Are you trying to find where is the Mail activity monitor on your Mac? If you are something of a geek, you probably really appreciated that the Apple mail app on your Mac allowed you to monitor every time an activity fired up in mail via a little monitor at the lower left of your Mail.app window. Here’s how to get it back.

Given all of the data breaches in 2018 (Marriott Starwood, 1-800-FLOWERS, Quora, Walgreens, the Post Office, etc.) it is no longer a question of whether your data has been breached – you need to assume that it has been – rather the question is what is the best way to monitor your bank accounts and credit card accounts for fraudulent activity? And what are some ways to protect against it in the future? (The answer to the latter may surprise you!)

In one of the creepier, more invasive – or brilliant, depending on your views – uses of the Internet of Things, smart CPAP machines are being monitored, and even adjusted, from across the Internet, and if you aren’t using yours often enough (known as ‘CPAP compliance’ or being ‘CPAP compliant’, your medical insurance company won’t pay for it, and your life insurance and health insurance premiums could go up. Now, for recent users of the CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) machines, this may be old news, but for the rest of us, HOLY CPAP!

The United Kingdom has passed a law that recognizes ‘domestic violence over social media’, and makes it a punishable offense. According to the new law, threatening or even monitoring someone via social media counts as domestic violence. So how do they distinguish between the average act of ‘following’ someone on Facebook or Twitter, and monitoring? Good question.

State Farm, the insurance company, has just released an iPhone app that evaluates how you drive. Called the State Farm Driver Feedback app, the iPhone application uses your iPhone’s accelerometer and GPS to track your acceleration, cornering, and braking, and then gives you a grade. But is that all it gives you? What about increased insurance rates, or even being declined insurance, based on how you drive, as recorded by the State Farm Driver Feedback app?

According to government officials and insiders, the Federal government is seeking broad authority and discretion to monitor all Internet communications, including communications on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, instant messaging systems, and even (or hey, perhaps especially) encrypted emails.

An intriguing and novel eavesdropping technique has been disclosed by a group of German scientists, who describe and demonstrate in their paper “Compromising Reflections, or How to Read LCD Monitors Around the Corner” how your monitor screen can be read from a distance, by pointing a telescope at its content reflected in nearby objects. Teapots, spoons, plastic bottles, glasses and even the surface of the user’s eye offer sufficient quality for text on the screen to be intelligible, even at long distance.