General
Bell Mobility to unlock all devices
Bell is now offering to unlock all carrier locked devices, even second had devices for users that have never been Bell customers. Prior to this policy, Bell Mobility only unlocked devices for current and former customers in good standing (you had to be the original buyer of the phone). Telus and Rogers already have similar policies (unlocking all devices even second hand for non-customers).
Run a speed test from Google Search
There are dozens of sites and services that promise to test your internet speed. The most popular are: Ookla Speed Test testmy.net Netflix Fast.com Speed of Me Now you can also add Google to the list. 1 - Go to the Google Search Page (on a PC or Android device) 2 - Enter Speed Test <img src="https://ekiledjian2.micro.blog/uploads/2025/0f77a668bd.jpg" alt=""> 3 - Choose the Run Speed Test option and ignore the search results
Chronicle Security launches under the Alphabet family of companies
Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, has launched a new cybersecurity intelligence company called Chronicle. The company promises to bring Alphabet's advanced machine learning capabilities and large cloud computing footprint to cyber intelligence. The soft launch was confirmed via a blog post on Medium called "Graduation Day: Introducing Chronicle". A quote from the blog entry says: “Organizations deploy dozens of security tools to protect themselves, and their security teams are highly skilled and extremely dedicated, but they can’t keep up with the growing number, sophistication and ambition of attacks.
Private Internet Access leaves Korea due to security concerns
We learned that Private Internet Access (PIA) has shut down its Korea exit nodes due to concerns about the privacy of its users. It learned through a "close contact" that South Korea law enforcement intended to clone its local data. Private Internet Access (PIA) didn't know why they would take these types of actions against it, but took immediate action as soon as it learned about this possibility. “On the 21st January 2018 at 6.15pm Pacific Time, Private Internet Access was alerted by close contacts in South Korea that law enforcement would be seeking to mirror our servers tomorrow, 24th of January 2018, at 10:00 A.
The best way to share your location with friends or family
Let's say you are meeting friends at a large outdoor concert, how do you provide your location? A street address may get them to the entrance gate, then what? What3words has proposed a solution that solves the issue of finding exact locations on a map? What3words has divided the entire planet into 57 trillion 3mx3m grids and assigned each grid a unique three-word "address". If I want to meet friends at the entrance of Union Station in Toronto, I can search for "
OPSEC - Security when making calls
RELATED: OPSEC - Introduction to Malware RELATED: OPSEC - How to securely delete files If you are making calls using a cellphone or landline phone then you should assume that your conversation can easily be intercepted by the carrier (providing the service or a government agency that has control over that carrier). Security researchers have even proven that with $1,500 in parts, they can build a cell phone call interception device by pretending they are a cell tower. “Regular phone calls on your cell phone (including SMS and MMS messages) are easily intercepted and should be considered insecure.
OPSEC - How to securely delete files
You should also read my previous article "OPSEC - Introduction to Malware". Most computer (or smartphone/tablet) users believe that when you use the delete function in your operating system, you have securely destroyed the file beyond recovery, but that simply isn't the case. In most cases, the entry to the file was removed from the index but unless that disk space is needed by the operating system, the file is most likely still on the disk (just isn't normally accessible anymore).
Is your Chromebook vulnerable to Specter or Meltdown?
TL;DR: If you are using a Chromebook that is actively supported, you are probably fine. Specter and Meltdown are two significant chip level vulnerabilities that kicked off the 2018 security scene with a bang. Affection millions of devices from almost every manufacturer, many consumers are panicking about what this means for them. Since I love Chromebooks, I wanted to write an article about how these two vulnerabilities affect them. This isn't a deep technical review about Meltdown or Specter. There are loads of well-written articles about them.
SecureDrop protects the anonymity of whistle-blowers
SecureDrop is an open-source project created by (the late) Aaron Swartz with support from Kevin Poulsen and James Dolan. The entire raison d'être of SecureDrop is to create a safe information exchange mechanism between media organizations and whistleblowers. The solution requires two servers: a TOR facing server to store messages and files a private server that monitors the security of the first server When a message or files are dropped on the first server, the information is encrypted with GPG for secure storage.
Alternative ways to get the TOR browser
Tor is an incredible power privacy enhancing tool that every security-conscious netizen should have in their arsenal. It doesn't replace a VPN service, since TOR isn't optimized for high bandwidth usage (like streaming music/videos) but it definitely has a place in my internet usage portfolio. To use TOR, you need access to a small kit of software that includes the TOR router and the TOR browser (a locked down customized version of the Mozilla Firefox browser). <img src="https://ekiledjian2.micro.blog/uploads/2025/4bf3ee060e.jpg" alt=""> The Great Firewall of China site test tool confirms that the TOR Project website is blocked.
The New York Times now available on TOR
“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” — Voltaire When the average consumer thinks about TOR (which isn't very often), they imagine that it is the ugly, damp & rancid underbelly of the internet. Reality is that TOR is a US government-funded project to create anonymity on the internet. It is a platform that allows everyone to have a voice without fear of punishment or even death (think political activists).
Karma releases an anonymizing hotspot
Open a magazine, newspaper, your local nightly news or almost internet blog, and you will be confronted with news about another security breach. Breaches, breaches everywhere. Concerned netizens are trying to find ways to protect themselves when online and to protect their privacy. In response, I have written a bunch of articles (such as): KeepSolid VPN Unlimited Review Review of Private Internet Access (PIA) Honest review of the ProtonVPN service Honest review of the Tunnelbear VPN service VyprVPN Review Review of HideMyAss VPN (HMA) The above reviews were VPN services, but what if you wanted a piece of hardware that was portable and could be used with any WIFI enabled device?
The start of the end for Symantec cert trust on Google's Chrome
A little history Early 2017, a security researcher (Andrew Ayer from SSLMate) discovered that three certificate authorities (Symantec Trust Network, GeoTrust Inc., and Thawte Inc), owned by Symantec, had improperly issued 108 TLS certificates. It is important to understand that these improperly issued certificates would allow a threat actor to spoof or impersonate a website that was using HTTPS. 9 of these certificates were issued without the knowledge of the domain owners. 99 were issued without proper validation of domain ownership.
Google Chrome to block "bad" ads in February
The Sultan of Search, Google, announced in June that it would introduce ad blocking tech in an upcoming version of the Google Chrome browser (and Chromebook). We can now confirm that this feature will make it into our browser on February 15 (2018). Chrome 64 will be delivered on January 23 and Chrome 65 on March 6. Either this feature will be part of Chrome 64 and turned on with a remote trigger, or it will be a server-side function. We will have to wait and see how Google implements this feature.
Review of the Morakniv Garberg outdoor knife
What is the best outdoor knife? Those who know me well know that I love the outdoors and I love knives. If I were stranded on an island and could only bring one home comfort, it would be an outdoor knife. Having many outdoor enthusiast readers, I am regularly asked what knife I like best. When I first started studying survival skills, I had the misguided belief that the more expensive your equipment, the better it must be. I quickly learned that this wasn't always the case and sometimes even the most basic tool, used correctly, could be a lifesaver.
Google Home forced me to switch to Spotify
Tech titans Google and Amazon chose Christmas 2017 to battle it out for your love and money. These smart speakers are designed to quickly provide access to each company's ecosystem and make your life easier. At least that is the promise. I am heavily invested in the Google ecosystem and have been for over ten years. In addition to using their free services, I pay for Google Music, storage, have an android phone (so I buy apps), etc. I signed up for the free Google Apps service in 2007 (predecessor to GSuite) when each domain was given 100 free user accounts.
Was Google, Apple, Facebook & Microsoft traffic redirected to Russia?
TL;DR: Internet traffic to and from major tech companies (Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitch, NTT Communications and Riot Games) were redirected through a Russian provider Wednesday. This appears to have been a deliberate hijack and not an error. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BGP is a routing and reachability protocol used on internet backbones around the world. It is what allows carriers to find routing information between each other (in simple terms). 2 BGP monitoring services have reported short changes to the routing of key internet giants, and they do not believe this was a mistake.
How do I test the speed of my VPN service
How can you test the speed (performance) of my VPN service provider? I receive this question regularly, and I thought it was about time I wrote an article about it. When evaluating internet speed, there are dozens or hundreds of different parameters that can influence your final score. In the world of VPN, these may include: The distance between you and the VPN server - even though most of your traffic is flowing at the speed of light, users have become accustomed to super speedy internet and even the slightest delay is noticed.
How do I test my VPN to determine if it is leaking?
When something leaks, it's usually bad news. A leaking pipe in the kitchen or a leaking radiator. The same principle applies to your VPN. When a poorly designed VPN fails and leaks your data, that's the start of a bad day. Unfortunately, there is no visible indication that your VPN is leaking. Obviously, well-designed VPN services do not leak, my favourites being: VyprVPN Review Honest review of the ProtonVPN service Honest review of the Tunnelbear VPN service
Do you need a dual-SIM smartphone?
Do I need a dual-sim phone? The answer is probably not. Most people sign a carrier contract and live with that service for two years. There is a small niche group that could benefit from a dual-SIM phone, and this is an article for them. Who are these mythical "special" people: users with a personal and professional mobile phone line that want to carry one phone users that travel often and want to use a low-cost SIM in their destination users that live in regions were carriers aren't national providers, and "