heavypound

A few years ago when the corporate IT department really started locking down and monitoring devices, I made a hard line in the sand between work and personal computing.

- I have two phones, one for work, one for home.
- I have separate Apple IDs for the work/home computers and iPhones
- My work MacBook doesn’t know my main home wi-fi password at my home; it’s relegated to the guest network
- My home iPhone doesn’t even know the guest wi-fi password at the office, strictly using cellular at work

“Forcing” the company to purchase any computing devices you need is easier to do at a large corporation than a small company, but I do agree that even in those situations, the company should provide you the tools you need to do your job.

For people in California, I wonder what the validity of using this app from Virginia is going to be. If you read the README file on the iOS App Store, it says when your test results come back as positive and are sent to the Virginia Department of Health, they will provide you with a PIN to use when you report your results in this app. Without the PIN, you can’t report a positive result in the app, so what’s the point? The PIN is used to reduce the number of false notifications that are sent out from the app.

We’re all anxious to get an app for contact tracing, but if we’re going through the trouble of installing and configuring an app on thousands of phones, let’s make sure it will work. If you get people to install this one, are they going to switch over to a new app that works once it is released. These people will feel they are covered and ignore any more “install this tracing app” messages from their corporate IT or HR groups.

Kopfschmerzen said:

Facebook has no permission to use a camera or a microphone on my phone. Seems like it never asked for it (so hopefully can’t use them). I would deny access if it asked though, that’s for sure.

If you want to verify for certain, you can go to Settings -> Privacy, and then Microphone, Camera, etc and adjust the settings from there.

Only apps that have asked for permission will be listed under each privacy topic.

I don’t think blocking or screening helps the problem of robocalls. Those responses just pushes the problem onto other people.

Robocalls are popular because they have “no” cost. I use the service from Jolly Roger Telephone to help with this. JR impersonates a real person answering the phone to get a real person on the line on their end. This ties up a real person and makes it actually cost the robocall outfit something because they are paying for a real person at that point. Since signing up for JR, I now relish all the telemarking calls I receive instead of fearing them or getting mad.

3 months ago, I sent a Series 2 Apple Watch in to repair a cracked screen. I received an empty box (no watch, but all packing materials) back from Apple with the security tape on the outside of the box having been broken. After a little over a week, Apple shipped a replacement watch, so I wasn’t impacted by the theft, other than not having the watch for an extra 2 weeks. I’d bet a rather large amount of money on my watch having been stolen by a (hopefully former) FedEx employee.