LG V10 review: A well-rounded smartphone

Get Android 6.0 Marshmallow Features Without Updating

Google has now launched the latest version of Android, 6.0 Marshmallow, for its Nexus phones. But Android updates don’t roll out to all phones at the same time, especially the non-Nexus ones, and they often take a long time. But you get can some of the Marshmallowy goodness right now — regardless of what phone you have!
Whether you’re on Lollipop, KitKat or older versions, you can get several of Android 6.0 Marshmallow’s best features on your phone right away. Not everything, mind you, but enough of the cool stuff.
It’s easier if you root your Android phone, but even if you haven’t, there are ways to get those features.

Get the Marshmallow Look Right Now

For the first time, Google has released the stock Android launcher for anyone who wants it. The new Google Now Launcher is exactly what Marshmallow ships with, and it supports some cool new features such as:

• Swipe left to get the new “Google Now homescreen”, which has all the information you need from Google Now cards, complete with offline support.
• When you’re on the homescreen, just speak quick “OK Google” commands, no taps or activation necessary.
• The App Drawer now scrolls vertically, and is automatically arranged alphabetically.
• You can search installed apps through the Search Bar, and it will also give suggestions of other apps you might like.

The Google Now Launcher is pretty impressive and lightweight enough to work fast on low-powered hardware too, so it’s definitely a contender for the best free Android launcher.
Download: Google Now Launcher for Android (Free)

Backup App Data and Restore (No Root)

Marshmallow brings a much-wanted feature, the ability to backup an app with all its data and then restore it to a device, without rooting your phone. Well, you might be surprised to know you can already do that.
We already have a multi-layered plan to backup non-rooted Android devices, but Helium is a core part of that. The app, made by the famous Clockwork Mod team, lets you backup apps complete with their data.
All you need is the Helium app, the companion Carbon app for Windows, Mac, or Linux computers, and a USB cable. Start the app, connect the phone to your computer, and you’re ready to go.
Helium backs up most apps, and it will notify you of which ones it can’t. I suggest you also backup the APK, since it makes restoring easier for some apps that break compatibility with new versions.
When you’re ready to install all this to a new phone again, connect it to your PC, download the app, and restore all your apps. It’s seamless and just works.
Helium Premium will also let you backup to cloud devices and external storage, and it supports apps that the free one doesn’t. Cloud backup makes it easier to sync an Android phone or tablet over WiFi. It’s well worth $4.99, if you ask me, but try out the free app first.
Helium isn’t a perfect solution though. For a full and complete backup of Android, you’ll need a rooted device and Titanium Backup Pro.
Download: Helium for Android (Free)

How to Manage Individual App Permissions

Android Marshmallow finally, finally brings the ability to control app permissions on an individual basis. What this means is that if an app asks for permission to read your text messages and your GPS data, you can choose to grant access to location but not your messages.
Controlling individual app permissions helps avoid the seven deadly security risks from apps. If you are using Android 5.x Lollipop or Android 4.3/4.4 KitKat, you can control individual app permissions with App Ops. On Android versions 4.2 and older, you’ll need to root your phone to control permissions.
App Ops is super simple and you’ll be able to toggle the permissions any app uses with a simple switch. That’s exactly how it works in Marshmallow too. So if you’re on Android 4.3 or higher, you’re in luck!
One thing to note: Uninstalling App Ops isn’t as easy as just deleting the app from your phone, you need to download a special App Ops Uninstaller.
Download: App Ops for Android (Free)

Better Cut, Copy, Paste for Android

Mimicking the iOS look, the new Android 6.0 makes it easier to cut, copy, and paste anything by giving you clear options when you select any text or image. However, there’s actually a better way than Marshmallow’s options.
Native Clipboard is probably the best way to improve copy-paste on Android. The app requires deep access to your Android device, but once you grant it those rights, it will copy anything in any text box, and paste any of your recent clipboard copied items to any other box. Double tap an empty box, and it just works.
Even after trying out Marshmallow, I found myself wanting to get this app back, so in this one case, the current systems actually outdo what you’ll get on Android 6.0.
Download: Native Clipboard for Android (Free)

Boost Your Battery Life With Two Apps

Marshmallow has two cool features to lengthen your battery life. First, it automatically puts unused apps to sleep. Second, it detects when you aren’t using your phone and stops using data at that time.
But what do you know? You already have a couple apps that will do the same things! You need to download Greenify and JuiceDefender.
Greenify’s auto-hibernation mode (available on Android 4.1 or newer phones) will stop updating apps you aren’t using and prevent them from slowing down your phone. JuiceDefender, on the other hand, is an all-in-one solution for almost any battery-saving tip on Android.
You get a lot of options in the free app, so try it out. I think you’ll be compelled to fork out $4.99 for JuiceDefender Ultimate.
Download: Greenify for Android (Free)
Download: JuiceDefender for Android (Free)

Ditch Chrome Custom Tabs, Get Firefox 42

One of the cooler features in Android Marshmallow is Google Chrome’s new Custom Tabs. With this, apps can open an optimized browser tab with saved passwords and other Chrome data intact. Plus, the pages will preload in the background so they seem faster.
Even if you aren’t using Android 6.0, you can get all of this goodness with the new Google Chrome for Android, which includes this feature.
Now, Chrome is the fastest Android browser, so this is great news. But Chrome isn’t necessarily the best browser. Personally, I’d recommend going with the new Firefox 42 Beta for Android.
Firefox 42 has a new awesome “Tab Queuing” feature, which is reason alone to get it. With this, when you are using any app, you can continue using it. When you see a link, tap it and it’s added to a queue, without moving you away from the app. Go to your notifications to find your Tab Queue, and with one tap, open them all in Firefox. It’s fantastic!
Download: Google Chrome for Android (Free)
Download: Firefox 42 Beta for Android (Free)


Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-android-6-0-marshmallow-features-without-updating/

Android 6.0 Marshmallow features: What's new?

Google has officially announced what the M in Android M stands for, and it's Marshmallow. Here are the features you can expect from Android 6.0.
It’s time to prod the Marshmallow: Android Marshmallow is here. But you still have a while to wait unless you own a Nexus 6, Nexus 5 or Nexus 9, or plan on picking up a Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P.


So, the question: is Android M worth getting excited about? We’ve been spending some quality time with the new software to see what it offers over the Android Lollipop version we’ve been using for what feels like forever.
Here are the features that take Android Marshmallow a step further. Is it enough to steamroll iOS 9 and Windows 10? For now at least, we’ll leave that to you.

The apps menu is crazy-different

One Android Marshmallow change all of you will notice is the way the new apps menu works. It’s totally different to Lollipop and the other previous versions of Android.

Related: When will your phone get Android 6.0 Marshmallow?





This time, instead of a bunch of apps ‘pages’ you flick through horizontally, the apps box is a scroll thumbed through with a smooth vertical movement. It’s a lot more like Windows 10/Windows Phone’s apps menu, or that of the HTC Sense custom Android interface.
Is it better? Is it worse? This is very much a case of being different rather than better, but it does scroll very snappily on the Nexus 6 we’ve been using. Those with big app collections may find it faster. And, as in Android Lollipop, the apps are arranged alphabetically rather than letting you move them about yourself.
As before, there are no app menu folders either. You have to keep these on the home screens, if you want ‘em.

App search bar and favourites

In order to help those who think the new apps menu is worse, and there will be some, there are some extra features to the apps area. First, there’s a search bar up at the top.
This is a text bar you just type words into, and Android Marshmallow searches your app collection for any apps with that name. There’s also an option to use the search term to look for other apps in Google Play.
Related: App Permissions: The Android Marshamallow 6.0 feature that really matters







If your apps library is so massive you can’t remember which apps/games you’ve uninstalled, this bit will let you get them back on-board sharpish.
There are also four special apps slots right at the top of the apps menu. These are filled using an algorithm that picks the most important apps based on those you use most, and have used most recently.
On the Nexus 6 these extra interface elements can feel like a bit of a stretch to reach. But then 95 per cent of people think the phone is that bit too big anyway. The Nexus 6X should feel comfier.

The clock has gone all stylish

Lollipop upped Android’s style game, and Marshmallow tries to take that a step further with a redesigned clock. It’s little more than a font shuffle, but does give the new software a bit of a different, sharper visual personality.
Check it out below. The date text is now written in all-caps, and the font of the time characters seems to be a bit thicker, as if Google has hit the ‘bold’ button.

Google has added a memory manager

One of the complaints about Android Lollipop was that its memory-hungry nature introduced all sorts of performance problems in phones without absolutely loads of RAM.
A new feature lets you check out the memory usage of all your installed apps without using a third-party app.
There’s a whole new ‘Memory’ area in the main Settings menu.
Related: Nexus 5X vs 6P: What's the difference?






However, before you get too excited, it’s mostly about monitoring RAM use and seeing if there are any apps doing things they really shouldn’t rather than tinkering with how much memory apps are allowed. You can see the RAM use over the last 3, 6, 12 or 24 hours, to let you identify when and where things are going wrong without too much active monitoring on your part.
As is so often the case with Android, you’ll still likely have to try uninstalling/reinstalling any apps that are seriously misbehaving.

You can add a lock screen message

A tiny little tweak of Android M is that you can now add a little line of text to your lock screen. Maybe you’ll want to add a little tag to your ‘Jim’s VHS and DVD rental’ small business, or a way to tell you and your other half’s his ’n’ hers Nexus 6s apart.







Unlike the date font, this little extra line is written in lower case, and seems to have opacity of just under 100 per cent, making it a bit less bright than the clock.
It’s basically a custom number plate for your phone: go to town.

Battery optimisation now on a by-app basis

Android only really started to embrace proper a battery-saving mode with Android Lollipop, even though custom skins have had such features for years now. Android Marshmallow adds a whole new battery area called ‘optimisation’.







This tweaks how apps eat energy when not being actively used in order to save battery life. As standard, all apps bar the Android system itself use battery optimisation, and all you can do is make important apps exempt from this feature.
Google hasn’t laid out too clearly exactly what optimisation does, but you can bet part of it is about regulating access to mobile data and how freely they can perform background processes.

The volume controls have changed yet again

One part of Android Lollipop that everyone got quite angry about originally was the volume control. The silent mode was ditched completely. It caused a bit of a fuss.
Related: What is Google Now on Tap?






It has returned, sort of. Android Marshmallow has a Do Not Disturb shortcut in the notifications drop-down that lets you switch off certain alerts for a period of time, or indefinitely. It does feel kind of fiddly still, but is designed to make sure you don’t switch the feature on and then end up missing your early morning alarm.
This new spot for Do Not Disturb lets Android Marshmallow pare down the volume controls a bit. Press the volume button and you’ll see the slider for system notifications. Next to it there’s a drop-down arrow that gives you access to the separate ‘media’ and ‘alarms’ volume dials.

Fingerprint scanners supported as standard

Finger scanners have been found in Android phones for years now. However, it’s only with Android Marshmallow that the system supports the hardware natively. Before now, software for these scanners had to be jammed in by the manufacturer.
image:



Both the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P have rear fingerprint scanners, and Google calls the system Nexus Imprint. It lets you unlock your phone with a finger-press, as an identification measure in apps and to sign off on Pay wireless payments.
Pay has been around for years now, but more recently Google re-announced it as Android Pay. Hopefully it’ll catch on this time.

Instant Google Now ‘Ok Googling’

Android 6.0 makes the system’s digital assistant way more useful. Where before it was largely consigned to the Google Now area of the phone, it can be accessed to look up things wherever you are, using something called Now on Tap.
Related: Android 6.0 Marshmallow tips and tricks







First of all, you can talk to the assistant whenever the phone is on the home screen just by saying ‘Ok Google’.
Don’t like talking to your phone? One of the neatest parts of Android Marshmallow is that the digital assistant can now be called up everywhere. A long-press on the Home button makes the Google Now assistant scan whatever’s on the screen to find extra info online that might be helpful.
It works absolutely anywhere. One example of a good use we found was looking at Tripadvisor for a local restaurant, then using Google Now to fly straight to that place’s menu URL. Neat, right? The only bit it doesn't seem to do yet is to OCR text in photos to Google Now-ify your photo gallery. Maybe one day, eh Google?

 

 

Permissions are on lock down

Before Android Marshmallow, app permissions were granted at the point of install. You agree to give an app access to, say, your camera, contacts and storage as soon as the app begins installing. This has changed.
From now on, apps will have to ask for your permission to access the camera, at the point where they want to use it. It’ll make things much clearer, letting you see exactly what apps are doing in the background.
For all apps already granted permissions, you’re also given a much clearer round-up of what’s what in the Settings menu. A dedicated section shows you which apps have access to your camera, your contacts and so on, and you can revoke them at the press of a switch.

 

USB Type-C/3.1 support

One important bit of future-proofing is full support for USB-C, which is closely linked to the USB 3.1 standard. We’ve seen this plug already in the OnePlus 2, but it was really just a USB 2.0 port with a different connector.
The big news is the new set of capabilities we’ll see when ‘proper’ USB-C phones arrive, with USB 3.1 support. They’ll be able transmit 40x the power of the current USB connectors, although exactly how much power phones of the future are going to gobble up is something we don’t know yet.
Bandwidth will increase too, but it’s the prospect of even faster-charging batteries that has us excited.

Doze

In a bid to hopefully give your battery life a boost, Android Marshmallow introduces a feature that recognises when the Android device is in a rested state to help conserve power. Google says it has tested it with a Nexus 9 and claims it can help make battery life last two times longer in standby mode by using fewer background services. If you're worried about missing out on alarms and incoming instant messages, Doze will still allow those notifications and modes to be activated.

When will Android 6.0 Marshmallow be available?

Google has announced that the Android Marshmallow launch will be at the beginning of October. Currently, developers can play around with the final Android Marshmallow builds on the Nexus 5 and 6 smartphones plus the Nexus 9 and Nexus Player set-top box. Google has since confirmed that the Nexus 7 will also be among the first devices to the get the Marshmallow treatment.

Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/android-m-features#FedXbvrZ7I8YK93X.99

10 Best Free Apps To Make Free Calls

Moto X Pure Edition Review: This Phone Does Android Better Than Google

When it comes to experiencing Android the way Google intended, you have surprisingly few options. Two, really. Google’s own Nexus smartphone—made by a parade of different hardware partners—and Motorola. The new Moto X Pure Edition is the new unspoiled Android champion. It can do Android even better than Google.

What Is It?

The Moto X Pure Edition is the new 5.7-inch Android flagship smartphone from Motorola, a Google company a Lenovo company. It comes with the latest Android Lollipop software and a few select Moto apps. It’s also the most customizable phone you can buy thanks to Moto Maker, a web app that lets you change the material, texture, and color of the phone before you buy it. Depending on your taste, the Moto X can be anything from eye-popping to subdued, and with Motorola’s universal SIM, you can buy an unlocked version for just $400 that will play nice with any major US cell network.

We’ve often called its predecessors the “Android Phone for Everyone,” and the Moto X more than retains that distinction.

Why Does It Matter?

Not only is the Moto X Pure Edition great, it’s actually cheaper than any flagship phone Motorola has ever made. Sure, $400 may not sound cheap, but now that US phone subsidies are disappearing and cutting edge smartphones can cost you $750+ out of pocket, $400 for a top-of-the-line Android phone is an amazing deal.

And, perhaps most importantly, it’s a Motorola phone that finally has an excellent camera. Mostly. We’ll get to that.

Design

The whole Moto X design shtick has always been the ability to decide how the phone looks. To pick out the colors of various components, personalize the design, and make it your own.

That being the case, it’s actually pretty hard to gauge the overall eyeball appeal of the new Moto X. Personally, I love the dark wood and gunmetal grey version we received for review. The wood is a little slippery, but nowhere near as bad as the Gorilla Glass on recent Samsung devices, and the sloping back (a Moto X trademark since the beginning) makes the X comfortable to hold.

With a 5.7-inch screen, this is definitely a big phone, but it actually feels manageable thanks to that curve. I never felt like “wow, this is a huge phone” when using it, and I’ve never said that about a phone bigger than 5.5 inches before.

The Moto X Pure Edition flanked by last year’s 6-inch Nexus 6 (left) and 5.2-inch Moto X (right)

I do have a few gripes, though—the first being a seam between the aluminum camera casing and the back of the smartphone. This pretty minor, but a couple times dirt and other detritus would somehow find its way in that crack and get stuck. I’d have to find something thin, like the SIM tool on my keychain, to actually dig it out. Now, I recognize that I’m almost OCD-level about keeping my gadgets clean—I’m the guy constantly wiping my smartphone with my shirt—but it’s a tiny detail that’s pretty annoying.

The other design frustration is the front-facing LED flash, a new trend for smartphones—and the first on any Moto phone—that aims to make your phone the perfect selfie-taking companion. But here it’s an eyesore, and I hate it. Just look at it. Look. At. It.

Nope nope nope nope

I understand that we live in a selfie world and a front-facing flash makes perfect sense, but the ugliness it brings to the Moto X, especially with a black bezel, is unjustifiable for me. If you’re a selfie fiend, you may not mind—you may even rejoice—but for the rest of us, it kinda sucks.

Everywhere else, Motorola keeps up with Samsung and Apple in the premium fit-and-finish department. You’ll find aluminum along the edges, your choice of luxurious material on the back. Motorola’s done away with the “ring” flash from last year’s Moto X, which didn’t really work that well anyways, and went with a more traditional layout with the LED underneath the camera sensor.

Okay, one last design gripe: the rear dimple is much smaller, which actually makes it less useful. On the Moto X, and especially the Nexus 6, that dimple helped you grip the larger phone providing better balance. Now, Motorola seems to be retaining the design choice for pure aesthetics rather than function since it’s in no position to comfortably hold, unless I’m holding the phone like an idiot (which I don’t think I am.)

But overall, the Moto X Pure looks great. And since you can pretty much make it look a couple dozen different ways, no doubt one will be to your liking.

Software

Motorola has always been about simplicity on Android smartphones, and the Moto X Pure runs with that idea. This phone just gets the hell out of the way and lets Android do what it does best. All the best parts of Android Lollipop, including Material Design and super-smooth animations, are all here, and all of Moto’s additional apps actually feel like good ideas. Let’s walk through a few of them, from best to worst:

Moto Display: Easily the Moto X’s best additional feature. Moto Display lets you preview incoming notifications on your lockscreen—no need to unlock the handset. You just press on the icons for a preview of the notification, whether it’s an email or text message or Swarm check-in. It’s really convenient, and I love it. You can also select certain apps to be blocked from Moto Display if you’d rather they stay private.

Moto Voice: Great, if you don’t mind squawking at your phone and drawing inquiring glances in public. You set a phrase that Moto Voice is always listening for, and then you can issue voice commands even if it’s asleep. Since I’ve always considered Starscream my spirit Transformer, my phrase was “Ok, Megatron.”

Say that, and it wouldn’t matter if my phone was off or halfway across the room, it would spring to life. You can use it to set alarms, get hands-free turn-by-turn driving directions, or anything else Google Now can do for you.

Moto Assist: This feature is cool in theory, and with the right implementation it could be really cool, but it feels a little hollow and half baked. They way Moto Assist works is you designate “places” like home and work or “events” like driving a car, sleeping, or being in a meeting and Moto Assist will intelligently silence your phone, read text messages aloud when you’re driving, even automatically reply to calls.

It mostly works great, but it interpreted a lot of my Google Calendar events as “meetings” when they were actually just reminders about articles I needed to write or other non-meeting things. So I just turned it off completely.

The only great thing that came from Moto Assist was that I got to hear a AI personal assistant say this sentence out loud from one of my Dungeons & Dragons Online guild members:

Just killed me a colossal red dragon on epic ELITE...She was a CR54

My response was “that’s awesome.”

Speakers

Smartphone speakers are a perennially overlooked feature on most smartphones. The big boys like Apple and Samsung seems to slap them on the bottom like an afterthought, and some (I’m looking at you LG) put the on the back where they don’t do any good at all.

But The Moto X Pure display is flanked by two front-facing speakers, and while they’re not as deep and rich as the absolutely wonderful Boomsound speakers you’ll find on some HTC phones, they do one thing well—they let you actually hear things. In one instance, I was trying to show a friend a video documenting the strange phenomena of “chin down, eyes up” cover art on the boxes of popular video games. I loaded up the video and out of instinct went to cup my hand around the speaker so the sound would be directed to our faces. Only this time, I didn’t have to. Even with taxis screeching by and drunk New Yorkers screaming obscenities, I could actually hear the video. It’s a simple thing, but a great thing.

Camera

Then there’s the camera. Motorola has never been accused of having a stellar smartphone camera. In fact, it’s often been the opposite. But this 21-megapixel camera is amazing. Compared with the S6 and the G4, arguably the top two Android cameras right now, it shows you more detail in daylight. Look at this cute dog photo:

So much detail. You can even see how his eyes say I’ve seen this world. I know its secrets.

Plus, this thing can shoot in 4K, has phase detection autofocus, and is just a champ in normal lighting conditions. It’s when lighting conditions are not-so-normal that things go downhill. Where the Moto X Pure shines in daylight, it stumbles clumsily in low-light. That’s bad, and you can read a more detailed analysis of this unfortunate Achilles heel right here.

The Moto X's Camera Is Truly Stunning, But Still Afraid of the Dark

Every time a new shiny phone is released, the typical claims of how great its camera is are barfed… Read more

Good light.

Low light. Yuck.

Like

The best way to describe the Moto X Pure’s display is cinematic. With a bigger 5.7-inch display with QHD resolution and two front-firing speakers, this guy is a great little multimedia champion. Also, stock Android looks best on as many pixels as possible.

The iconic phrase on personal taste is “to each their own,” and the Moto X gives you exactly that. I personally love my dark wood a gunmetal gray smartphone because it matches the contents of my soul, which is primarily dark and black. But maybe you hate it! Luckily, there are a crap ton of different options to choose from, so you can hate my design choice all you’d like (you’d be wrong, but whatever).

The software is just great. It’s lightweight, beautifully animated, and simple. I don’t have to thumb through a million menus. It feels like an Android phone, which makes sense since that’s what you’re buying.

The price absolutely makes it. At $700+ (what you’d normally pay for a tip-top Android), I’d say there’s too much missing hardware. No wireless charging, no fingerprint sensor. But at a steep $300 discount, I’d say there’s almost too much for the price. It’s just a great deal.

No Like

It doesn’t seem completely futureproof. We know that Google’s next release of Android, Marshmallow, will officially bring fingerprint sensor support to Android. With Android Pay also launching in days or weeks, not having it on the Moto X Pure could be annoying. Moto reps told me that the service will definitely still work on the phone, you’ll just have to authenticate with a pin. Since the whole promise of mobile payments is to be quick and painless, no fingerprint sensor is a definite minus.

While in daylight, the Moto X Pure is simply stunning. Not only does it beat out the S6, which we were completely WOW-ed with, it even beat out the G4. But man, in low-light the camera is like Adam Sandler in Pixels, which is to say real bad. If you find yourself more of a day person, this camera turns out miracles. But if you’re a night hawk—prepare for sadness.

This battery isn’t exactly a dislike per se, but it’s not great either. It’s just OK. Taking off the charger at 8am and plugging in at 10pm, I was usually at about 5 percent battery on a rather mediocre usage diet. That’s not terrible, but not great. If you have a late night or are prone to heavy use (i.e. lots of streaming, web browsing, video recording, etc.), the Moto X is going to die on you. Luckily, it does come with quick charging capability, so if you do find you’re in dire need of some juice, you can get some fast.

While the price is a definite like, that $400 price is for 16GB of storage. For a phone that shoots 4K, that is just not going to cut it. Enough. With. 16GB. Phones.

Should You Buy It?

If you’re looking for the absolute best value Android smartphone out there: Yep. Yep, you should. The only hesitation you should feel in your heart is that Google will most likely be announcing two Nexus smartphones possibly by the end of the month. A Google Phone means two devices very similar to the Moto X, definitely getting upcoming Marshmallow update first, and ones that could even be a part of Google’s new Project Fi wireless service.

But what Nexus most likely won’t have is a look tailored specifically to you and legitimately useful Moto apps you’ll want to use. Pull the trigger or wait—it’s a win-win.

Images by Michael Hession

Source: http://reviews.gizmodo.com/moto-x-pure-edition-review-this-phone-does-android-bet-1728270123

Windows 10 privacy concerns may help Linux

In today's open source roundup: Will Windows 10 privacy issues bring more users to Linux? Plus: Windows 10 keeps talking to Microsoft even when you try to shut it up. And Ars Technica readers sound off about Windows 10 and privacy

Windows 10 privacy concerns may help Linux
Windows 10 is out now, and many people are shocked at some of the privacy issues involved with Microsoft's latest desktop operating system. But will Windows 10 and its privacy problems prove to be a boon for Linux? A writer at Softpedia thinks that Windows 10 could be quite good for growing the Linux user base.
Silviu Stahie reports for Softpedia:

...Windows 10 collects huge amounts of data about your PC and you as a user, and most media outlets seem to think that it's OK and that it's just an evolution of the operating system. From my perspective, it's just another reason to move to Linux.
Many journalists have treated Windows 10 with a lot of lenience, to say the least. Many have said that Windows 10 does collect plenty of data, but that it is OK because others are doing it as well and pointed fingers at Google or Facebook. Just because others are doing it doesn't mean that it's OK for everyone involved. It's interesting to see how, in just a couple of years, we've moved from being apprehensive about sharing our personal details online to calling it an evolution.
There are so many things that send information from Windows 10 that it will take you a while to stop them all. Microsoft collects a ton data about you as a user, and not just about your computer. Stuff like location, preferences, and even contacts is being collected and sent by default if you don't stop it. Even with everything turned off, it's hard to determine if something else is happening.
A very clear line is being drawn right now. Windows is clearly opting to use the online components more in its internal functionality and Linux is going towards privacy. When you add the security component to this equation, you can only get a single answer.
More at Softpedia

Windows 10 keeps talking to Microsoft

Windows 10 comes with various privacy control settings, but a writer at Ars Technica notes that Windows 10 will keep talking to Microsoft even when you try to shut it up.
Peter Bright reports for Ars Technica:

Windows 10 uses the Internet a lot to support many of its features. The operating system also sports numerous knobs to twiddle that are supposed to disable most of these features and the potentially privacy-compromising connections that go with them.
Unfortunately for privacy advocates, these controls don't appear to be sufficient to completely prevent the operating system from going online and communicating with Microsoft's servers.
...Windows 10 will periodically send data to a Microsoft server named ssw.live.com. This server seems to be used for OneDrive and some other Microsoft services. Windows 10 seems to transmit information to the server even when OneDrive is disabled and logins are using a local account that isn't connected to a Microsoft Account. The exact nature of the information being sent isn't clear—it appears to be referencing telemetry settings—and again, it's not clear why any data is being sent at all. We disabled telemetry on our test machine using group policies.
We configured our test virtual machine to use an HTTP and HTTPS proxy (both as a user-level proxy and a system-wide proxy) so that we could more easily monitor its traffic, but Windows 10 seems to make requests to a content delivery network that bypass the proxy.
More at Ars Technica

Ars Technica readers sound off about Windows 10's privacy problems
As you might imagine, Peter Bright's article on Ars Technica caught the attention of the site's readers and they weren't shy about sharing their thoughts about Windows 10's privacy issues:

Caffarius: "If they don't release a way to stop this incessant collection of data, it's looking like all my machines are going to be Linux based once Microsoft's Windows 7 support drops off. Arch doesn't want to know a thing about me. And that's how I like it."
Anowack: "Surprise! A company that disrespects user privacy enough to remove the option to turn off telemetry in all consumer versions of its operating system is going to disrespect it in other ways also."
Causality: "This is completely ridiculous. Can somebody write an overhaul patch that just puts a "F##K OFF" button in the privacy settings menu?"
Delicieuxz: "The Windows 10 EULA and Microsoft's Privacy Statement declare that Microsoft will access and use the content of people's emails and other files, such as documents uploaded to One Drive, according to Microsoft's discretion. "Share with our partners" also includes law enforcement, wherever Microsoft deems required. And I think Microsoft cannot ignore any instance which they feel should be forwarded to law enforcement without making themselves complicit in any potential criminal activity.
Windows 10's all-your-contents-are-belongs-to-us policy is also a widening of the backdoor which law enforcement asks OS manufacturer to build into their systems.
Basically, Microsoft's Windows 10 EULA claims that all files used in Windows 10 may be accessed, searched, and contents utilized by Microsoft, with Microsoft exercizing sole discretion over what it will access, and how it will be used.
I think all businesses, content creators, and even nations should be dismayed at this."
Sifaka: "You should not need to install a firewall to stop your OS from sending data to a remote server."
ZPrime: "While what this article reveals is somewhat disconcerting, a lot of what MS mentions in its privacy policy is stuff that the product needs to function as intended (i.e. OneDrive, various Live Tile apps / etc) and people are just fearmongering the hell out of it.
Personally I have no problems with "telemetry" because it's not traceable to an individual user, and it's there to help improve the product. OTOH, as the article says, if I've turned off Bing / MSN crap, Windows shouldn't still be poking those URLs."
ZeroHazard: "Let's not forget the purely monetary concerns: metered internet. If it's constantly reading and sending your data to an offsite server, you're getting dinged by data usage charges. I wouldn't be surprised if ISPs welcomed this 'feature' with open arms and greased palms."
Peter Chastain: "Does the postal carrier need to know the contents of my mail in order to deliver it? Does the storage center need to know the exact contents of my boxes, or only that they don't contain harmful material?
MS doesn't need to know the contents of your files or your emails to store or deliver them. They do need to know the contents if they want to send you targeted offers or turn you over to law enforcement."
Temtka: "Right now I am dual booting Windows 10 Enterprise and Linux. I use linux for 95% of my stuff. Windows for the other 5%. I store nothing personal on my Windows partition. Which is sad, because for the most part I really like Windows 10. Too bad it can't be Windows 10 without all the tracking."
PaidthePrice: "Microsoft's final good operating system is and will be Windows 7. Now, Microsoft treats every device like a cell phone. So they treat it as a "service" not a product. I prefer a product over a service."
More at Ars Technica

Source: http://www.itworld.com/article/2969704/linux/windows-10-privacy-concerns-may-help-linux.html

4 sources to listen to police scanners

RadioReference has been around for a long time, and offers one of the most comprehensive listings of scanners on the Web. In addition to live audio broadcasts of Police, Fire, EMS, Railroad, and aircraft communications, RadioReference also offers a complete frequency database, trunked radio system information, and FCC license data. Users (at the time of this writing, there were over 700,000 registered users at this site) also have access to a wide variety of forums in which to discuss what they're listening to.
There's also a wiki, a user-edited reference resource for communications information and acronyms. RadioReference offers user-contributed frequencies, technical information on communication systems used all over the world, the opportunity to discuss communication-related topics with users globally, and of course live streaming services.

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More than 3000 live audio streams are available to listen to at Broadcastify, with feeds from public safety, aircraft, rail, and marine live audio streams. Scanner broadcasts are categorized into Most Popular, Official Feeds,Alert Feeds, etc. so users can easily navigate to what they might be looking for in any area of the country. Broadcastify users will soon have the opportunity to broadcast their own streaming broadcasts.
Listening to streams here is free, an upgraded membership for a small monthly premium gives listeners the ability to listen for an unlimited amount of time, set up alerts, and get rid of all advertisements. For listeners who would like to take advantage of Broadcastify's service on the go, they offer a full featured mobile web site that is supported on most smartphones, iDevices, and tablets, as well as app support that is available for Apple iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and other mobile devices.

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Ustream differs a bit from the other listings in this article; it's primarily a live video streaming service that anyone can hook into, either to broadcast or to watch live streams. However, it's possible to listen to live police scanners here, and it's become a popular source when other sources might not be broadcasting. You'll have to do a little digging to find what you're looking for; try searching for "police scanner" in the Ustream search field to get started.

Ustream is divided into several categories, anything from Popular to Entertainment to Education. Most broadcasts are free to watch, and it's possible to stream your own show if you'd like. Over fifty million viewers tune into Ustream every month to watch live sports events, listen to streaming audio broadcasts, or check in with their favorite television personality. While you're watching or listening to something, Ustream offers a unique chat feature that allows users to connect with their fellow viewers or listeners live.
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TuneIn offers users the chance to listen to more than 70,000 stations from all over the world, in any genre from Jazz to Classical. They also offer a wide variety of public safety broadcasts, anything from air, fire, police, rail, public transportation, and much more. At the time of this writing, nearly 900 public safety broadcasts were available for streaming and listening for free within a Web browser.
Just like Ustream, it takes a bit of searching to find what you're looking for here; you'll want to type "scanner" into TuneIn's search field and then go from there. They do offer a more targeted search by genre; you can search for scanners within Air, Police, Fire, and more. Scanners that are in your local geographical area will come up first in search results. If you know the name of the scanner you're looking for, or the locality that it's attached to, it's a good idea to try that in search results as well. TuneIn also offers a mobile app available for most mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones.


Source: http://websearch.about.com/od/webdirector1/ss/Police-Scanners-Online-Four-Sources.htm#step1

How to Choose the Best VPN Service for Your Needs (from howtogeek.com)

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are veritable Swiss Army Knives when it comes to privacy enhancement, censorship avoidance, anonymous file sharing, and more. But not all VPNs are created equal and there’s no sense paying for features you don’t need (or paying at all if a full-fledged VPN service is overkill for your needs). Read on as we explore the ins and outs of picking a perfect VPN service.
We’re about to walk you through what VPNs are, why people use them, how to assess your VPN needs, and the important questions to ask when shopping for a VPN. If you’re impatient and you just want a really good VPN right this second, you can always jump right to the end and check out our recommendations. A thorough read from start to finish, however, will show you why we’re recommending the services we are.

What Is Virtual Private Networking?

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. Through the use of software (and sometimes, at the corporate and governmental level, hardware) a VPN creates a virtualized network between two physically separate networks.

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VPN use, for example, allows an IBM employee to work from home in a Chicago suburb while accessing the company intranet located in a building in New York City as if he was right there with the physical LAN hundreds of miles away. The same technology can be used by consumers to bridge their phones and laptops to their home network so, while on the road, they can securely access files from their media server or desktop computers.
VPNs also have another case use beyond bridging users securely to their own (or corporate) local networks: connecting users to the greater Internet through a secure connection such that all their traffic between their devices is routed through the tunnel to the end point so no one in between can see what is going on. Not only is their traffic secure but it will appear to originate not where they are (like Sydney) but where their VPN exit node is (like New York City).

Why Do People Use VPNs?

We used the words private and secure a lot in the previous section and that should tip you off to one of the principle draws of using a Virtual Private Network: to secure your connection and increase the privacy there of.

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In addition to the use cases we highlighted above (securely accessing a remote network as if you were connected to the network as a local user) there are also some very valuable use cases that are more outwardly focused. Why would someone want to, as we mentioned above, use their computer in Sydney, Australia but appear (to all the websites and services they use) as if they were in the United States?
Many services are geographically blocked. If you’re a reader outside the US who has visited a popular YouTube video only to be informed “This video is not available in your country,” or some variant thereof, you’ve experienced geo-blocking. You’ve also experienced it if you’ve attempted to watch Netflix in a country not currently supported by Netflix.
Even when you can access a service like Netflix in your country there are often incongruences between what is available in the primary market (typically the US) and the market you’re in. In addition to absent videos many people (we’re looking at you, Australians) have to deal with insanely high import taxes on software that see them paying twice (or more) what US consumers pay for the same products.

On a more serious note, an unfortunately large number of people live in countries with high levels of overt censorship and monitoring (like China) and countries with more convert monitoring (like the US); one of the best ways to get around censorship and monitoring is to use a secure tunnel to appear as if you’re from somewhere else altogether.
In addition to hiding your online activity from a snooping government it’s also useful for hiding your activity from a snooping Internet Service Provider (ISP). If your ISP likes to throttle your connection based on content (tanking your file downloads and/or streaming video speeds in the process) a VPN completely eliminates that problem as all your traffic is traveling to a single point through the encrypted tunnel and your ISP remains ignorant of what kind of traffic it is.
In short a VPN is useful anytime you want to either hide your traffic from people on your local network (like the person who controls the free Wi-Fi at the shop you’re working at), your ISP, or your government and it’s also incredibly useful to trick services into thinking you’re right next door when you’re an ocean away.

Assessing Your VPN Needs

Every user is going to have slightly different VPN needs and the best way to end up paired with the ideal VPN service for your needs is to take careful stock of what your needs are before you go shopping. You may even find you don’t need to go shopping because home-grown or router-based solutions you already have on hand fulfill your needs just fine. Let’s run through a series of questions you should ask yourself and highlight how different VPN features meet the needs highlighted by those questions.
To be clear many of the following questions can be satisfied on multiple levels by a single provider, but the questions are framed to get you thinking about what is most important for your personal use.

Do You Need Secure Access to Your Home Network?

If the only use case you care about is securely accessing your home network to gain access to local content while away from home, then you absolutely do not need to invest in a VPN service provider. This isn’t even a case of the tool being overkill for the job; it’s a case of the tool being the wrong tool for the job. A remote VPN service provider gives you secure access to a remote network (like an exit node in Amsterdam), not access to your own network.

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What you need for secure access to your own home network is a VPN server running on either your home router or an attached device (like a Raspberry Pi or even an always-on desktop computer). Ideally you’ll run the VPN server at the router level for best security and minimal power consumption. To that end we recommend either flashing your router to DD-WRT (which supports both VPN server and client mode) or purchasing a router that has a built in VPN server (like the previously reviewed Netgear Nighthawk and Nighthawk X6 routers).
If this is the solution you need (or even if you just want to run it in parallel with remote solutions for other tasks) definitely check out our article How to Set Up Your Own Home VPN Server for additional information.

Do You Need Secure Casual Browsing?

A great use case for VPNs that everyone should adopt, even those who aren’t particularly security/privacy conscious, is securing their remote casual computer and mobile device use. When you use Wi-Fi at the coffee shop, the airport, or the hotel you’re staying at while traveling cross-country, you have zero idea whether or not the connection you’re using is secure.
The router could be running outdated and compromised firmware. The router could actually be malicious and actively sniffing packets and logging your data. The router could be improperly configured and other users on the network could be sniffing your data or probing your laptop or mobile device. You never have any guarantee whatsoever that an unknown Wi-Fi hotspot isn’t, either through malice or poor configuration, exposing your data.

In such scenarios you don’t need a beastly VPN provider with massive bandwidth to secure your casual email, Facebook, and web browsing activities. In such scenarios the same home VPN server model we highlighted in the previous section will serve you just as well as a paid solutions. The only time you might consider a paid solution is if you have high-bandwidth needs that your home connection can’t keep up with (like watching large volumes of streaming video through your VPN connection).

Do You Need to Geo-Shift Your Location?

If your goal is to appear as if you’re in another country so you can access content only available in that country (e.g. BBC Olympic coverage when you’re not in the UK or YouTube videos when you’re not in the US) then you’ll need a VPN service with servers located in the geographic region you wish to exit the virtualized network in.
Need UK access for that Olympic coverage your crave? Make sure your provider has UK servers. Need a U.S. IP address so you can watch YouTube videos in peace? Pick a provider with a long list of US exit nodes. Even the greatest VPN provider around is useless if you can’t access an IP address in the geographic region you need.

Do You Need Anonymity and Plausible Deniability?

If your needs are more serious than watching Netflix or keeping some war kiddie at the coffee shop from snooping on your social media activity, you need to more closely scrutinize the details of any VPN service provider you consider. You want a provider that doesn’t keep logs and has a very large user base. The bigger the service the more people poring through every exit node and the more difficult it is to isolate a single user from the crowd.
A lot of people avoid using VPN providers based out of the United States on the premise that US law would compel those providers to log all VPN activity. Counterintuitively, there are no such data logging requirements for US-based VPN providers. They might be compelled under another set of laws to turn over data if they have any to turn over, but there is no requirement they even keep the data in the first place.
In addition to logging concerns, an even bigger concern is the type of VPN protocol and encryption they use (as it’s much more probable a malicious third party will try and siphon up your traffic and analyze it later than they will reverse engineer your traffic in an attempt to locate you). Considering logging, protocol, and encryption standards is a great point to transition into the next section of our guide where we shift from questions focused on our needs to questions focused on capabilities of the VPN providers.

Selecting Your VPN Provider

What makes for a VPN provider? Aside from the most obvious matter, a good price point that sits well with your budget, other elements of VPN selection can be a bit opaque. Let’s look at some of the elements you’ll want to consider.

It’s up to you to answer these questions by reading over the documentation provided by the VPN service provider before signing up for the service. Better yet, read over their documentation but then search for complaints about the service to ensure that even though they claim they don’t do X, Y, or Z, that users aren’t reporting that they are in fact doing just that.

What Protocols Do They Support?

Not all VPN protocols are equal (not by a long shot). Hands down the protocol you want to run in order to achieve high levels of security with low processing overhead is OpenVPN.

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You want to skip PPTP if at all possible. It’s a very dated protocol that uses weak encryption and due to security issues should be considered compromised. It might be good enough to secure your non-essential web browsing at a coffee shop (e.g. to keep the shopkeeper’s son from sniffing your passwords), but it’s not up to snuff for serious security. Although L2TP/IPsec is a significant improvements over PPTP it lacks the speed and the open security audits found with OpenVPN.
Long story short, OpenVPN is what you want (and you should accept no substitutions until something even better comes along). If you want the long version of the short story, definitely check out our article Which is the Best VPN Protocol? PPTP vs. OpenVPN vs. L2TP/IPsec vs. SSTP for a more detailed look.
There’s currently only one scenario where you would entertain using L2TP/IPsec instead of OpenVPN and that’s for mobile devices like iOS/Android phones and tablets. Currently neither Android nor iOS supports native OpenVPN (although there is third-party support for it). Both mobile operating systems do, however, support L2TP/Ipsec natively and, as such, it’s a useful alternative.
A good VPN provider will offer all of the above options. An excellent VPN provider will even provide good documentation and steer you away from using PPTP for the same reasons we just did.

How Many Servers Do They Have And Where?

If you’re in the US and you want a VPN to hide your activities (like filesharing) in a country with lax laws then a VPN with the majority of its nodes in the US isn’t very useful to you. Conversely, if you’re looking to access US media sources like Netflix and YouTube without geo-blocking, then a VPN service with the majority of its nodes in Africa and Asia is of very little use to you.
Accept nothing less than a diverse stable of servers in multiple countries. Given how robust and widely used VPN services have become it isn’t unreasonable to expect hundreds, if not thousands, of servers across the world.
In addition to checking how many servers they have and where those servers are located, it’s also wise to check into where the company is based and if that location aligns with your needs (if you’re using a VPN to avoid persecution by your government then it would be wise to avoid a VPN provider in a country with close ties to your country).

How Many Concurrent Connections Are Allowed?

You might be thinking “I only need one?” but what if you want to set up VPN access on more than one device, for more than one family member, on your home router, or the like? You’ll need multiple concurrent connections to the service. Or, perhaps, if you’re particularly security oriented you’d like to configure multiple devices to use multiple different exit nodes so your collective personal or household traffic isn’t all bundled together.

At minimum you want a service that allows for at least three concurrent connections; practically speaking at least five (to account for your mobile devices and computers) and with the ability to link your router to the VPN network is preferable.

Do They Throttle Connections, Limit Bandwidth, or Restrict Services?

ISP throttling is one of the reasons many people turn to VPN networks in the first place so paying extra for a VPN service on top of your broadband bill just to get throttled all over again is a terrible proposition. This is one of those topics some VPNs aren’t perfectly transparent about so it helps to do a little digging via Google.
Bandwidth restrictions might not have been a big deal in the pre-streaming era but now when everyone is streaming videos, music, and more the bandwidth burns up really fast. Avoid VPNs that impose bandwidth restrictions unless the bandwidth restrictions are clearly very high and intended only to allow the provider to police people abusing the service.
In that vein a paid VPN service in this day and age restricting you to GBs worth of data is unreasonable. A service with fine print that restricts you to X number of TBs of data is acceptable, but really unlimited bandwith is to be expected.
Finally, read the fine print to see if they restrict any protocols or services you wish to use the service for. If you want to use the service for file sharing read the fine print to ensure your file sharing service isn’t blocked. Again, while it was typical to see VPN providers restrict services back in the day (in an effort to cut down on bandwidth and computing overhead) it’s more common today to find VPNs with an anything-goes policy.

What Kind of Logs, If Any, Do They Keep?

Most VPNs won’t keep any logs of user activity. Not only is this of benefit to their customers (and a great selling point) it’s also of huge benefit to them (as detailed logging can quickly consume disk after disk worth of resources). Many of the largest VPN providers will tell you as much: not only do they have no interest in keeping logs but given the sheer size of their operation they can’t even begin to set aside the disk space to do so.

Although some VPNs will note that they keep logs for a very minimum window (such a only a few hours) in order to facilitate maintenance and ensure their network is running smoothly there is very little reason to settle for anything less than zero logging.

What Payment Methods Do They Offer?

If you’re purchasing a VPN for securing your traffic against snooping Wi-Fi nodes while traveling or to route your traffic safely back to the US while traveling, anonymous payment methods aren’t likely a very high priority for you.
If you’re purchasing a VPN to avoid political persecution or wish to remain as anonymous as possible, then you’ll be significantly more interested in services that allow for payment through anonymous sources like cryptocurrency or gift cards.
You heard us right on that last bit: a number of VPN providers have systems in place where they will accept gift cards from major retailers (that are totally unrelated to their business) like Wal-Mart or Target in exchange for VPN credit. You could buy a gift card to any number of big box stores using cash, redeem it for VPN credit, and avoid using your personal credit card or checking information.

Do They Have A Kill Switch System?

If you are depending on your VPN to keep your activities anonymous you need some sense of security that the VPN isn’t just going to go down and dump all your traffic out into the regular Internet. What you want is tool known as a “kill switch system”. Good VPN providers have a kill switch system in place such that if the VPN connection fails for any reason it automatically locks down the connection so that the computer doesn’t default to using the open and unsecured Internet connection.

Our Recommendations

At this point your head might be, understandably, spinning at the thought of all the homework you’ve got ahead of you. We understand that selecting a VPN service can be a daunting task and that even armed with the questions we outlined above you’re just not sure where to turn.
We’re more than happy to help cut through all the jargon and ad copy to help get the bottom of things and, to that end, we’ve selected three VPN service providers that we have direct personal experience with and that meet our VPN selection criteria. In addition to meeting our outlined criteria (and exceeding our expectations for quality of service and ease of use) all of our recommendations here have been in service for years and have remained highly rated and recommended throughout that time.

Private Internet Access

If you’re looking for the most bang-for-your-buck it’s really hard to beat Private Internet Access. They have 2,000+ servers in 18 countries. They support OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec, and PPTP. You can have up to five simultaneous connections and you can configure supported routers to use the server for whole-home coverage; bandwidth is unlimited. They have zero logging and accept everything from your personal credit card to Bitcoin to a Starbuck’s Gift card as payment. Their support pages are unrivaled and include detailed setup instructions for every device and OS you can imagine but for standard configuration on personal computers you can just download their easy-to-use wizard to set everything up. In addition they also support proxy services so you can link a single application (such as a BitTorrent client or chat client) into an anonymizing proxy.
You’d expect to pay a premium for all those features but you can pick up a PIA account for $6.95 on the month-to-month plan or prepay for the year and drop your cost down to a mere $3.33 a month. From a feature-to-dollar standpoint a year subscription to PIA is the best value in town.

Hide My Ass

Hide My Ass is a long running and highly regarded VPN provider on par with Private Internet Access. They have 870 VPN servers distributed between 200 countries. They support OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec, and PPTP. Like PIA they also offer unlimited bandwidth and while they say you can have unlimited users you’re actually limited to two computer users unless you configure your router for a VPN  connection (so it’s not really unlimited and the five connection limit offered by PIA is actually more flexible in that it is effectively “unlimited” in your home in the same fashion).
In addition to the same core features found in Private Internet Access’s stable, Hide My Ass also has anonymous email, anonymous link forwarding, and other anonymizing services. Those extra services as well as Hide My Ass maintaining a presence in 200 countries does add a bit of a premium to the price tag: if you pay by the month it’s $9.99 but if you pay by the year your cost drops to $4.99 per month.

TunnelBear

If Private Internet Access and Hide My Ass are the luxury sedans of the VPN world, TunnelBear is more like the econo-car (if you get the paid program) or the city bus (if you use their generous free program). That’s not a knock on TunnelBear, either, they’ve been around for years and their free service tier has been of great utility to people in need all over the world.
The free TunnelBear service offers up to 500MB per month. That’s not a whole lot of data but it’s enough for mobile browsing or light home browsing. If you need more data than that you can upgrade to their professional accounts at a cost of $6.99 per month or $4.16 per month if billed annually.
The free account is limited to a single user while the premium account enabled unlimited bandwidth for up to five computers or mobile devices. TunnelBear doesn’t list the total number of servers on their site but they do offer servers in 14 countries. Their Windows and Mac OS X client is based on OpenVPN and their mobile VPN system uses L2TP/IPsec. Unlike the previous two recommendations TunnelBear has a firmer stance against file sharing activities and BitTorrent is blocked.
From a feature-to-dollar standpoint TunnelBear doesn’t beat out Private Internet Access or Hide My Ass but it does offer a free tier and it is extremely easy to get up and running with their dead-simple apps for Windows and OS X users.

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Whether you’re paranoid that your government is logging your web browsing activities, you’re sick of your ISP throttling your connection, you want to secure your browsing sessions while on the road, or you just want to download whatever the heck you want without the man on your back, there’s no substitution for a securely deployed Virtual Private Network. Now that you’re armed with the knowledge necessary to pick a good VPN (and with three solid recommendations at that), it’s time to secure your internet traffic once and for all.

Source: http://www.howtogeek.com/221929/how-to-choose-the-best-vpn-service-for-your-needs/