The phrase "spyware program" has very negative connotations and the first impression of people who hear it is that there must be something shady and illegal involved. Usually the thing that comes to people's mind is that it must be some kind of virus which will seriously damage your computer and that it will take ages to get rid of this from your PC so to be able to use your computer in a normal way. Although it's a fact that in most cases infection of a spyware program won't have any positive effects for the victim, but there there are actually a few kinds of "good" spyware programs which will help you monitor somebody's cell phone in order to make sure that he's safe and there's nothing which constitutes a threat to his life.
Most of the parents who buy cell phones to their children usually think that it's nothing wrong when a teenager texts or calls his friends. Using the modern devices he will also be able to take and send high quality pictures, browse his favourite websites. However, if you try to imagine what can kind of pictures and texts can he send, you may start to worry that actually there might be something wrong about this. Just think of a very common situation which becomes more and more popular in the teens world - explicit messages, nude pictures - this is the stuff which teenagers are the most interested in these days. You can think that as long as they talk with their peers, there is nothing inappropriate about this, but there are a lot of sexual predators who may involve your child in a relationship which nobody would approve.
When a child turns into a teenager, you will a notice a significant difference in your contact. Most teenagers will not come to you to talk about their concerns, worries and problems, they will discuss this stuff with their friends. And even if you try to ask them about anything, they will get even more secretive. This is the major reason why you should think of employing some technical skills to make sure that your child is safe and the people who he flirts with are the people in the same age. Although I meant technical skills, you really don't have to be tech savvy in order to use cell phone spyware. There are two basic steps to start "spying" or rather observing your child's cell phone - you have to install one piece of software in his device and then access a special website where will you have to use your authorization credentials to get access to information gathered from your child's cell phone. When you access the website you will be able to choose what phone numbers you want to "watch". When you decide to watch a certain phone number, you will be notified about each and every text or call associated with this phone number. Thanks to this you can choose to observe only numbers that you don't trust and omit numbers of your child's friends who you know.
Depending on the software which you choose, you will be able to check your child's texts, calls, in some cases, if your child's device has a GPS built in, you will be able to track his position live - this means that you will see an actual map with an exact position of your offspring. The software is virtually undetectable by an ordinary child, you have to employ a lot of technical skills to find out that your phone has been infected with such spyware and thus you don't have to worry that your child will notice it.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Faxing Directly From Your Cell Phone
Have you ever needed to send a fax but you were away from your office and couldn't find any service point where you could do it? If so, you will be very interested in a new feature available for smartphones as well as for iphones. There is an application which now make it possible to send faxes right from your cell phone. All you will have to do is to download it and pay a small fee in some cases, then you can enjoy the freedom of faxing from everywhere. However, if you want to send large faxes, it will be better to make sure that you have a good internet connection available, since it will significantly speed up the process.
Most of the applications for sending faxes from your cell phones are very easy to use and doesn't require any technical skills. All you will have to is to read a few instructions and you're ready to go! One of the possible uses of such tool is for example faxing while you're travelling or just don't have any fax nearby. However, just think of other advantages of using mobile faxing - you can totally forget about costs of paper which is required when you want to send a traditional fax. It's not only cheaper solution, but also much more ecological. We all know that even if it's not so important today, its importance will increase significantly within years.
The principle behind mobile faxing is almost the same as with ordinary online faxing. You just send your document in whatever format you want - let it be PDF, doc or pages(it's the Mac counterpart to doc) - to a company which handles your faxing. They have special devices which translate the digital documents into ordinary analog message which can be send via phone lines. Then you just receive a report to find out if your message has been received successfully. You don't have to worry about many things such as paper jams or that you have run out of ink. All those things are handled by a third-party company which you have employed to send faxes in your name.
The costs of such services vary depending on the amount of pages that you are going to send per month. Usually the fee starts at around $5 per month, however many companies let you test their services for free for some time. Thanks to this, you will find out if you're satisfied with the quality of services and you will make sure that your decision is right. Of course if you're not happy with the services, in most cases you will be eligible for a refund. It depends on the company, but nearly all providers will give you the full sum you paid.
Most of the applications for sending faxes from your cell phones are very easy to use and doesn't require any technical skills. All you will have to is to read a few instructions and you're ready to go! One of the possible uses of such tool is for example faxing while you're travelling or just don't have any fax nearby. However, just think of other advantages of using mobile faxing - you can totally forget about costs of paper which is required when you want to send a traditional fax. It's not only cheaper solution, but also much more ecological. We all know that even if it's not so important today, its importance will increase significantly within years.The principle behind mobile faxing is almost the same as with ordinary online faxing. You just send your document in whatever format you want - let it be PDF, doc or pages(it's the Mac counterpart to doc) - to a company which handles your faxing. They have special devices which translate the digital documents into ordinary analog message which can be send via phone lines. Then you just receive a report to find out if your message has been received successfully. You don't have to worry about many things such as paper jams or that you have run out of ink. All those things are handled by a third-party company which you have employed to send faxes in your name.
The costs of such services vary depending on the amount of pages that you are going to send per month. Usually the fee starts at around $5 per month, however many companies let you test their services for free for some time. Thanks to this, you will find out if you're satisfied with the quality of services and you will make sure that your decision is right. Of course if you're not happy with the services, in most cases you will be eligible for a refund. It depends on the company, but nearly all providers will give you the full sum you paid.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Backwards Phone Lookup - A Couple Of Tips
Backwards phone lookup is the other name of a very popular service called "reverse phone look up". The purpose of performing backwards look up is exactly the same, you have a phone number of somebody and you want to learn more details about this person. Depending on the type of phone number you want to reverse, the service can be free, but in some particular cases, you will have to pay a small fee to access the information.
The free lookups are available for ordinary land lines as well as business phone numbers. Those phones can be easily found with no charge for example at WhitePages.com website. They claim to offer over 400,000,000 of residential records absolutely free of charge. This means that if you type a phone number and it's found in the database, you will be able to find out the owner's name as well as his home address. However, there are phone numbers which are actually landlines but cannot be found in the public phone directories such as WhitePages. Those numbers are called "unlisted" and their owners requested their data removal from public sources. This is very common practice which is intended to protect their privacy. Although you can't find their information in public databases, you can try to employ paid backwards phone look ups to find more details about those numbers.
So if you need to reverse a number which hasn't been found in for example WhitePages, you will have to check paid services which have much bigger databases. The data for those directories is collected in totally different way and since residential records are public information, you can just ask a phone carrier for the data of his customers, but cell phone numbers as well as unlisted cannot be handled this way. Those data brokers have to ask each and every cell phone owner if they allow them to list their information in their database. Of course this is a simplification and the process is much more sophisticated but according to the current US law the company which collects such data must receive a consent from each and every person.
If you still can't find the record which you need, you can try to employ a private detective. And although this is the most effective method of find the phone number's owner, it's also the most expensive one I would advice it only to people who are really desperate to find out somebody's identity. The fees for a basic service will start at at least $300 and they might raise to even a few thousand dollars, so the costs can be enormous. However, you are assured that the information you receive is accurate and double checked.
The free lookups are available for ordinary land lines as well as business phone numbers. Those phones can be easily found with no charge for example at WhitePages.com website. They claim to offer over 400,000,000 of residential records absolutely free of charge. This means that if you type a phone number and it's found in the database, you will be able to find out the owner's name as well as his home address. However, there are phone numbers which are actually landlines but cannot be found in the public phone directories such as WhitePages. Those numbers are called "unlisted" and their owners requested their data removal from public sources. This is very common practice which is intended to protect their privacy. Although you can't find their information in public databases, you can try to employ paid backwards phone look ups to find more details about those numbers.
So if you need to reverse a number which hasn't been found in for example WhitePages, you will have to check paid services which have much bigger databases. The data for those directories is collected in totally different way and since residential records are public information, you can just ask a phone carrier for the data of his customers, but cell phone numbers as well as unlisted cannot be handled this way. Those data brokers have to ask each and every cell phone owner if they allow them to list their information in their database. Of course this is a simplification and the process is much more sophisticated but according to the current US law the company which collects such data must receive a consent from each and every person.
If you still can't find the record which you need, you can try to employ a private detective. And although this is the most effective method of find the phone number's owner, it's also the most expensive one I would advice it only to people who are really desperate to find out somebody's identity. The fees for a basic service will start at at least $300 and they might raise to even a few thousand dollars, so the costs can be enormous. However, you are assured that the information you receive is accurate and double checked.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
When Can Spoofing Caller ID Be Helpful
Have you ever wanted to call somebody but you didn't want the other party to know your phone number? For years it was impossible due to the telecommunication structure and only law enforcement agencies could fake their IDs when calling other people. Fortunately the situation changed in 2003 when the VOIP technology became really popular and each month more and more people were starting to use it. The VOIP phones use completely different technology than ordinary land or cell phones. And thus the development of VOIP telephones made it possible to spoof your caller ID.
You don't have to posses any special equipment or expensive devices. There is obviously such stuff, but it's mainly used by professional private investigators as well as law enforcement. In some cases big telemarketing companies also employ it, but for an ordinary person who just want to hide his or her phone number from the eyes of the other person, there is a cheap and simple solution. It works like a calling card - at first you dial the number given on the card and then upon a few moments you will be able to call the number you need. The cost of such operation will be slightly higher than when calling without spoofing ID, but thanks to use of such a calling card, you can be sure that the person will not know your phone number.
Many people will think that they can use a feature built-in their cell phones in order to hide their phone number when calling. Unfortunately, this is not as effective as the calling card fro spoofing ID and can be easily tracked without any bigger effort. Which means that there is no point in making use of it if you have to stay anonymous. There are a lot of different companies who offer calling cards for spoofing IDs and you should always compare prices, since almost all the services offer the same features, so it's smart to choose the cheapest one.
There is a very important thing which you should bear in mind when spoofing ID. It will never make you 100% and when you break the law, it will not be difficult to trace you and find out your real identity. Of course, this can't be done by an ordinary person, but only by law enforcement agency with a court injunction. This means that you can safely use a spoofing ID for each and every legitimate purpose without thinking of any legal consequences.
You don't have to posses any special equipment or expensive devices. There is obviously such stuff, but it's mainly used by professional private investigators as well as law enforcement. In some cases big telemarketing companies also employ it, but for an ordinary person who just want to hide his or her phone number from the eyes of the other person, there is a cheap and simple solution. It works like a calling card - at first you dial the number given on the card and then upon a few moments you will be able to call the number you need. The cost of such operation will be slightly higher than when calling without spoofing ID, but thanks to use of such a calling card, you can be sure that the person will not know your phone number.
Many people will think that they can use a feature built-in their cell phones in order to hide their phone number when calling. Unfortunately, this is not as effective as the calling card fro spoofing ID and can be easily tracked without any bigger effort. Which means that there is no point in making use of it if you have to stay anonymous. There are a lot of different companies who offer calling cards for spoofing IDs and you should always compare prices, since almost all the services offer the same features, so it's smart to choose the cheapest one.
There is a very important thing which you should bear in mind when spoofing ID. It will never make you 100% and when you break the law, it will not be difficult to trace you and find out your real identity. Of course, this can't be done by an ordinary person, but only by law enforcement agency with a court injunction. This means that you can safely use a spoofing ID for each and every legitimate purpose without thinking of any legal consequences.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Are Prepaid Cell Phone Onwers Actually Anonymous?
During the past decade the world anonymity has became extremely popular. Several years ago people were unaware that they should reveal only the information they really have to in order to protect their identities. However, while the modern technology have developed significantly, a lot of new issues to remember have appeared. Most of the privacy concerning things are associated with the Internet and ever growing social networking pages where people are very eager to share their personal information with strangers. However, more and more people decide to cut down on the amount of shared data. Once they notice that they can do something to improve their so called anonymity in the internet, they will also try to look further to find other means to achieve this.
I know quite a lot of people who use no contract sim cards, because they think that thanks to this, nobody will be able to learn their name, address or any other personal information, just by using their phone number. They believe that if there's no personal information associated with the number in the carrier's database, nobody will be able to find it using for example a cell phone lookup. Unfortunately, they're not right, buying a prepaid cell phone will not make you any more anonymous if you decide to use the phone number just like any other. This means that you will be for example shopping online using your personal information and the prepaid cell phone number or you will take part in some online sweep-stake where you have to provide your cell phone number. If you use the number in this way, you can be sure that your data will be collected and aggregated into a cell phone directory with all your personal information in it.
However, there is a easy way to prevent such situation - you just have to read the terms of service before you enter your personal details. If you notice that you agree to resell your data, you shouldn't agree, since you can be sure that after some time the information you entered will be bought by some cell phone directory and everybody who pay a few bucks will be able to find your name and address just knowing your cell phone number which was meant to be totally anonymous.
Although this is very boring and takes a lot of time to even skim read the terms and conditions as well as privacy policy, you should always sacrifice your time to do this in order to know what exactly is going on. Don't forget that it's the same contract as if it was printed and signed.
I know quite a lot of people who use no contract sim cards, because they think that thanks to this, nobody will be able to learn their name, address or any other personal information, just by using their phone number. They believe that if there's no personal information associated with the number in the carrier's database, nobody will be able to find it using for example a cell phone lookup. Unfortunately, they're not right, buying a prepaid cell phone will not make you any more anonymous if you decide to use the phone number just like any other. This means that you will be for example shopping online using your personal information and the prepaid cell phone number or you will take part in some online sweep-stake where you have to provide your cell phone number. If you use the number in this way, you can be sure that your data will be collected and aggregated into a cell phone directory with all your personal information in it.
However, there is a easy way to prevent such situation - you just have to read the terms of service before you enter your personal details. If you notice that you agree to resell your data, you shouldn't agree, since you can be sure that after some time the information you entered will be bought by some cell phone directory and everybody who pay a few bucks will be able to find your name and address just knowing your cell phone number which was meant to be totally anonymous.
Although this is very boring and takes a lot of time to even skim read the terms and conditions as well as privacy policy, you should always sacrifice your time to do this in order to know what exactly is going on. Don't forget that it's the same contract as if it was printed and signed.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
It's Actually Possible To Find An E-Mail Owner's Name And Address
People usually think that they are anonymous while using internet. They think that once they disconnect and connect again, they will have a new IP address and nobody will be able to find them again if they don't want to. If they don't want to be the person they were, they simply change their nickname or e-mail address so to create a new identity. Unfortunately, the truth about this is much more complicated and not many people are aware that there is no such thing as anonymity in the internet. I don't want to talk about the authorities who can easily track each and every internet user, but I want to introduce you a tool which will enable you to find a person's details just knowing his e-mail address.
Although due to the amount spam which is being sent each day, many people wish not to publish their e-mail address. However, if you ask them to give you this address, the person shouldn't have any second thoughts and would probably provide you with his e-mail. A lot of people forget login credentials to their e-mails accounts and change the address, but usually when you ask somebody for an e-mail address, he will give you his primary one. When you have the e-mail, it's sometimes possible to figure out the person's name, since a lot of people use it as a user name. However, in most cases the user name will be something like "flower34" or "joker1000" and hence you have to use some other method to obtain the person's name.
You can obviously use Google or any other search engine which can give you some decent results if the person published his name and e-mail on some website which has been indexed by Google. In this situation, you will get your information without paying anything. However, if you want to get some more detailed information about the e-mail's owner, you can use a reverse email lookup. It's quite a new service which will work with most of the US e-mail addresses. To learn how it works you can visit an email lookup website and simply enter the address in a special box. Once you hit search button, you will have to wait for a while(usually just a few seconds) to get the results delivered. At first you will be presented with just a small bit of the data obtained from database, but if you decide to pay, you will receive the full report.
Although due to the amount spam which is being sent each day, many people wish not to publish their e-mail address. However, if you ask them to give you this address, the person shouldn't have any second thoughts and would probably provide you with his e-mail. A lot of people forget login credentials to their e-mails accounts and change the address, but usually when you ask somebody for an e-mail address, he will give you his primary one. When you have the e-mail, it's sometimes possible to figure out the person's name, since a lot of people use it as a user name. However, in most cases the user name will be something like "flower34" or "joker1000" and hence you have to use some other method to obtain the person's name.
You can obviously use Google or any other search engine which can give you some decent results if the person published his name and e-mail on some website which has been indexed by Google. In this situation, you will get your information without paying anything. However, if you want to get some more detailed information about the e-mail's owner, you can use a reverse email lookup. It's quite a new service which will work with most of the US e-mail addresses. To learn how it works you can visit an email lookup website and simply enter the address in a special box. Once you hit search button, you will have to wait for a while(usually just a few seconds) to get the results delivered. At first you will be presented with just a small bit of the data obtained from database, but if you decide to pay, you will receive the full report.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Why Finding Friends Is Now Much Easier Than It Used To Be
Several years ago when we lost contact with some of our mates because he moved to for example other state or city it was much more difficult to find a good way to get in touch with him. There were some traditional methods like asking your mutual friends whether they know something about this person. You always could use a printed phone directory or hire a private investigator. The first two methods usually didn't yield any satisfactory results unlike the last one. Private detective has always been the best method to trace virtually any person, but the cost of hiring one is often so high that most of the people who look for their friends simply can't afford to pay one.
Fortunately, there was a huge progress in the technology and thanks to bright engineers we now have access to the Internet. The most powerful source of knowledge which is publicly available. As the urban legends say there are hardly any things which you couldn't find in the internet, there things you will find beautiful, there are news and books which you can read online, but there are also things which we would never want to look at. That's the nature of the internet, everybody has access to it and is able to create his own content as well as browse and read stuff created by other people.
Internet would be a useless invention if we didn't have any tools for searching it. This why search engines like Bing or Google are now the most visited websites in the internet. Huge majority of people start browsing the Internet with typing some query into a search engine. People can look for some products to buy, reviews of the products they're going to buy, news and articles and many other things. And among those things there is one more which is not so popular to search using the internet - people. It can be very surprising to you, but it is possible to use internet as tool to find your old mates or just people that you want to learn more about.
Depending on the type of information that you have about the person you should use different tools to search for a person.
1. WhitePages
If you know a land line phone number of the person, it might be possible that you will be able to find details about him for free. There are actually a few websites which allow you to perform a reverse phone look ups free of charge and their databases are quite comprehensive. My first choice for such a search would be WitePages. Once you type a person's phone number, you will be given the person's name as well as the address. Of course there is a chance, that the guy has requested to remove his record from a phone directory and thus you will not be able to find it. If you decide to look for a person by his name, you should also think of a state where he now can live, since when you type simply his or her name you will surely end up with at least a few hundreds records which you will have to manually browse.
2. Spokeo
Spokeo is much more comprehensive than WhitePages and can provide you with information from social networks - which means that you can learn the person's interests and see pictures of him. Unfortunately, most of those information are not available for free, you will have to pay for access to them. The basic monthly fee for this is relatively low and equals $4.95. If decide to use the free version, you will still see the person's address, some limited household information as well as family members.
3. Pipl
When type a person's name into Pipl search field, you will get a list of different results from the most popular social networks, such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, LinkedId, ClassMates, but you will also see which websites mentions this name. Spoeko will charge you for this, but Pipl will show you pictures associated with the given name for free. The pictures will come from pictures search engines as well as from social networks. Using Pipl website you can perform a free reverse cell phone lookup, but the amount of information which you can get will be small and usually it will be just the carrier's name.
Fortunately, there was a huge progress in the technology and thanks to bright engineers we now have access to the Internet. The most powerful source of knowledge which is publicly available. As the urban legends say there are hardly any things which you couldn't find in the internet, there things you will find beautiful, there are news and books which you can read online, but there are also things which we would never want to look at. That's the nature of the internet, everybody has access to it and is able to create his own content as well as browse and read stuff created by other people.
Internet would be a useless invention if we didn't have any tools for searching it. This why search engines like Bing or Google are now the most visited websites in the internet. Huge majority of people start browsing the Internet with typing some query into a search engine. People can look for some products to buy, reviews of the products they're going to buy, news and articles and many other things. And among those things there is one more which is not so popular to search using the internet - people. It can be very surprising to you, but it is possible to use internet as tool to find your old mates or just people that you want to learn more about.
Depending on the type of information that you have about the person you should use different tools to search for a person.
If you know a land line phone number of the person, it might be possible that you will be able to find details about him for free. There are actually a few websites which allow you to perform a reverse phone look ups free of charge and their databases are quite comprehensive. My first choice for such a search would be WitePages. Once you type a person's phone number, you will be given the person's name as well as the address. Of course there is a chance, that the guy has requested to remove his record from a phone directory and thus you will not be able to find it. If you decide to look for a person by his name, you should also think of a state where he now can live, since when you type simply his or her name you will surely end up with at least a few hundreds records which you will have to manually browse.
Spokeo is much more comprehensive than WhitePages and can provide you with information from social networks - which means that you can learn the person's interests and see pictures of him. Unfortunately, most of those information are not available for free, you will have to pay for access to them. The basic monthly fee for this is relatively low and equals $4.95. If decide to use the free version, you will still see the person's address, some limited household information as well as family members.
When type a person's name into Pipl search field, you will get a list of different results from the most popular social networks, such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, LinkedId, ClassMates, but you will also see which websites mentions this name. Spoeko will charge you for this, but Pipl will show you pictures associated with the given name for free. The pictures will come from pictures search engines as well as from social networks. Using Pipl website you can perform a free reverse cell phone lookup, but the amount of information which you can get will be small and usually it will be just the carrier's name.
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