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Hi everyone, welcome to the first collaboration between NerdSanctum and factXtract. Today,
we want to talk about 5 myths in the tech world that although they are false, they have
been told so many times that many now accept them as proven facts.
No. 1. Common household magnets can ruin data stored on solid-state and hard-disk drives
We have been told many times that we shouldn't place a magnet near our hard drive or we will
lose all of our data! Such fear might have been valid couple of decades ago during the
good old days of floppy disks, but it is not a concern any more. First of all, there is
nothing magnetic in solid-state or flash drives, so they are immune to the magnetic fields.
But, data on Hard-disk drives, is still stored magnetically. However, in order to affect
the data on hard-disk drives, you need a very strong magnetic field, perhaps equivalent
to that created by an MRI machine which obviously is not found in your average household.
Speaking of wiping the data, that brings us to our second myth.
No. 2 Emptying your computer's trash bin permanently deletes your data
This probably has happened to most of us once or twice. You delete an important file and
then mistaken empty your trash bin and there goes your precious document that you can never
get back. Well, that is not quite right.
When your operating system deletes a file, it doesn't alter the information on your hard
drive but marks its space on your hard drive as "free space" instead. The file is therefore
not completely gone. However, there is a good chance that your computer might start writing
new information where that file used to be stored. At this point, what you need to do
is actually "do not do much" on your computer and instead run a file recovery program. There
are many of them out there and there is a good chance that they can find your file.
We have provided some links in the description of this video.
No 3 Macs are safe from Viruses There were times that Apple bragged that its
computers are virus free. That perception has been changed recently and it is now well-documented
that Apple's Macs can also be infected with viruses, trojans and other malware.
Macs are UNIX
some form of Windows OS; and hackers write programs to specifically attack Windows based
systems in order to affect as many people as possible. The second is that Macs are UNIX
based which is indeed much more secure than Windows; but is still susceptible to malicious
software attacks. No.4 More Cellphone bars means higher quality
phone calls
Many believe that more cellphone bars means that we will definitely get higher quality
phone calls. But it is really true?
There are several reasons that this is indeed a myth. One simple explanation is that the
strength of the signal that your phone receives depends on its power, which is measured in
reference to milli-watts and its unit is dBm. The dBm's higher than -65 generally mean that
you have a very good signal and dBm's lower than -105 mean that you have a very weak signal.
However there is no industry standard for how many dBm's a bar is, so 2 bars on one
network may mean 5 bars on another. So the number of bars you have might not be a good
metric to use and brag about the quality of your service to your friends!
No. 5 Password-protected Wi-Fi's are safe
It has happened to almost all of us. We are outside our home, school or the office and
we desperately need to connect to an Internet connection without having a data plan. We
finally find a Password-protected Wi-Fi connection and we happily connect to it. We are definitely
safe, right? Wrrrong!
It is known that hackers launch "phony secure hotspots" to steal information. For example
a hacker can go to an airport and create a hotspot called "Airport Wi-Fi" and have access
to all data that connected users transmit on their phony hotspot. The best way to ensure
your safety is ask an employee of whoever is offering Wi-Fi to confirm the hotspots
name and its legitimacy. After all, it is better to be safe rather than losing your
sensitive information.
So those are our 5 Tech myths if you liked them, please don't forget to give a thumbs
up and subscribe to us for our future videos.