May, 2019 - Softonic English

Top 7 podcasts on YouTube

Some of your favorite YouTubers have amazing podcasts! Check them out!

Move over Spotify, you’re not the only podcast host around here.

Some of our favorite YouTube content creators and celebrities have decided to deviate from their usual work, and create podcasts. Just like how there seems to be a YouTube video for all of your needs, there seems to be a podcast on YouTube for all interests.

For this list, we took a look at all YouTube podcasts released by the creators. Although these podcasts might be available on other platforms, they can also be listened to on YouTube. Also, we are not considering podcasts that have been uploaded by fans or outsiders.

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Top 7 podcasts on YouTube

Let’s get this out of the way: no, a YouTube video is technically not a podcast. By definition, a podcast is an audio file; there is no video. However, these creators refer to themselves as podcasts, and we aren’t going to argue with them or their millions of subscribers.

7. StarTalk

Even some of Neil Degrasse Tyson’s fans sometimes have an issue making it through his books. He’s quite knowledgable, but his charisma and entertainment value don’t quite shine through.

However, Tyson’s podcast StarTalk is filled with answers to many of the universe’s mysteries and still manages to be funny.

The channel does not have many full episodes of the podcast. For those, you will need to go to their website. However, the channel does have interviews, segments from the podcasts, and funny clips of Tyson being Tyson.

How to record a podcast with good sound quality

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6. Sardonicast

Sardonicast stars three YouTube content creators known for discussing film: Adam from YourMovieSucks, Alex from IHateEverything, and Ralph from RalphTheMovieMaker.

The podcast, as you might imagine, is also based around film discussion. The three hosts are known for being hilarious and also very sarcastic. The three banter about movies similarly to Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

If you’re a film lover, then you’ll love these guys. Not only will they make you laugh, but they’ll make you appreciate quality filmmaking so much more.

5. Your Mom’s House

If you aren’t familiar with Tom Segura, go watch one of his Netflix specials right now. He is easily one of the funniest comedians in the game right now.

Are you back? Hilarious, right?

Your Mom’s House is hosted by Segura and his wife and comedienne Christina Pazsitzky. On the podcast, they interview other people in the comedy industry as well as entertainers.

If you want something funny to help get you through your work day, Your Mom’s House might just be the answer.

4. Joe Rogan Experience

Prior to his podcast, Joe Rogan had a few claims to fame. He was the host of “Fear Factor,” a show where contestants had to conquer their fears. He’s a commentator for UFC. He even has done stand-up and has specials on Netflix.

However, what most people seem to know him from nowadays is probably his podcast, “Joe Rogan Experience.” On the podcast, Rogan invites celebrities for interviews, or just to smoke a joint like how he did with Elon Musk.

One of the best (or worst) parts of the podcast is that Rogan is not afraid to bring on controversial guests such as Alex Jones or Ben Shapiro. He’ll ask hard questions on controversial issues, and his fans love him for that.

3. RT Podcast

If you type in “video game podcast” on YouTube, you’re gonna get a LOT of different podcasts. These range from okay, to pretty cringe-worthy.

The problem is a lot of these podcasters aren’t established names who have already made a name for themselves on YouTube or in the entertainment business in general. The RT Podcast is the definitive podcast for video games.

For those that have been living under a rock, Rooster Teeth is a popular YouTube channel that does let’s plays and other video game content. They also have a longrunning series called “Red vs. Blue,” which is a comedy that takes place in the Halo universe.

On the podcast, the team at Rooster Teeth talks about video games, internet trends, and also random internet hilariousness.

If you’re a fan of Rooster Teeth, the RT Podcast will not disappoint you.

2. Ear Biscuits

Easily one of the best channels on all of YouTube is Good Mythical Morning.

GMM is essentially the talk show of the internet. Rhett and Link, the hosts, play games, eat gross food, and put their bodies through the oddest conditions.

So what’s Ear Biscuits then?

Ear Biscuits is the podcast hosted by Rhett and Link. Rather than talking about current events, celebrity gossip, or hosting interviews, the pair instead talk about everyday life.

Has your family just suffered a loss? They talk about that. Do you often procrastinate? They go into that as well. Along with the mysteries of the universe, do you find yourself debating the comedic value of farts? Well, they talk about that too.

On GMM, Rhett and Link don’t often go into controversial topics. You won’t hear a lot of social or political issues come up. However, the two are surprisingly much more vulnerable on Ear Biscuits.

If you’re a fan of GMM, then you’ll really love Ear Biscuits. If you’re not, there is still a lot of quality content for you to enjoy on the podcast.

1. H3 Podcast

Ethan Klein is not the greatest host.

He often doesn’t stay on topic. He often loses control of interviews. Also, things rarely go according to plan. With that being said, you’re probably wondering how on Earth the H3 Podcast took the number 1 spot.

Ethan and Hila Klein create a very casual atmosphere where guests go into personal detail that we simply don’t get to hear elsewhere.

The husband and wife team do have shows just featuring the two of them, but they mainly do episodes with guests from YouTube and beyond. Heck, they even invite YouTubers they dislike on the podcast:

If you’re a fan of H3H3 Productions and their videos, their podcast definitely has something for you.

Wrapping up

Look, if you’re a fan of true crime podcasts, then you need to listen to My Favorite Murder on Spotify or Stitcher. YouTube simply can’t compete in that area and some others.

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However, both celebrities and famous YouTube content creators have some incredible podcasts on the platform. Happy listening!

WhatsApp cracks down on clone apps

WhatsApp has sent out cease and desist letters to a number of clone apps.

Recently, WhatsApp has been gripped by a number of crises as fake news has spread across its network. This fake news has been used to aid political campaigns but has also seen terrifying attacks carried out by crowds whipped into a frenzy by horrifying stories that weren’t true.

In response to this, the messaging app has enacted a number of initiatives, with the most prominent being limitations to message forwarding.

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The first move saw a new Forwarded tag appearing above a message that didn’t originate from its current sender. This then evolved into a Frequently Forwarded tag. A tag becomes a Frequently Forward tag if the message had been shared more than four times. Eventually, WhatsApp set a limit on how many times a message could be forwarded at all. Thanks to this move, WhatsApp messages can only be forwarded five times at once.

Problem is though, the people who were spreading all of that fake news in the first place want to continue doing so. This means there is a demand for software that will help them bypass WhatsApp’s message forwarding limits and, accordingly, WhatsApp clone apps have sprung up that do just that.

Tech 2 reports that these clone apps can cost as little as $14 yet give users the ability to send up to 100,000 messages per day, if not more. A report by Reuters found that these tools were available to buy on Amazon. They were also being used to subvert WhatsApp’s new policies for political reasons as well as in marketing attempts for regular businesses.

WhatsApp has sent out cease and desist letters to a number of clone apps

WhatsApp’s response to these clone apps has been strong. The messaging app wouldn’t even allow Reuters to use one for test purposes.

WhatsApp responded, “We are continuing to step up our enforcement against imposter WhatsApp services and take legal action by sending cease and desist letters to hundreds of bulk messaging service providers to help curb abuse… We do not want them to operate on our platform and we work to ban them.”

As well as ordering the owners of the fake apps to stop operating, WhatsApp is also banning accounts that use them.

Whatsapp's fake news problem — WhatsApp knows it has fake news problem and is trying to stamp it out.

This isn’t the first time WhatsApp has taken strong action against users of unofficial versions of the app. Recently, users of GBWhatsApp and WhatsApp Plus were targeted with temporary bans. Some lost their entire chat histories in the process. Those apps were built to offer more user-friendly features like themes and added customization options.

This time, however, the clone apps have a much more criminal underworld feel to them. This money being made facilitating attempts subvert attempts by WhatsApp to make its network a safer place. There is a real battle taking place on WhatsApp, and we all need to hope that the right side wins it.

WhatsApp dark mode is back in development and testing

WhatsApp dark mode is coming, and it will be called Night Mode.

We like to keep you updated on all the updates and new features that are coming to WhatsApp. Trouble is, WhatsApp very rarely makes announcements about these types of things. This means we have to scan through the beta versions of WhatsApp for iPhone and Android and use what we find there to determine what is on the way.

With this being the case, that code is sacred. We can only talk about what is in that code, or sometimes what isn’t in it. When we recently looked at the WhatsApp beta, one thing was missing that had been there before; the upcoming dark mode. The dark mode was gone from the code, Twitter wasn’t happy about it, and it led us to ponder whether we’d ever see a WhatsApp dark mode. Well, now we can put those doubts to bed.

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WhatsApp dark mode is coming, and it will be called Night Mode

We’ve already seen screenshots of the upcoming dark mode, which made it all the more perplexing when it was gone from recent versions of the WhatsApp beta. The dark mode is now back in the code, however, and we have new screenshots to add to those we’ve already seen.

The WhatsApp dark mode will be called Night Mode and it looks like it is well along the development path. Night mode is already compatible with the Chats, Status, and Calls tabs on the app but there is a chance that there might still be a few aesthetic changes to come before the feature rolls out to all WhatsApp users. WABetaInfo hypothesizes that the green buttons you can see in the screenshots will change to white for example.

WhatsApp night mode — Screenshots via: WABetaInfo

As well as the core features of the app, a more recent update to the WhatsApp beta has shown more WhatsApp pages and screens receiving the Night Mode treatment. WhatsApp beta version 2.19.139 has brought with it some rough night mode screens for the Contacts and Contact Info screen, and the Group Info screen

WhatsApp dark mode screenshots — Screenshots via: WABetaInfo

As you can see from the screenshots above, however, these still don’t look complete, which means WhatsApp still has work to do on the night mode aesthetics before regular WhatsApp users will begin to see it on their phones.

As well as aesthetics, however, it is likely that WhatsApp still has a lot of work to do on the backend of the night mode feature to ensure a bug-free experience when it finally rolls out to everyone. This is, of course, one of the major reasons apps go into beta testing before getting a full release.

Signing users up to beta programs helps developers iron out any creases from the code, while also giving them early access to new features. The flip side of this is the unstable nature of the new features. If you’re OK with this and would like to try out new WhatsApp features, like night mode, before everybody else gets them, check out our tutorial below.

Google’s Live Transcribe gets new skills to help the hearing impaired

New contextual environment features include the ability to hear applause, laughter, and a knock at the door.

Live Transcribe isn’t one of Google’s most well-known apps but for those that use it could be one of the most important. Although still in development, the app uses Google’s speech recognition technology to transcribe conversations onto a phone’s screen as they’re happening. This allows people with hearing impairments to participate in conversations going on around them. The app also has a facility for typing out responses, too.

Live Transcribe has an impressive list of features including support in over 70 languages, bilingual conversational support, haptic feedback for when somebody starts talking, and a volume indicator to show how loud somebody is talking. Until now, however, all of these features have been based around conversations, but a recent Google blog post describes some interesting new skills that are on the horizon.

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New contextual environment features include the ability to hear applause, laughter, and a knock at the door

It was Google’s head honcho, Sundar Pichai himself, who announced the new features via Twitter. As well as offering users the ability to engage in conversation more, Live Transcribe will also allow users to take more from their surroundings.

This Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we’re announcing updates to Live Transcribe, a tool that provides real-time transcriptions on Android. It’ll soon show sound events – like a knock on the door – and enable transcripts to be saved on device. #GAAD https://t.co/hMltPZ2S75

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) May 16, 2019

The app’s update gives it the ability to highlight sound events (like a dog barking) that are going on around the user. Google’s Product Manager for Android Accessibility had this to say on why this is an important development, “Seeing sound events allows you to be more immersed in the non-conversation realm of audio and helps you understand what is happening in the world. This is important to those who may not be able to hear non-speech audio cues such as clapping, laughter, music, applause, or the sound of a speeding vehicle whizzing by.” These new features will also increase immersion in conversations, as well as offering wider contextual information.

Google first announced Live Transcribe back in February. The promise then was that the feature would receive a limited rollout in its beta form and also on Pixel 3 devices. If you have a Pixel 3 device, you can simply enable the feature right now by going to your Accessibility settings. If you don’t have a Pixel 3, however, you’ll have to download it first, which you can do here.

Google Live Transcribe Download now

The only caveat in all of this is that the app is still in development and so is still a little unstable. At this early stage in the development process, however, the more users Google can get to download the app the better they’ll be able to make it in the future. This means using it will help make it better and if you give Google feedback on the app, you’ll help even more.

Popular app draining 20% of Android phone batteries

If you want your battery to last longer, you need to update this app now.

Mobile phones are great, but they’re not perfect. Sure, innovation has rushed ahead at a frightening pace, ever since the first iPhone dropped in 2008, but smartphones still can’t do everything. As users, we still have to make trade-offs. The biggest and most controversial recent trade-off has been having to give up the headphone jack to make our phones waterproof.

One of the main trade-offs we all make every day is with our batteries. A phone without battery is useless so every day, as our batteries slowly drain, many of us pick and choose which apps and features we want to keep using and which we want to sacrifice so we can keep our phones on for a little bit longer. This has become such a part of our everyday routine that the phone manufacturers themselves have even built in special modes to do it for us. You’ll struggle to find a phone on the market today that doesn’t come loaded with “Battery Saver” mode in one form or another.

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We’re still a long way from this problem disappearing. Battery technology simply has not advanced at the same speed as processor development et al, so until a huge leap is made, we’re not going to get more than a couple of day’s worth of juice out of them. That doesn’t mean our trade-offs have to be so harsh, though. There are simple tricks we can do to help us get the most out of what we have. This latest one could have a huge effect on how long your smartphone battery lasts in between charges.

If you want your battery to last longer, you need to update Netflix now

A recent blog post by smartphone energy management firm Mobile Enerlytics brought to light some rather strange findings relating to how apps can drain our batteries, even when we’re not using them. One app, in particular, has been shown to have a considerable effect on its own: Netflix.

In tests running on Android 6.01 Marshmallow, Mobile Enerlytics discovered that Netflix drained the phone’s battery over 20% while it was sitting idle overnight. A full fifth of the phone’s battery had gone and Netflix was found to be the main culprit behind it. The firm then took to the Google Play Store and found that many user reviews of the Netflix app were citing battery drain too.

The issue relates to a process loop becoming stuck, even when the app is not in use, and running the battery down.

The Mobile Enerlytics blog post does conclude by saying that the issue only affects users running Netflix on Android 6.01, but that still affects a massive 17% of all Android users. The good news is that the information has been passed to Netflix and the company has released a fix via its latest update. Update Netflix now.

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Instagram hit by a massive data leak

Contact data for over 49 million Instagram users has been exposed online

Instagram wants to be known as the beautiful social network. Instagram feeds all over the world are filled with post after post from seemingly perfect users, celebrities, and so-called influencers. There are literally millions of these types of user on Instagram and it looks like a lot of contact data relating to this exact subset of Instagram user has just been leaked.

Contact data for over 49 million Instagram users has been exposed online

A report by TechCrunch shows that an unprotected database of well-known and high-profile Instagram accounts has been leaked online. The database was hosted by Amazon Web Services and included private and personal data including email addresses and even phone numbers.

The interesting thing about all this is that the leaked database does not actually come from inside Instagram. The open database was discovered by a security researcher called Anurag Sen who then told TechCrunch about his discovery. After a bit of digging, the media outlet then traced it back to Chtrbox, a marketing company in Mumbai.

Chtrbox is one of the many companies around the world that pays Instagram influencers to publish sponsored posts for their followers to see. As well as containing email addresses and phone numbers, the database also included information about the users’ Instagram accounts, including number of followers and the overall reach of their account. Chtrbox had also given each account a monetary value, showing how much they were worth in marketing terms. The firm will no doubt have used this information to decide how much to pay an influencer for a certain campaign.

According to Instagram HQ, this type of datamining is prohibited on the network. Speaking to TechCrunch, a spokesperson for the Facebook-owned app said, “We’re looking into the issue to understand if the data described – including email and phone numbers – was from Instagram or from other sources… We’re also inquiring with Chtrbox to understand where this data came from and how it became publicly available.” The app is clearly trying to distance itself from culpability on this one.

password lock — This isn’t the first time sensitive Instagram user information has leaked online

This isn’t the first time, however, that Instagram or Facebook has been exposed by leaks like this one. A couple of years ago, Instagram was hit by a similar data scraping issue when details from over six million accounts were leaked online. Recently, it was just a couple of months ago when hundreds of millions of passwords were found unencrypted on an internal server at Facebook. When news of the recent breach first broke Facebook originally claimed that it was only a few thousand Instagram passwords that had leaked. It later had to confirm, however, that the true number was actually in the millions.

What is going on with Huawei and Android?

Trade wars, national security, and 5G networks.

If you own a Huawei smartphone, you’ve probably been going through quite the emotional turmoil recently. Your choice of smartphone has seen you placed on the front lines in a trade war and potential futuristic cyber-war between the world’s two prominent superpowers.

The last few days, in particular, will have been particularly upsetting as it has looked like your smartphone could be cut off from official Google support, setting it adrift from the latest and greatest features but also, more importantly, nuts and bolts security updates. So, what exactly has been going on?

Trade wars, national security, and 5G networks

In today’s hyper-globalized world, it isn’t often when your choices in the market can see you fall afoul a global trade war, but that is exactly what has happened to anybody who has bought a Huawei mobile. On Monday, in response to the U.S. Government blacklisting the Chinese technology behemoth, Google suspended all business with Huawei that required the transfer of hardware, software, and technical services.

For anybody unfamiliar with Huawei, the Chinese manufacturer has grown to prominence recently thanks to its competitively priced and impressively featured lines of smartphones. The likes of the P30, P30 Pro, Mate 20 Pro, and others including the budget-friendly Honor range have captured the market’s attention and won a huge global following.

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Huawei phones come loaded with the manufacturer’s own mobile operating system called EMUI, but, like with almost all other smartphone manufacturers’, Huawei’s mobile operating system is based upon Google’s open source Android. When Google suspended all business with Huawei, it meant that Huawei phones would no longer be able to receive data from Google. Goodbye regular over the air updates. Why though?

Since Trump became the president, he has been pushing hard his “America First” narrative. China has been a major target of these initiatives as Trump sees his base as white American blue-collar workers. All those factory workers in China are doing jobs that, according to Trump, should belong to factory workers in America. He has hit China with tariffs and in the midst of all this, Huawei has become a prominent target for the Trump administration.

It isn’t all about trade though. As well as mobile phones, Huawei also builds other things that annoy the Trump administration; namely 5G networks. 5G is the next generation of mobile telecommunication networks. The increase in data speeds will be so significant that 5G networks will be able to facilitate things that until now have seemed impossible. Smart cities that can record and react to everything that goes on within them are on the horizon and the U.S. government is concerned that it could be Chinese technology that sits at the heart of it all.

The U.S. has been exerting pressure on its allies not to have Huawei install 5G networks in their countries and has even taken drastic measures itself, including putting pressure on Canada to arrest one of Huawei’s top executives to put pressure on the Chinese tech giant.

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This latest move then, might shock due to its severity. Many analysts are saying the move could decimate Huawei’s mobile phone manufacturing business, but it definitely fits a pattern of behavior. Except, well, what about everybody who has bought a Huawei phone? This is where it gets a little complicated.

For Huawei users’ questions regarding our steps to comply w/ the recent US government actions: We assure you while we are complying with all US gov’t requirements, services like Google Play & security from Google Play Protect will keep functioning on your existing Huawei device.

— Android (@Android) May 20, 2019

Over the last couple of days, there have been a number of developments. First off, Google has said, via Twitter, that Huawei phones will still be able to access services like Google Play, even while Google tries to comply with the U.S. government. Since then, Huawei has said itself that it will keep providing security updates to its customers. The best news, however, has come from the U.S. Commerce Department, which has granted a 90-day temporary license to Huawei that restores its ability to provide updates to its customers. This license does not allow Huawei to keep selling new Android phones, however, which shows that there are still major problems underlying the whole issue.

So, if you own a Huawei phone, you’re off the hook for the next few months at least. It doesn’t look like this issue is even close to being over though, so we can expect further developments on this in the future. Remember to stick with us to keep yourself up to date.

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Google has a cool new app to help kids learn to read

Rivet listens to kids read out loud and can even help with pronunciation.

Google is most famous for web searches and its big-name apps like Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Chrome. Beyond its core products, however, Google casts a wide net developing and releasing apps that cover many different aspects of our lives. From cultural heritage preservation to online video game streaming, Google has a lot of apps that do a lot of things. We can now add Rivet, an app that teaches kids to read, to this ever-growing list of software. Rivet has just left the beta testing stage and is now available on Android smartphones, tablets, iPads, iPhones, and Chromebooks.

Rivet listens to kids read out loud and can even help with pronunciation

Google makes a compelling case for the need for an app that teaches kids how to read. The search giant points out that struggling readers are, “unlikely to catch up and four times less likely to graduate from high school. Unfortunately, 64 percent of fourth grade students in the United States perform below the proficient level in reading.” You’d be forgiven for thinking we can all read just fine, but it doesn’t appear to be so. This is why Google has developed Rivet, to help kids learn to read at a young age.

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Straight off the bat, Rivet has some very impressive stats, giving users access to over 2,000 free books split into categories like topic and reading level to help them learn to read. The blog post announcing Rivet’s release also promises that this number will keep growing as Google will continue to add books to it moving forward.

On top of the large library, however, as you’d expect from a Google product, Rivet has some very interesting tech-based features that will help it get the job done. The app can listen to children reading aloud and then offer visual cues should it hear them pronounce a word incorrectly. The app also offers audio clips so that the children can hear words pronounced correctly and makes the whole process of learning to read and pronounce words properly feel like a game.

Another good Rivet feature is the Follow Along feature. When activated, Follow Along will read out full pages on a selection of books, just like a teacher would in class or a parent at home, and the child can follow the story via the words on the page.

Rivet is designed to give kids the ability to learn to read even if they don’t have somebody there to teach them. It does a good job of it too; the app helps when they get stuck and actively teaches them as they move up through reading levels.

The trouble is that the app only offers its teaching capabilities on a limited number of the 2,000 books in its library (for now). Not all the books have full audio support. Google is likely to work on bringing full support to more books in the future. If it can do that, it is highly likely that Rivet will help a lot of kids learn to read at a high level and develop strong reading habits.

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U.S. Postal Service testing self-driving trucks

Long-haul mail deliveries are on the roads without drivers.

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

That’s the unofficial motto of the Post Office, and something that seems even more possible when the couriers themselves are robotic trucks that don’t need to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom. Sure, we’re a long way off from the T-1000 showing up at our door with a bag of mail, but self-driving mail trucks are already being tested.

Starting today, the San Diego-based company TuSimple is running a two-week test of mail truck deliveries between USPS locations in Phoenix and Dallas. The self-driving semis will make five round trips, each one 45 hours long. Even if you’re the most ferocious road warrior in the world, wearing a diaper and an IV, that’s probably outside your comfortable driving range.

To keep an eye on things, the self-driving trucks will have a human driver who could jump in. An engineer will ride shotgun.

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Self-driving trucks could provide incredible cost savings and efficiency. That will also come at the cost of driving jobs, however. According to Reuters, the American Trucking Associations estimates a shortage of as many as 174,500 drivers by 2024, due to an aging workforce and the difficulty of attracting younger drivers. So self-driving trucks will be great to replace any human shortfalls. The problem, however, will be the drivers who don’t want to be replaced by Robo-Driver 2000.

If all vehicles became self-driving, that would wipe out three percent of all American jobs. Millions of careers that could come to a screeching halt. In many states, “truck driver” is the most popular occupation.

As technology accelerates, we’ll have to be mindful of helping those displaced by its effects. Sometimes making things cheaper comes at a higher cost than we realize.

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Avast Secure Browser sets the benchmark for security and privacy

How many of us can remember a world where we couldn’t turn to Google for easy answers, where Wikipedia didn’t serve as a one-stop shop for research, or where connecting and networking with people was something you could only do with business cards and landline telephones? The world wide web has woven itself into our daily lives, and its use in American homes has increased by 400% in the past 20 years. The number of hours we spend on the internet each week has shot up from 9.4 hours to 23.6 in the past 19 years, and overall internet penetration has increased from 67% to 92%. That’s all time you spend using your web browser (i.e. email, shopping, banking, social media, news & entertainment, etc.). By now you should be using one that’s safe, fast and private.

Avast Secure Browser was designed around those exact priorities, and a new, updated version was released back in April 2019. Avast was built by security experts, their prime focus being to grant users control, anonymity, safety, and smart intuitive browsing. Avast Secure Browser doesn’t follow your searches, clicks, or purchases, and seamlessly brings all your privacy and security tools together, and as of the new update also includes features like an Email Hack Check, a Webcam Guard, and better Anti-Fingerprinting tools than ever before.

Avast Secure Browser Free Download

Secure, fast and private web browser with a new customized Security & Privacy Center

Extensions are dangerous

We all love our browser extensions, and while many are useful and safe, it just takes one wrong download to put your computer at risk. A compromised extension can actually grant attackers access to all data on both your computer and the websites that you’ve visited.

Avast polled over 10,000 consumers globally and discovered that even the most popular browser extension frameworks had serious security vulnerabilities despite widespread use. 64% of respondents said they used third-party browser extensions, yet a meager 21% of them said they trusted them. 96% of the same people polled said they wished their browser did a better job of being up front about identifying ads or malware hidden extensions instead of merely apologizing and cleaning up the mess later. When you move to get a new extension, Avast Secure Browser scans for any unsafe add-ons, links and content that could be potential malware.

What is Avast Secure Browser?

Avast Secure Browser is a new approach to internet browsing based on the powerful Chromium open source platform. Other well-known browsers that use the Chromium source code are Google Chrome, Opera, and Brave, with Microsoft Edge next in the queue. Avast Secure Browser is fast and comes with a litany of privacy-enhancing features and customizable settings to bolster your privacy. Officially, Avast Secure Browser is the successor of Avast SafeZone Browser which has since been discontinued in order to pave the way for the new kid on the block. The most obvious example of this level of customization is the new Security and Privacy Center.

Avast Secure Browser Free Download

Secure, fast and private web browser with a new customized Security & Privacy Center

Security and Privacy Center

The Security & Privacy Center is a curated collection of tools, features, and settings for managing your online activity. Each feature or setting in the Security & Privacy Center is also a knowledge center helping users understand what the feature is, the benefits, and when it should be used. Avast implemented this feature so users could “easily customize their browser to their own needs. Plus, you’ll get the same familiar look you’re used to so you won’t need to change your browsing habits!”

In the Security and Privacy Center you can view and set various filters to not only craft a more secure and private browser but a more secure PC and personal identity. You can access it by simply clicking the Avast symbol in the top-right corner of the Avast Secure Browser screen.

This way you control browsing aspects such as ad-blocking, privacy, HTTPS encryption, password manager extensions, and other tools such as:

Webcam Guard (enabled) to give consumers complete control over who can access their computer cameras.
Email Hack Check to let people know if their email addresses have been compromised.
Extension Guard (enabled) to block the installation of untrusted browser extensions.
Adblock (enabled) to improve browsing speed and block potentially malicious ads.
Anti-Phishing (enabled) to protect against phishing attempts.
Anti-Fingerprinting (disabled) to prevent websites from tracking people as they browse.
Flash Blocker (enabled) to block all Flash content.

You may also launch a new private browsing window (called Stealth Mode) and a Privacy Cleaner (which cleans your browsing data) from the Security & Privacy Center as well – and this time they’ll actually do their job. Enabling Stealth Mode with Avast Secure Browser ensures both anti-tracking and anti-phishing, and automatically upgrades all http to https encryption.

“Consumers using tools like Private Browsing and Incognito Mode are being lulled into a false sense of security as these only offer limited privacy options and no real protection at all against many security or privacy threats,” said Matt Adkisson, Director, Platform Products, Avast.

“Consumers have never been offered a browser that provides both industry leading web protection and online privacy delivered by cybersecurity experts. We are first and foremost a security company and we redesigned Avast Secure Browser specifically to deliver a secure and private online experience. Not only is it a simple and safe choice for the privacy-conscious individual, it’s also substantially faster than other browsers available today.”

How’s the privacy?

While Avast Secure Browser definitely has speed going for it, speed still comes secondary to its stance on privacy and security. The browser has top-of-the-line built-in privacy features that serve to hide your identity, cover your digital footprint, and keep your business strictly your own. “We believe that what you do online is your business,” says the team. “Your posts, your emails, your searches, your browsing history — they’re yours. With our browser, it stays that way.”

Avast Secure Browser Free Download

Secure, fast and private web browser with a new customized Security & Privacy Center

Avast Secure Browser is available on Windows 10, 8, and 7 to any new users of Avast Antivirus products and can be downloaded right here. You can also elect to tack on additional paid subscription features like Avast SecureLine VPN for a small annual fee. The full feature list and the link to download the new Avast Secure Browser is available on their website. Stay tuned with us for more information as it becomes available!