Apple’s iCloud service is a great way to store documents and backups in the cloud, but the space isn’t unlimited. Here’s how to check how much free space you have left in your iCloud account on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

If you’ve accidentally deleted a note in Microsoft OneNote, don’t panic. There’s a good chance your deleted note is still available in a OneNote backup. Here, we’ll show you how to recover your notes in OneNote for Windows, Mac, and the web.

Landline Phone Technology Dates Back to the ’60s

If you find an old push-button telephone in a closet, you can probably still connect it to your landline and it’ll work just fine. That’s because these phones have used the dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) technology standard since 1963. In other words, that phone from the ’60s will still work with a modern telephone landline because they use the same technology.

(Before that, rotary telephones and some early push-button telephones used something called pulse dial signaling. They won’t work when plugged into a modern landline—not unless you buy a converter.)

Cellular Standards Are Quickly Changing

Cellular technology is very different. We’re not using a standard that dates back decades anymore. Instead, technology companies are regularly coming out with new standards: 5G was first used in 2018, 4G in 2009, 3G in 2001, 2G in 1991, and 1G in 1981. The “G” stands for Generation—5G is the fifth-generation cellular standard.

These new standards offer a variety of improvements, but they improve the fundamentals, too: Newer standards are generally faster and provide a stronger signal. That’s how we went from slowly browsing the web on the original iPhone (or a BlackBerry) to streaming high-resolution videos on modern smartphones.

New cellular standards take some time to become widespread and appear in the products they use. Not every phone sold since 2018 is a 5G phone, for example: The iPhone gained 5G support for the first time in 2020.

Modern Networks Don’t Support Old Standards

While cellular standards are changing quickly, that’s not exactly the reason why old phones can’t connect to modern networks. The precise reason is that cellular carriers drop support for old standards to free up resources for new standards.

For example, as of early 2021 in the U.S., the big carriers all support 5G, 4G, and (for now) 3G. They no longer support 2G or 1G.

Let’s say that you have a first-generation iPhone, also known as an iPhone 2G. It’s a classic! But you can’t use it on a modern cellular network today: It only supports 2G. (If you’re an Android fan, take pride in the fact that the first Android phone, the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1, started out with support for 3G.)

The iPhone only gained support for 3G with its second-generation model, which was called the iPhone 3G. That iPhone 3G can still connect to modern networks—for now, at least, until they drop support for 3G.

Why Networks Drop Support for Old Standards

Maintaining support for older cellular standards is a trade-off. As AT&T argued in a press release when it shut down 2G at the beginning of 2017, phasing out 2G freed up more wireless spectrum that could be used for newer standards—in particular, making the 4G network faster.

Like Wi-Fi, cellular connections are just radio waves. And also like with Wi-Fi, cellular providers only have a specific range of radio frequencies that they can use for their networks. If they use a “band” of that spectrum to keep 2G going, they can’t use that same band for 4G. If they shut down their 2G network, they can reallocate that band (portion of the wireless spectrum) to newer, faster networks that more devices are using.

After all, people upgrade their devices frequently. When the vast majority of people are using modern devices that support the latest standards and only a few people are using older devices, there’s very little reason to keep those old networks running. It may be cheaper for a cellular network to offer discounted device upgrades—or even to give away free devices that support modern standards—to the few customers who are holdouts, rather than to spend resources keeping an old network running.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t keep using feature phones—but you have to buy a modern feature phone with support for modern cellular standards. (Yes, they do exist!)

3G Is Going Away in 2022 or 2023 (in the US)

As of early 2021, there are some big 3G shutdowns coming in the next few years. Cellular carriers in the U.S. say that they will shut down their legacy 3G networks in 2022 or 2023. Only devices that support 4G or 5G will then be able to connect.

The exact details are still up in the air. Verizon said that it would shut down its 3G network at the end of 2020, but in early 2021, the company reportedly set a new target of 2023. AT&T says that it’s shutting down 3G in 2022. T-Mobile plans to phase out its 3G networks through late 2021 and early 2022.

When that happens, your old iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, or iPhone 4S won’t connect to a cellular network anymore. (Android phones from before the 4G era will be cut off, too.)

But the iPhone 5 will still connect. It was the first iPhone to support 4G, and it was released in 2012. (Android phones with 4G support will still connect, too. The first Android phone with 4G was the HTC Evo, released in 2010.)

A Decade Is a Long Time, but Not by Historical Standards

Realistically, most phones released in the past decade will still be able to connect when these networks are shut down. That’s still a pretty generous period of time.

But it’s pretty short compared to historical precedents: By 2022, we imagine you’ll still be able to connect that touch-tone phone from the 1960s to your landline.

Credit to: How To Geek - Chris Hoffman

Your credit score is an important indicator of your financial health, so it’s crucial to develop good credit habits to build and maintain a good credit history. Learn and avoid common credit mistakes that can stifle your progress and even damage your credit score for years to come.

Mistake 1: Co-signing a loan

If a friend or relative can’t get loan approval on their own, there is usually a problem with their credit standing. If the borrower doesn’t pay as agreed, you’ll have to repay the debt and the relationship will be ruined.

Be gentle and tactful in saying no. You can instead suggest that the person try to fix their credit health first before applying for a loan – a good way for them to start is by checking their credit report and seeking financial counselling.

Mistake 2: Not paying bills on time

Payment history has a big impact on your credit score with a 45% weightage, so missing even one payment could wreak havoc on your credit and may result in fees and penalties.

Late payment will stay in CCRIS/CTOS data for 24 months and it will be used in credit score calculation. While its impact on your score may diminish over time with new positive information, it can still hamper your credit growth the entire time it’s on there.

To ensure you pay all your bills on time, request payment reminders from your lenders or, even better, set up autopay through your bank account. Just make sure you have enough money in your bank account each month to cover your bills.

Mistake 3: Only checking your credit report when there’s a problem

Your credit report contains a lot of crucial information, such as your credit score, CCRIS details, directorship and business interests, litigation and more. If you only check your report when there’s a problem, it will take a much longer time to fix things later.

Checking your credit report regularly enables you to spot problem areas or inaccuracies early, so you can take immediate steps to correct them. That way, you’ll be credit-ready when you need to be, for instance if you need to apply for a loan.

Credit to: Ctos Credit

If you want to send a private message to someone and ensure that they are the only ones who read it, protecting it with a password only the recipient knows is a solid choice. Fortunately, secure email providers ProtonMail and Tutanota make this process easy and highly secure, and you can use both for free.

Why Send a Password-Protected Email?

When you send an email to a standard webmail address like Gmail, the server receives the email and notifies the recipient. The server can see the entire contents of the email, and any devices set up for use with that email address can notify the recipient of a new message.

This usually takes the form of a push notification with a visible subject line and a preview of the message contents. Even on a mobile device that’s locked, this can give away information to anyone looking over the recipient’s shoulder.

On a shared computer or tablet, the email might download automatically via clients like Apple Mail. All it takes is a click or two to read the entire content, regardless of whether the email was intended for someone’s eyes or not. The message might be indexed by local search engines and may show up at other times.

If the message in question is sensitive, this might not be ideal. If you’re serious about having only the intended recipient see the contents of your email, protecting it with a password seems like an obvious choice. As long as you can communicate the password to the recipient privately, your message can be read without the risk of anyone else seeing it first.

In particular, the services we’ll be using today don’t transfer any of your messages (except for the subject line) to the recipient’s email server. This means that the message contents won’t even show up when searched for in a webmail or desktop client.

Sending Password-Protected Email with ProtonMail

ProtonMail is one of the web’s best-known secure email providers. The service is based in Switzerland, where data protection laws are strict. It uses end-to-end encryption, so that email contents are stored in an encrypted format that not even ProtonMail’s servers can decrypt.

ProtonMail automatically encrypts all messages between users of the service, with an option to use PGP encryption for contacts who are using other email services. But there’s also an option to simply send a password-protected email to anyone, regardless of which email service they use.

To do this, you’ll need to sign up for a free ProtonMail account. You don’t need to provide your name, an existing email address, or any other identifying personal information.

Once you’ve signed up and logged in, click on the “Compose” button in the top-left corner of the screen to begin writing your message. When you’re ready to send your message, click on the Encryption “padlock” icon along the bottom of the compose window.

This is where you can set your password (which must be typed twice for confirmation) as well as an optional password hint. If you’re sending mail to someone and you haven’t communicated a password to them already, you can use the hint field to prompt them to enter a password that only they would know.

Hit the “Set” button to lock your email. You can now click on the Expiration time “hourglass” icon to determine when your email expires. All emails sent via this method will expire within 28 days by default, but you can pick a shorter time period if you like. When you’re ready, hit Send to finalize your message.

Everything except the subject line and the recipient will be encrypted and hidden. The recipient will receive a notification that they have a password-protected email and a link waiting for them. When the link is clicked, a password field will appear, which can be used to decrypt the message.

Sending Password-Protected Email with Tutanota

Tutanota is another well-known and trusted secure email provider. The company is based in Germany, a country with some of the strongest data protection laws in the world. Tutanota also uses end-to-end encryption so that data on the server is only visible to the person who owns the email account.

Like ProtonMail, Tutanota also encrypts messages between users of the same service. Tutanota also includes a password-protected email mechanism that works almost identically to ProtonMail’s, except that Tutanota’s implementation also encrypts and hides the subject line, too.

To send mail via Tutanota, sign up for a free account. Just like with ProtonMail, you don’t need to provide identifying information to sign up. Just pick a username and a password, and away you go. Once you’re signed up and logged in, click on the “New email” button to begin composing your message.

Enter an email address into the “To” field to reveal an optional password field. You can toggle the password requirement using the secure “padlock” icon in the subject field. Tutanota will remember the last password you set for the email address supplied—or you can set a new one.

With your message composed, hit Send, and Tutanota will deliver a message notifying the recipient that there is an encrypted email waiting for them. When they click the link in this email, a password field can be used to decrypt the message so that it can be read.

Like with ProtonMail, Tutanota’s password-protected messages also expire. Your message will be available at the supplied link until the next time you send a password-protected message to the same email address.

How Is This More Secure Than Webmail?

The beauty of this solution is that the contents of your messages (except for ProtonMail’s subject line) never even touch the recipient’s email servers. Nothing you say will be visible in an unencrypted format, since the message contents only ever exist on ProtonMail or Tutanota’s servers.

If your email provider is required to hand over the contents of your inbox due to a legal request, the contents of the email won’t be saved anywhere. The same thing applies if there’s a data breach and your inbox is compromised.

This means that the contents of your message cannot be scanned by Gmail’s AI, indexed by local search features on a mobile device or desktop, or appear in a push notification. The most a recipient will see before decrypting the message with a password is a notification that there’s an email waiting for them.

There are drawbacks to this method too. Many people are unwilling to click on links in email messages, and it’s even possible that some spam filters could incorrectly divert your encrypted mail to junk. Also, since the messages expire, it might be easy to lose them, especially if the recipient hasn’t realized that they’re there.

It’s also not an infallible system. Someone could guess the password, or the recipient could pass the link and password on to other people. Never assume that information is safe purely because it was password-protected at some point.

Why Not Use Gmail or Outlook?

The best native protection that Gmail has to offer in this department is the confidential email feature. This uses a one-time passcode to prove that the person opening the email has access to the mailbox it was sent to, but this method isn’t much use if the inbox has already been compromised.

Outlook also offers some protection using S/MIME encryption, which requires certificates to be set up on your device and that the recipient uses a mail application that supports the standard. It’s a far cry from simply entering a password, and it doesn’t work with the webmail version of Outlook, either.

What About Sharing the Password?

How you deliver the password could be just as important as this process. If possible, do so in person so that you know that the person you are speaking to is who they say they are. Failing this, you could use a secure messaging service like Signal to send a self-destructing message.

Credit to: How To Geek - Tim Brookes

Bitwarden and KeePass are two excellent password managers that stand out from the pack by being entirely open source and almost completely free (Bitwarden has an optional paid plan.). There are some important differences, though. Here’s how to choose between them.

Using Bitwarden vs. KeePass