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Speed Up, Customise Your Phone With These Simple Hacks







Autoplay Autoplay 1 of 5 Tricks And Treats Smartphones are complex devices and they continue to evolve with new features like AI and neural engine processors.



This also means that there could be a number of handy tricks in your device that you might not be aware of. Advance Notification Controls On Android For Android phones with Android 7.0 and above, there is hidden settings menu that gives you nuanced control over notifications. To enable this, pull down the notification bar, tap and hold the gear icon on the top right for a few seconds.



When you let go, you will see a message on the bottom saying ‘System UI tuner has been enabled’. Head to settings and scroll to find System UI tuner. Tap on Other > Power notification controls and enable it. Now for each app, you can set different levels of notification alerts instead of just the standard on/off. Auto-Stop Music Playback On iOS If you like to go to sleep while listening to music, this feature is a Godsend. The trouble with this is that once you go to sleep, audio continues to play in the background which eats up battery life.



For iPhone users, a simple way out is to use the timer function. Open the Clock app and go to the timer section. Now set the timer to 45 or 60 minutes as per your preference. Tap the box below the time that reads ‘When Timer Ends’ — scroll down to the bottom and select the Stop Playing option. Now, when the timer ends, music playback will automatically stop on your iPhone. Creating Custom Vibration Alerts Both iOS and Android let you select a custom ringtone for a contact. However, iOS users also get the option to set a customized vibration alert for each contact. To access this, open the contact card in your phone book and tap on edit. Tap on Ringtone and in the next menu tap on vibration — you will see a list of preset vibration styles to choose from. If you want to create your own alert, scroll down and you will see the option to ‘Create New Vibration’ to make your own custom vibration pattern. Play Games Without Ads A lot of game developers are moving to the freemium model for their apps. This means that while you don’t pay for the game upfront, small or full screen ads will pop up every few minutes.



The frequency of ads tends to increase the more your play. A simple way to get rid of the ads is to switch off your data and WiFi when you want to enjoy the game.



Typically, ads are delivered over the Internet and if you switch off 3G/4G and WiFi, you can play uninterrupted. This won’t work if the app/game has the ads pre-loaded.

LONDON: Is the web browser on your phone slower than usual? It could be mining bitcoin for criminals.As the popularity of virtual currencies has grown, hackers are focusing on a new type of heist: putting malicious software on peoples' handsets, TVs and smart fridges that makes them mine for digital money.So-called "crypto-jacking" attacks have become a growing problem in the cybersecurity industry, affecting both consumers and organisations. Depending on the severity of the attack, victims may notice only a slight drop in processing power, often not enough for them to think it's a hacking attack. But that can add up to a lot of processing power over a period of months or if, say, a business's entire network of computers is affected."We saw organisations whose monthly electricity bill was increased by hundreds of thousands of dollars," said Maya Horowitz, Threat Intelligence Group Manager for Checkpoint, a cybersecurity company.Hackers try to use victims' processing power because that is what's needed to create - or "mine" - virtual currencies. In virtual currency mining, computers are used to make the complex calculations that verify a running ledger of all the transactions in virtual currencies around the world.Crypto-jacking is not done only by installing malicious software. It can also be done through a web browser. The victim visits a site, which latches onto the victim's computer processing power to mine digital currencies as long as they are on the site. When the victim switches, the mining ends.Some websites, including Salon.com, have tried to do it legitimately and been transparent about it. For three months this year, Salon.com removed ads from its sites in exchange for users allowing them to mine virtual currencies.Industry experts first noted crypto-jacking as a threat in 2017, when virtual currency prices were skyrocketing to record highs.The price of bitcoin, the most widely known virtual currency, jumped six-fold from September to almost USD 20,000 in December before falling back down to under USD 10,000.The number of crypto-jacking cases soared from 146,704 worldwide in September to 22.4 million in December, according to anti-virus developer Avast. It has only continued to increase, to 93 million in May, it says.The first big case emerged in September and centred on Coinhive, a legitimate business that let website owners make money by allowing customers to mine virtual currency instead of relying on advertising revenue.Hackers quickly began to use the service to infect vulnerable sites with miners, most notably YouTube and nearly 50,000 Wordpress websites, according to research conducted by Troy Mursch, a researcher on crypto-jacking.Mursch says Monero is the most popular virtual currency among cyber-criminals.A report by cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks estimates that over 5 per cent of Monero was mined through crypto-jacking. That is worth almost USD 150 million dollars and doesn't count mining that occurs through browsers.In the majority of attacks, hackers infect as many devices as possible, a method experts calls "spray and pray.""Basically, everyone with a (computer processing unit) can be targeted by crypto-jacking," said Ismail Belkacim, a developer of an application that prevents websites from mining virtual currencies.As a result, some hackers target organisations with large computing power. In what they believe might be the biggest crypto-jacking attack so far, Checkpoint discovered in February that a hacker had been exploiting a vulnerability in a server that over several months generated over USD 3 million in Monero.Crypto-jackers have also recently targeted organizations that use cloud-based services, in which a network of servers is used to process and store data, providing more computing power to companies who haven't invested in extra hardware.Abusing this service, crypto-jackers use as much power as the cloud will allow them to, maximizing their gains. For businesses, this results in slower performance and higher energy bills.Martin Hron, a security researcher at Avast, says that besides the rise in interest in virtual currencies, there are two main reasons for the rise in attacks.First, crypto-jacking scripts require little skill to implement. Ready-made computer code that automates crypto-mining is easy to find with a Google search, along with tips on the vulnerabilities of devices.Second, crypto-jacking is harder to detect and is more anonymous than other hacks. Unlike ransomware, in which victims have to transfer money to regain access to their computers blocked by hackers, a victim of crypto-jacking might never know their computer is being used to mine currency. And as currency generated by crypto-jacking goes straight into a hacker's encrypted wallet, the cyber-criminal leaves less of a trail.Both Apple and Google have started to ban applications that mine virtual currencies on their devices. But Hron, the Avast researcher, warns that the risk is growing as more everyday devices are connected to the internet - from ovens to home lighting systems - and that these are often the least secure. Hron said that cheaply made Chinese devices were particularly easy to hack. Some experts say new techniques like artificial intelligence can help get a faster response to suspicious software.