Your phone lights up with a new text message alert. It’s from a company you’ve bought a product from recently, announcing that they have a deal they wanted to share with you. You think how this happened and realize you had given them your cell phone number, but know you’re concerned about what this means for your personal data. This is what you need to know in this age of businesses texting their customers.

Why is Giving Out Your Phone Number Risky?

Never forget that your phone number belongs to you. So many businesses and other entities have your phone number, and while some, like your employer or doctor’s office, should have them, others most certainly should not. If you give your phone number out to a business like a large retailer, you might be unwittingly agreeing to let them share it with all sorts of other, tangibly-related businesses who are now able to interact with you or study certain things about you. Market research executives crave to get this kind of information so they can influence shoppers. Take a stand by asserting that you only need to give it to people and businesses who actually need it.

Data Security Laws

The good news is that, even if you do give out your phone number to a business, they’re under obligation to not do anything unscrupulous with your data. Group texting companies are legally required to secure customers’ personal information. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be vigilant about what’s going on with your data. If you have evidence or suspicion that a business has shared your data without the proper authority, you need to call them out on it and warn others.

How to Keep Your Data Safe

Knowing personal data risks doesn’t mean you should swear off technology. It just means that you need to be more mindful of how you use your data. You should have strong passwords, encrypted data, and be running virus protection. Change your passwords regularly and don’t open any suspicious emails. It might seem like a lot to keep track of at first, but you’ll get so used to it that it’ll be harder to not stay alert.

While businesses might be able to text their customers, that doesn’t mean customers can’t have a say in who sees their personal information or if they want to continue being texted. The technological revolution has made communication faster than ever, but that doesn’t mean it should impair our ability to feel like we can use the internet and smartphones without feeling like others are spying on us.

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Immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are touching lives in gaming and live entertainment, among many other areas. The security industry is reaping the benefits of this technology, too. Security monitoring is one area recently that has made tremendous progress. While most of the AR/VR technologies in this area are novel, their application is gaining traction very fast. Here are four ways virtual reality is improving security monitoring.

Security surveillance

Security experts agree that staying ahead of potential threats is the only true way of preventing them. Without elaborate surveillance systems of all threats, virtual and real, you cannot be safe. Using VR to model the security threats and situations can help bust technical faults and vulnerabilities that the bad guys can use.

Also, security is not just about bad guys; it is also about the hazards and risks inherent in a system. Virtual reality in construction, manufacturing, and other workplaces that are prone to hazards is proving to be a game changer.

In manufacturing, planning the factory layout requires time, careful planning, research of the equipment that will be placed, only to discover that that one piece of equipment next to the walkway has a heating coil that would be exposed to the employees, creating a safety hazard; but, you didn’t realize that until after you’ve installed everything else. So now, you have to remove everything and go back to planning. Being able to quickly explore the different safety concerns in real-time, without having to install physical objects first but still getting the benefits of testing as though it was there, will help prevent future accidents, reduce the labor cost installing and uninstalling equipment, increase production speed.

If you’ve ever worked in construction, than you know that there is a big difference between what the architect and engineers had planned, and what the landscape will actually let you do. Commonly used 2D images and maps do not project the exact picture on the ground. You may get the topographical map of an area, but it may not give you the true treacherous nature of the area in question. Virtual reality can offer you the third dimension that will tell you exactly what you are likely to find on the ground.

Accuracy in protection is a matter of life and death, and VR is making it possible for security officers to make the right call based on accurate information.

Source: ProVigil

Real-time simulation

Virtual 3D renderings are becoming a common phenomenon in most industries. For example, manufacturers, medical practitioners, architects, artists, and many other people can now simulate the reality on the ground. Customers can now take virtual tours of buildings, planes, theater rooms, and studios courtesy of virtual reality. The most common are 3D renderings of property, especially in new real estate developments.

The prospective power of AR/VR becomes even greater when it is used in conjunction with AI. Security companies will soon be able to have a real-time display of potential risks and threats. Using complex, predictive neural networks to highlight suspected criminal intent, agencies like law enforcement, airport security, or even event security will be able to quickly act upon security threats, instead of react upon them.

Source: GCN
Virtual reality is quickly growing beyond the world of entertainment. Security, education, farming, and health care are just a few places that we are currently using AR/VR, only because we have yet to try it in other fields. Like most technology, the idea that it was created for is quickly surpassed by the ideas of where it can be used, once the awesome might of the human imagination is set upon it.