How to Use Siri Shortcuts to Record a Police Encounter

Being stopped by police can be a difficult and even scary experience. Hopefully, the incident can be resolved smoothly and peacefully, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, just in case. That’s why you may want to take certain steps, including texting someone your location and recording the encounter. You can do all that, and more, with your iPhone and a handy Siri shortcut.

Reddit user Robert Petersen created a shortcut called “I’m getting pulled over” that will pause any music playing on your phone, turn down the brightness, and activate “Do Not Disturb” mode. The shortcut will also send a message to someone with your status and location and start recording a video of the encounter. Here’s how to set up and use this shortcut.

Allow Untrusted Shortcuts

First, make sure the Shortcuts app is on your iPhone. The app should already be there as long as you’re running iOS 12 or higher. But if it’s missing, download and install it directly from the App Store. Next, you’ll need to allow untrusted shortcuts. However, before you can do that, you need to run at least one shortcut.

Open the Shortcuts app and run a shortcut. If you haven’t yet created any shortcuts, which would appear in the My Shortcuts section, tap Gallery and select the name of a shortcut. Tap the Add Shortcut button, then tap the My Shortcuts icon. Tap the shortcut you just added to run it.

Now, go to Settings > Shortcuts. Under Sharing Security, turn on the switch next to Allow Untrusted Shortcuts.

Add and Set Up Shortcut

Open Safari on your phone and go to the page for the “I’m getting pulled over” shortcut. Make sure you get the latest version of the shortcut, not the original called “Police." Swipe down the Add Shortcut screen to review the actions this shortcut will take. At the bottom, tap the Add Untrusted Shortcut button.

At the next screen, type the phone number of the person you want to notify via text when you run this shortcut. Or tap the plus icon to access your contacts and select a specific person.

Tap Continue, then add a contact for someone whom you want to receive a copy of the video of the encounter. Tap Done.

Run the Shortcut

You should test the shortcut before trying to run it in a real-life situation to make sure it runs properly and you know how to use it. Open the Shortcuts app, tap My Shortcuts, then tap the shortcut’s icon. You can also say “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over." The shortcut then runs automatically, though there are a few points at which you will need to step in.

The shortcut requires you to press the red recording button to stop the video, then tap the Use Video link to create a text message. Tap the arrow next to the generated text message to send the video to your assigned contact. You can then choose whether or not you want to upload the video to iCloud Drive or Dropbox.

Any element of the shortcut that you previously set up can be changed at a later date. From the My Shortcuts page, tap the ellipsis on the shortcut and modify any of the variables you wish to change. If the shortcut is running as expected, keep it in mind the next time you’re pulled over by a police officer and want to record and notify someone about the encounter.

Email security and privacy awareness course

Given the amount of free time many may have at this time, or at least time you have to sit in front of your computer screen, it may be a good time to evaluate your awareness online to the dangers you face.  To that end, this blog will focus on email security and many of the aspects of it you may not be awareness.  Thanks to our friends at Mailfence, a privacy-conscious email provider, they have created a free course you can take to raise your awareness.  Click here for the course.  There is some reading involved, but it is well worth it.

A Guide to Public Wifi Security Risks & How to Use it Safely

There are hundreds of fantastic things we can thank the World Wide Web for. But, sadly, that doesn’t mean it isn’t without fault.

There’ll always be people who try to exploit the naivety or recklessness of others. That sad state of affairs extends to cyberspace. Criminals will often try to intercept sensitive data over wifi networks – and there’s no better place to try that than on (often unguarded) public servers.

But don’t worry, there are ways to combat this. This guide will run you through everything you need to know about how these cybercriminals operate, and provide you with effective ways of preventing and countering an attack.

Thanks to our friends at Surfshark, here is a comprehensive guide you can use to stay safe.

Online Gaming Safety

If your life is similar to mine during this Pandemic, you may have a child/teenager sitting in front of a computer screen playing games to pass the time away.  Given that, you should educate yourself a bit about safety and online gaming.  To that end, here is a great resource for educating yourself.  Click here. 

The guide is helpful for the following:

• The rise of online gaming and how millions of active online players and 2.4 billion casual mobile gamers are now a target of cybercrime.
• Facts and statistics around online gaming privacy: in 2011 77 million accounts were hacked on the Playstation Network, and in 2014 70% of South Korea's population (aged between 15 and 65) had their data stolen whilst playing online.
• Common forms of cyberattacks targeting online gamers (e.g. gaming malware, in-game ransomware, keyloggers (password stealers), so-called ‘power-up’ scams, and phishing campaigns, etc.).
• Practical and useful tips and advice to avoid being a victim of cyber attacks when playing online, including tips for parents with kids who play online games.

Get more done with these 10 Mac tips

Amid the ongoing distractions of the COVID-19 outbreak, it’s important to remember  millions are using their Macs every day to get work done. These tips should help you work more efficiently, giving you more time to catch up on everything else.

Use Do Not Disturb

Zoom calls, Teams conferences, phone calls, emails, instant messages, Slack conversations – does anyone else get stressed out that working remotely ends up being so noisy? It’s hard to focus through interruption, so use Do Not Disturb to buy yourself some mental space.

On your Mac, press the Option key and tap the Notifications icon in the top right. You’ll see its color change to light gray, which means Do Not Disturb is activated. Now you’ll receive no application notifications until you enable it again.

Staying online 

They used to say only death and taxes were certainties in life. Today you can add “and intermittent Internet access” to the list. If you use an iPhone as well as a Mac, you can try this (though it won't help with death and taxes). Open Catalina’s System Preferences>Network and look for the new-to-Catalina Auto Hotspot item which will automatically connect your Mac via your iPhone if you have Personal Hotspot running on your smartphone.

Full screen, Split View

Tap the green traffic light icon in any app to enter full screen mode. This gives you the greatest possible display space (though you can make this even greater by hiding your Dock and enabling Automatically hide and show the Menu bar in System Preferences>General.

You can open two applications side by side in this attention-preserving mode. There are several ways to achieve this, but I recommend the following approach.

• Launch both required applications and set one to full screen mode by tapping the green button, or Control-Command-F .
• Tap Mission Control (F3), or slide four fingers up on your trackpad.
• Drag-&-drop the preview of the second application into the image containing the full screen app.
• Both applications should now open side-by-side.

Get Gestures

Working in full-screen mode is even easier when you learn to use trackpad gestures:

• Slide four fingers on the trackpad left or right to move between spaces.
• Slide three fingers up to return to Mission Control.
• Slide two fingers up or down to scroll.
• Swipe left from the right edge with two fingers to open Notification Center.

There are many other trackpad gestures you can use on your Mac.

Automate stuff that wastes your time

There are numerous ways to automate repetitive tasks on your Mac. Text Replacement can be particularly useful at times. Text Snippets are even better.

• The problem: You have text you enter into documents frequently.
• Solution: Write the text (it can include links), select it and drag it to the Desktop.

You now have a text clipping. Just drag that clipping into documents to automatically enter it.

Save smarter

You probably save your work into specific folders. You may have lots of these. Did you know that you can use the Print dialog to speed this process up (so long as you want to save it as a PDF)?

Here’s what to do:

• OpenFile>Print, open the PDF item lower left and scroll down to Edit Menu...
• In the next box tap the Plus 
• In the Finder twindows hat then appears, navigate to the folder you want to save items to.
• Click it and hit Save.

Now all you need to do when saving a document is tap Command-P (print), and then select the new destination in the PDF drop-down menu.

Get results – fast

You’re using Command-Space to use Spotlight and you’ve become accustomed to employing this to search the Web. Next time you make a search query, type it in the usual way and then tap Command-B. You’ll be taken directly to the search result in Safari. Tap Command-Tab to return to your previous application.

Share a web page

The quickest way to share a web page is to type Command + I in order to send an email containing the page, or Command + Shift + I if you only want to share the URL.

Send a PDF – of (almost) anything

You can easily share a PDF of anything you can print on your Mac in iMessage or Mail using the Print menu. Just open File>Print and tap PDF and use Send in Mail or Send via iMessage.

Command-Space

Command-Space is the most useful Mac tip in the book. Use it to access Spotlight search, where you can search the contents of your Mac, search the Internet, open applications and so much more. Get used to using it and you’ll save oodles of time.

Best Video Doorbells to buy..

So one of the ways that I am keeping myself busy during the pandemic is by doing work around the house for my mother.  One of those things I did was install a video doorbell.  She lives in an area that would make it easier for her to have one and I figured I might as well use my skills to get it done. Coincidentally, I was contacted by a website that just published a review of video doorbells.  So without any delay, click here for the review from safety.com!