connected it to your social networks, Timehop plods through your past photos, status updates, tweets, check-ins and posts. Every morning, you wake up to a new photograph or memory from a year ago that you can also share on your social networks.

Windows Phone users can also try the Time Travel ! app, which is the same, though not so sleekly designed.

COLLECT

Thelenslab.com

Rs.133 on iTunes

Collect is about recording one moment every day. So you feed it one photo of yourself, your children, your garden, pet, anything really, daily. You can have multiple folders, but can only upload one photo per folder. The app allows you to include a detailed note along with the photograph and save it with tags. You can import a photo from your camera roll or take it from within the app. A month later, it creates an automatic, hi-resolution collage of those 30 days, one that you can share with friends and family.

Automatic backup to iCloud is available, but costs Rs.190 extra.

MEMOIR

Yourmemoir.com

Free on iTunes

Memoir displays your earlier photos when you revisit the same place or meet the same friend. It almost seems serendipitous, though it uses the data you have collected through your smartphone—when you click a photo, check in at a restaurant or update your social network. Once you’ve downloaded it, you connect Memoir to your phone and social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare and Dropbox, and then let it do its job.

Memoir tracks the photos on your phone, connected social networks, status updates as well as location check-ins and then notifies you about these old memories on the basis of where you are, what you’re doing or who you’re with. If you’re having adosa, for example, it might tell you the last time you had one, and who you were with at that time. Or show photos of the same hotel you were at years ago, or the people you were with. You can annotate the old memories by adding new ones—like adding a new photograph with a note.

FLASHGAP

Flashgap.com

Free on Google Play and iTunes

Attending a party and want to see it from every angle? Ask your friends to download Flashgap. Once everyone has created a profile, you can create a shared photo album in which you can all upload photographs using the app. No one will be able to see, modify or delete the uploaded photos while the party is on. As soon as you take a photograph, it will show in the app for 3 seconds before disappearing. All this “evidence” becomes visible in the app at noon the following day, when you’re probably dealing with the hangover of the night before. Once the shared album is available, you and your friends can chat about the evening, relive the moments, laugh out loud at all the unfiltered visual documentary you’ve collected, comment on photographs, even delete the ones you don’t like.

GOOGLE PHOTOS

Photos.google.com

Free on Google Play, iTunes and Web

In August, Google Photos rolled out a walk-down-memory-lane feature. Now it’s reached a phase where it automatically feeds you enhanced photographs, collages from the past, and videos of a day from your past. All the images come as cards within the Google Photos app and list the people and places you’ve visited. You can choose to share through email or on social network, or show it to the person next to you.

ON THIS DAY

Facebook.com/onthisday

Free on Facebook

Built by Facebook, On This Day sends notifications to your Facebook timeline about what you were up to on a specific day, a year or a few years ago. Memories include posts, other posts you’re tagged in, major life events or when you became friends with someone on Facebook.

Had a break-up and don’t want to see the memories with your ex? You can control that by going to the app page. Click on Preferences, choose the Edit option next to the People tag and enter the name of the person whose memory you don’t want to see. The app also lets you filter by date—which days you don’t want to be reminded of and which ones you wouldn’t mind.

MOMENTS

Momentsapp.com

Free on Android and iTunes

Imagine, you and your friends go for a brunch and each of you ends up clicking a lot of pictures through the day, with multiple devices and smartphones. At the end of the day, when you go home, you want the pictures that your friends have clicked of you on their smartphones. Instead of asking them individually, you can download and install Moments.

This app automatically groups your photos with the people who are in them, either by event or day. So, for example, if you went to a wedding and all of you clicked pictures, Moments will make a Wedding folder for you to share, suggesting the friends you should share it with. All you need to do is add some photos the app might have missed and send those to your friends. It will work the same way for your friends too. Once you see all the photos taken by everyone, you can tap on the ones you want to save on your phone. Your friends need to have the app to be able to share and download too.

complete article at livemint.com

October 21, 2016July 25, 2016

Free ways to automate your posts

Tired of updating your social media accounts individually? These apps will do the work for you

You wake up in the morning with a tweet-worthy topic. But it’s still early and no one will be checking their Twitter accounts for a few hours. So your spectacular construction of 140 characters could get lost in inane tweets of sentiments equalling: “I’m up, world!” or “Off to the loo”. You worry about it, rushing to office, trying to hold on to your sentence construction for a few more hours. And after you post it on Twitter, you worry about reposting it on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media accounts. Before you know it, half the day has gone by.

Fret not. Here’s a collection of apps that can do the menial work for you. Just sit back, think up brilliantly constructed posts and schedule them at the right time to showcase to your audience.

IFTTT

Free on iOS, Android and Web

Ifttt.com/products

Short for IF This Then That, IFTTT offers a delightful range of possibilities for those who want to create connections between their social media accounts, connected devices, gadgets, smart-home devices, even cars. For example, if Curiosity Rover, US space agency Nasa’s Mars mission Twitter account (@MarsCuriosity), posts a photo, you can automate your app to send an email to your astronomy group. Or if you post a tweet about milk, you can set up an action-reaction trigger to send a notification to your spouse’s smartwatch and remind him/her to get milk.

The possibilities are endless, for IFTTT offers a whopping 306 types of online accounts to work with: Message your roommate when you reach a grocery store; save your favourite tweets on Evernote, or share Facebook status updates on Tumblr and LinkedIn. Even post videos you like on YouTube or your blog. These action-reaction relationships are called Recipes in the IFTTT world. You can create your own recipe of action-reaction or use what others have created.

Our favourite is the one IFTTT recently put up on its blog—it automatically updates your Twitter profile image whenever you post a new Facebook profile picture. In case a person wants different profile photos on Twitter and Facebook, s/he can simply choose to not use this Recipe.

HOOTSUITE

Free for up to three social media accounts; $8.99 (around Rs.600) a month for more accounts; available on Android, iOS and Web

www.hootsuite.com

Be it for an individual, a start-up or a company, Hootsuite automates social media, making it easy to share photographs or posts across multiple social media accounts. It shortens links and photos using the ow.ly service and gives you a preview of your post across all social media. You can schedule multiple posts, and set the time and day when you want a post to be released.

Hootsuite also allows you to see feeds of multiple accounts in the same window and reply to comments or tweets. You can also track a particular hashtag, and reply or comment on it, from within this app. No more toggling between Twitter and Facebook to see who’s saying what in response to your post. The Analytics tab shows which tweets are getting the maximum clicks.

Hootsuite has launched Hootlet (www.hootlet.com), a plug-in for the Chrome browser, to share links, photos and geo-location tags from your browser to your social media accounts seamlessly.

BUFFER

Free for up to 10 scheduled posts; plans of $10 a month for more posts; available on iOS, Android and Web

www.buffer.com

This is the app to use if you want to schedule posts tailored to a particular audience. You can select which social media account you want your post released on, be it an image, a video or an animated GIF. You can also schedule certain posts to repeat weekly or monthly.

Buffer allows you to choose from 50,000-plus royalty-free images to post on your social media, or create collages of exactly the right size for a Facebook profile or cover photo, add watermarks and post an image. In addition, Buffer has a Chrome browser extension that makes it easy to read and share links, funnelling them through your Buffer account so they can be posted online at the right time. Currently, Buffer works for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.

TWEETDECK

Free on Web

Tweetdeck.twitter.com

For active Twitter users, TweetDeck might be an efficient way of going about things. A smart social automation app, which began as a start-up and was acquired by Twitter, TweetDeck lets you join and track multiple Twitter accounts from the same window. You can organize tweets according to topics, interests, conversations or real-time events or hashtags. You can track any account and actively see the tweets of that account. You can see your own notifications, the activities of other Twitter users, the messages you get in all the connected accounts, the retweets, what’s trending, collections (lists of Twitter accounts that you would like to follow), as well as mentions of your account. If it’s a start-up’s account, TweetDeck gives access to team members without forcing them to share passwords.

ZAPIER

Free for 100 tasks a month. Plans start at $20 a month

www.zapier.com

With Zapier, you can create a connection between two sites and ask it to act automatically, pushing your content from one place to another. The app automates tasks within a particular network (reposting the photograph you posted on your Facebook timeline on a Facebook Page) or between different ones.

Complete article at livemint.com

October 7, 2016July 25, 2016

Log off from the internet, step by step

A 101 on removing your personal data from the Internet. But be warned: it’s a painful exercise

Had enough of selfies, tweets, posts and searches? Tired of bots tracking and predicting every move of yours? If you want to get back to being anonymous, here’s how you can systematically delete personal information from the World Wide Web.

STEP 1: Target social media

Posts, photos, thoughts, tumblers, tweets…. We have all posted endless numbers of things online on various social media accounts. Start by deleting all these accounts: Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube. All of them have the option to deactivate an account. If you are still not able to figure out how to delete a particular social media account, head to DeleteYourAccount.com, which tells you the process for 34 social media accounts.

STEP 2: Get hold of other accounts

Remember that shopping site where you created an account because they had an offer you just couldn’t resist? Or that food app which had promised a free dinner if you signed up with them? Even that dating site you visited once? And that game you played for a day and then forgot about? It’s time to go through your emails and list all the obscure accounts you’ve created over the years. If you’re not sure, simply search for your name and the usernames you use in Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. You may have forgotten the passwords or the account could have been deactivated simply because you haven’t used it in a long time.

But if you really want to wipe that slate clean, you will need to reset the password, sign in to reactivate the account, and then proceed to delete it. Most of the online companies allow you to deactivate, but there’s no guarantee that all of them will actually delete all the data they have collected about you, says Thejesh G.N., a Bengaluru-based technologist and co-founder of DataMeet, a community of open-data enthusiasts. “Unfortunately, in India we don’t have any legal option to demand that the personal data be deleted by the online or telecommunication company,” he says. This is why the other steps that follow are important.

STEP 3: Unsubscribe mailing lists

There was a time before social media when we used to subscribe to the newsletters of different websites. You might still be old-fashioned and get emails from Google and Yahoo groups and various forums, as well as from associations and sundry accounts that you have subscribed to. Go through your Inbox, Spam and Junk folders and methodically unsubscribe from each of these groups.

STEP 4: Dumb down your phone

Every app that you downloaded on your smartphone collects some kind of data about you. “Apps send off location, geo-tags, your search patterns, contacts, and sometimes even read your messages,” says Rakshit Tandon, cyber-security consultant with the Internet and Mobile Association of India, who does workshops with law-enforcement agencies on Internet security.

The ideal way is to remove the Internet factor—switch off 2G, 3G and 4G and use your smartphone only to make calls. If you don’t want to switch off the World Wide Web completely, start by controlling the apps. Uninstall the apps you don’t require and haven’t used for a while. Then head to the app websites and delete your personal account from there. Simply uninstalling the app won’t delete your personal information from the company’s servers.

If you want to make sure personal data is removed by the app owners, email the webmasters of the companies running these apps and ask them to erase your personal content. If you don’t want to uninstall the app from the phone, make sure you know what permissions each of these apps is using. In most phones, you can head to App Settings and you’ll know what all you’ve said yes to. Switch off the permissions you don’t want to give, or uninstall if the app refuses to work without these.

STEP 5: Remove search engine results

Would you want your name to vanish from search engine results? If the answer is yes, then most of the search engines let you remove certain links—which come up when you search your name—that might be harming your reputation. However, if the mention is not harming your reputation in any way or isn’t a copyright infringement or harassment, as decided by the search engine company, it might be hard to get a search engine to remove links about you. In that case, click on each of the links, head to the individual websites that are using your name in news, mentions, or listings, and email each webmaster of these websites, requesting them to remove mentions about you from their sites.

STEP 6: Become browser-anonymous

When you next want to go online and search, make sure you do it anonymously. By default, most browsers track your activity. Opt for Incognito modes in the browser. Enable Privacy Badger (www.eff.org/privacybadger; free for Chrome and Firefox) to make sure cookies are disabled and third-party trackers are not secretly seeing what you check online. Install AdBlock Plus (Adblockplus.org; free on Firefox, Chrome and Safari) to block banner ads, pop-up ads, tracking cookies and scripts.

Another thing you can do is make sure you have opted out of Google Analytics tracking. Go to Tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and opt out. If you like anonymity but do want to browse, consider the open-source anonymous Tor Project (Torproject.org), which lets you browse online and communicate with others without tracking you.

STEP 7: Reinvent

Some online companies don’t delete information on their servers even if you delete your account with them. In that case, give misleading information, like the wrong birth date, name, surname, age, profile photos, etc.

Complete article at livemint.com

Notifications are taking over your life

The 11th Like makes your day

Share

Participate in policymaking

File an RTI

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WayGo

iTranslate voice

SayHi

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Share

iDevices socket

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7 RECIPES THAT ARE EASY TO MAKE

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Do you remember what you did last summer? Now you can relive your past, one photograph at a time, with these apps

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Tired of updating your social media accounts individually? These apps will do the work for you

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