Shiraz Kotwall

Technesium is a technology company which offers a variety of products & services for the home user as well as companies.

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Extend Unlock suspends Android's lock screen up to 4h per interval while a condition holds: on-body, trusted place or paired device. Opt-in, not a standing state.

Review under Security and privacy. Power plus Volume up, then Lockdown, overrides it.

Video is AI-generated.

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Task-based job fraud: small payouts for rating or liking build trust, then a deposit is demanded to unlock tasks or withdraw. I4C lists upfront payment and blocked withdrawals as red flags. Report: 1930.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Android's private space holds apps behind a separate lock. While locked they are not enumerated: absent from launcher, recents, sharing surfaces and Settings.

Unlocked, apps and notifications are visible. Conditional, not permanent.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

The catch: the archive on your laptop is plain text. And it only works with WhatsApp Desktop on a Mac.

Turn on FileVault first: System Settings > Privacy & Security > FileVault.

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

A viral reel shows a free tool, wacrawl, that makes 5 years of WhatsApp chats searchable offline, no cloud.

Mostly true. It's open source, never logs in to WhatsApp, and its backups are encrypted before they leave your laptop.

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Turn it off in what you already use. Gemini: profile > Gemini Apps Activity > Off. ChatGPT: Settings > Data Controls > "Improve the model for everyone" > Off.

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

A viral reel says two free AI tools give you "9 billion free tokens" a month: 1.6B + 7.4B.

The maths is wrong. Both tools pool the same free plans (Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter, Mistral), so the numbers overlap.

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

And each figure is a ceiling that assumes every rate limit is maxed 24/7. You get throttled mid-size models, not the top ones.

The real price: some free AI plans may train on your prompts. Fine for testing ideas. Never for client data.

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Disuse is not a state change. A device stays signed in to a Google Account until explicitly signed out; sessions do not expire from inactivity.

Significance is inventory accuracy, not active exposure.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Remote-installation fraud: plausible pretext, urgency, link sent during the call, live guidance past the platform warnings.

Play Protect scans installs including from outside the store, but detection at the end of the chain is not a reason to proceed.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Ring, locate, lock and erase are instructions transmitted to the device. It must be signed in and connected to receive them; powered off or in flight mode, nothing executes.

Remote erase is a confidentiality control, not recovery.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Ring, locate, lock and erase are instructions transmitted to the device. It must be signed in and connected to receive them; powered off or in flight mode, nothing executes.

Remote erase is a confidentiality control, not recovery.

Video is AI-generated.

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Android revokes permissions, background execution and notifications for long-unused apps, and clears their temporary files.

This is exposure reduction, not failure. The app stays installed and the state is fully reversible.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Binding the second factor to one device creates a single point of failure. Backup codes mitigate it: sets of ten, each inactive after one use.

They must be generated in advance and stored offline, not inside the account they secure.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Deletion in Google Photos is two-stage. Items sit in trash for 30 days and continue to consume quota; only emptying it frees storage.

The window is a recovery control. Emptying forfeits it.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Android's privacy dashboard is a retrospective access log for camera, microphone and location.

Presence is evidence of access, not misuse. Most entries map to user-initiated activity. The useful ones are those without a plausible explanation.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Android permissions are granted once and retained indefinitely, decoupling the grant from its context.

Ask-every-time restores that link. Applied broadly it causes prompt fatigue and reflexive approval, so apply it selectively.

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[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Password Checkup reports stored credentials as compromised, weak or reused. Compromised means published in a breach corpus.

It enumerates exposure. It does not remediate it. Accounts stay compromised until the credential changes.

Video is AI-generated.

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Walk a room. Get a drawing you can build from.

SiteDraft turns a LiDAR scan into a dimensioned floor plan — PDF, DXF for AutoCAD, 3D model.

One rule: an estimate is never shown as a measurement. Unsure walls print dashed with a ±.

https://t.co/t1nGENYaHY

[Shiraz Kotwall @TechnesiumBlog]

Google Account sessions persist by default and are not expired by disuse. The device list under Security enumerates them; each can be signed out remotely.

Sign-out terminates account access. It is not a remote wipe of local data.

Video is AI-generated.