When Is Amazon Prime Day 2018? And 10 More Things to Know About It

Amazon Prime Day 2018 is almost here. It feels like Christmas, doesn’t it? We just need Jeff Bezos to turn up in a red suit.

2017’s Prime Day saw sales in excess of $1 billion. This year’s event is expected to be even bigger as Amazon is primed to offer more discounts than ever before.

Keeping reading to learn about Amazon Prime Day 2018 and to discover how to get the best deals.

When Is Amazon Prime Day 2018?

It’s not been officially confirmed, but it’s now widely expected that Amazon Prime Day 2018 will be on Monday, July 16.

The news leaked after TechRadar spotted an errant advertising banner on Amazon’s UK website which showed the date. The banner was quickly removed, and there has been no further word from Amazon itself.

In practice, Amazon Prime Day runs for more than 24 hours. Assuming the dates in Amazon’s banner were correct, it will begin at midday EST on July 16 and run until midnight PST on Tuesday the 17th, giving it a total duration of 39 hours.

We’ll update you as soon as we hear more. But until then, here are 10 more details that’ll help you get acquainted with and prepare for Amazon Prime Day.

1. What Is Amazon Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day launched in 2015 as part of the company’s 20th birthday celebration. From a shopper’s standpoint, the first edition was beset with issues. Demand outstripped supply, the website slowed to a crawl, and the discounts were often on non-alluring items.

However, from a company standpoint, the 2015 Prime Day was a resounding success. It sold 398 products per second and saw the company make higher revenues than on Black Friday.

By last year’s 2017 event, Amazon has smoothed out the customer issues and the day went off without a hitch. The company saw a 60 percent rise in sales compared to 2016. Amazingly, revenues eclipsed its 2016 Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

2. Who Can Take Advantage of Amazon Prime Day?

Only Amazon Prime members can take advantage of the massive discounts.

However, if you’ve never been a Prime member before, you can cheat the system and sign up for a free 30-day Amazon Prime trial. Of course, you’d need to remember to cancel your trial before Amazon sends you a bill.

A new membership to Amazon Prime costs $12.99/mo or $119/year. In addition to Prime Day deals, you receive access to Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Music, free 2-day shipping, and many more Amazon Prime benefits.

3. What Deals Can You Expect on Amazon Prime Day?

In 2017, Amazon’s own products often enjoyed the most significant discounts. The Echo speaker dropped by 50 percent as Amazon let them go for $89.99, while the smaller Echo Dot was given a $15 discount to bring the price down to $34.99. As a result, the Dot became the most-bought item of the day.

You’ll also find considerable discounts on Amazon Fire sticks, Kindle ereaders, and items in the Amazon Basics range.

But it’s not just Amazon products that see bargain prices. In 2017, the TP-Link Wi-Fi Smart Plug, the Sony PlayStation 4, the Nintendo Switch, and the OnePlus 5 phone were all big sellers.

Away from technology, estimates suggest Amazon sold 3.5 million toys, 200,000 dresses, 52,000 kitchen items, and 37,000 power tools.

4. Watch for Lightning Deals

Lightning Deals are a standard part of the Amazon shopping experience for Prime members. Every day, Amazon offers a limited number of products at a massive discount. The quantity of any item is limited, and deals are only available for a short amount of time.

On Amazon Prime Day, Lightning Deals are more common, with often hundreds of deals running at any moment. If you keep your eyes open, you might find a saving above and beyond standard Prime Day discount.

And if the Lightning Deal you want sells out before you get a chance to buy it, you can join a waiting list. If the people with the item in their cart fail to complete the purchase, it will automatically be offered to you.

5. Use Amazon Alexa for a Head Start on Deals

To beat the crowds to the best deals on Prime Day, you need to shop using your voice with Amazon Alexa.

In 2017, Amazon gave voice shoppers a two-hour head start on new deals. During the last Black Friday, that increased to seven hours.

We’d expect Amazon to offer the same benefits during this year’s Prime Day. You just need to say “Alexa, what are your deals?” to enjoy the advanced notice. If you hear something you want, say “Alexa, add [item] to my cart.”

6. Use Amazon Assistant for Deal Notifications

Unbeknown to many, Amazon offers a browser extension. It’s available on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge.

The extension—called Amazon Assistant— offers lots of benefits, including order tracking, product comparisons, and access to your various lists. It’s an extension that every online shopper needs.

However, from an Amazon Prime Day perspective, its best feature is the watch lists. You can receive desktop notifications when any deals you’re watching go live, meaning you’ll never miss out on a purchase you want.

Download: Amazon Assistant (Free)

7. Check CamelCamelCamel for Price Histories

How do you know the price you see on Amazon represents a good deal? We all know high street shops artificially bump up prices ahead of a big sale, and some Amazon vendors are no different.

To make sure you’re not being conned, check the item’s price history on CamelCamelCamel. You can enter the Amazon item’s URL or search for keywords and see how the price has changed over time.

If you see a steady rise in the weeks building up to Prime Day, you should probably give it a wide berth.

8. Check Forums for Even More Prime Day Deals

Lastly, it’s worth hanging out in some dedicated Amazon Prime Day forums. The best subreddit will probably be /r/PrimeDay, but don’t expect to see much activity until the day itself. There’s also a dedicated Amazon subreddit which is worth keeping an eye on.

You should also check the threads on SlickDeals. It’s consistently one of the best sites for finding bargains on the web, and on Prime Day it goes into overdrive.

9. Singles’ Day Is Bigger Than Amazon Prime Day

Despite its impressive performances when compared to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon Prime Day is not the web’s biggest day of online shopping.

That award goes to Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales. In 2017, it saw sales of $17.8 billion. That’s more than 17 times the amount of money spent on Prime Day.

Alibaba is yet to become a giant in Europe and the United States. But if you’re looking for cheap, unbranded electronics, it might be better to wait until Singles’ Day 2018 on November 11th (and don’t worry, Alibaba is a perfectly safe place to do your shopping).

10. You Could Shop Elsewhere

Other stores have been looking enviously at Amazon piling up sales records. In response, an increasing number are running their own concurrent sales in an attempt to get involved in the buzz.

Last year, we saw Macy’s, Kohl’s, Best Buy, Nordstrom, and Dell provide discounts—many of which also offered free shipping.

On Amazon Prime Day 2018, you can expect to see Google, Newegg, Office Depot, and 1-800 Flowers join the list, along with several others.

So before committing to a purchase on Amazon, make sure you can’t find it cheaper on a competitor’s site.

Start Planning Your Amazon Prime Day Budget

Shopping responsibly is important. Events such as Prime Day are filled with temptation. Many people overspend and wake up with a head full of buyer’s remorse.

To make sure you don’t overindulge, you should make a budget before the big day arrives. There are lots of online tools that can help you budget or you could even use Microsoft Excel to create your own budget .

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YouTube’s Picture-in-Picture Mode Is Now Free on Android

YouTube has, suddenly, and with little fanfare, made its picture-in-picture mode available on Android for free. YouTube’s PiP mode was previously only available to YouTube Red subscribers, but with the switch to YouTube Premium times have changed.

Picture-in-picture allows you to view content in a small window while continuing to use the device in question. PiP has been common on TV sets and the like for years, and with the release of Android 8.0 (Oreo) it has been an option on your smartphone too.

How to Use YouTube’s PiP Mode

YouTube’s picture-in-picture mode has, until now, only been available for people willing to pay for the privilege of watching YouTube. However, YouTube has now removed that barrier, making its PiP mode available for free on Android. Sorry, iOS users.

Unfortunately, YouTube isn’t making its PiP mode available to everyone. You’ll need to be resident in the U.S., and using the YouTube app on an Android device running Android 8.0 (Oreo) or above. So international users or anyone with an older phone is out of luck.

Even if you do qualify to use picture-in-picture for free, not all videos are available to watch. Any videos that contain music content will not work with PiP, at least for free. Instead, you’ll need to subscribe to YouTube Premium or YouTube Music to unlock them.

As detailed on YouTube’s support pages, using PiP mode is simple. When you’re watching a video, tap the Home button on your device. Instead of closing YouTube, as it would have done previously, the video will continue playing in a small window.

PiP Is Perfect for the Under-30s

This is, admittedly, a small upgrade to the way YouTube operates. However, for those people (anyone under the age of 30) who have short attention spans, picture-in-picture lets you watch YouTube videos without actually watching YouTube videos.

Image Credit: Rego Korosi/Flickr

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Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky will reportedly step down from Snap’s board of directors

Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky, who has served on Snap’s board of directors since December 2012, is not expected to stand for re-election to Snap’s board of directors and will thus be stepping down, according to a report by The Information.

Early investors stepping down from the board of directors — or at least not seeking re-election — isn’t that uncommon as once-private companies grow into larger public ones. Benchmark partner Peter Fenton did not seek re-election for Twitter’s board of directors in April last year. As Snap continues to navigate its future, especially as it has declined precipitously since going public and now sits at a valuation of around $16.5 billion. Partners with an expertise in the early-stage and later-stage startup life cycle may end up seeing themselves more useful taking a back seat and focusing on other investments. The voting process for board member re-election happens during the company’s annual meeting, so we’ll get more information when an additional proxy filing comes out ahead of the meeting later this year.

Benchmark is, or at least was at the time of going public last year, one of Snap’s biggest shareholders. According to the company’s 424B filing prior to going public in March last year, Benchmark held ownership of 23.1% of Snap’s Class B common stock and 8.2% of Snap’s Class A common stock. Lasky has been with Benchmark since April 2007, and also serves on the boards of a number of gaming companies like Riot Games and thatgamecompany, the creators of PlayStation titles flower and Journey. At the time, Snap said in its filing that Lasky was “qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors due to his extensive experience with social media and technology companies, as well as his experience as a venture capitalist investing in technology companies.”

The timing could be totally coincidental, but an earlier Recode report suggested Lasky had been talking about stepping down in future funds for Benchmark. The firm only recently wrapped up a very public battle with Uber, which ended up with Benchmark selling a significant stake in the company and a new CEO coming in to replace co-founder Travis Kalanick. Benchmark hired its first female general partner, Sarah Tavel, earlier this year.

We’ve reached out to both Snap and a representative from Benchmark for comment and will update the story when we hear back.

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Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky will reportedly step down from Snap’s board of directors

Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky, who has served on Snap’s board of directors since December 2012, is not expected to stand for re-election to Snap’s board of directors and will thus be stepping down, according to a report by The Information.

Early investors stepping down from the board of directors — or at least not seeking re-election — isn’t that uncommon as once-private companies grow into larger public ones. Benchmark partner Peter Fenton did not seek re-election for Twitter’s board of directors in April last year. As Snap continues to navigate its future, especially as it has declined precipitously since going public and now sits at a valuation of around $16.5 billion. Partners with an expertise in the early-stage and later-stage startup life cycle may end up seeing themselves more useful taking a back seat and focusing on other investments. The voting process for board member re-election happens during the company’s annual meeting, so we’ll get more information when an additional proxy filing comes out ahead of the meeting later this year.

Benchmark is, or at least was at the time of going public last year, one of Snap’s biggest shareholders. According to the company’s 424B filing prior to going public in March last year, Benchmark held ownership of 23.1% of Snap’s Class B common stock and 8.2% of Snap’s Class A common stock. Lasky has been with Benchmark since April 2007, and also serves on the boards of a number of gaming companies like Riot Games and thatgamecompany, the creators of PlayStation titles flower and Journey. At the time, Snap said in its filing that Lasky was “qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors due to his extensive experience with social media and technology companies, as well as his experience as a venture capitalist investing in technology companies.”

The timing could be totally coincidental, but an earlier Recode report suggested Lasky had been talking about stepping down in future funds for Benchmark. The firm only recently wrapped up a very public battle with Uber, which ended up with Benchmark selling a significant stake in the company and a new CEO coming in to replace co-founder Travis Kalanick. Benchmark hired its first female general partner, Sarah Tavel, earlier this year.

We’ve reached out to both Snap and a representative from Benchmark for comment and will update the story when we hear back.

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5 Google News Alternatives That’ll Change How You Read News

The news is more broken than ever before. It’s difficult to believe what you read from news sites, and you know you can’t trust social media. The onus is now on the reader to find the right places to read the most factual articles.

For most of us, Google News remains one of the main ways we find out what is happening. But even with the new changes in Google News, it raises many of the old issues. Over the years, publications have gotten only better at gaming Google’s algorithms, and it’s only a matter of time before they trick the new Google News.

What you need are new ways to find out what is happening in the world around you.

Reddit News (iOS, Android): Reddit Launches a News Tab

The internet’s largest community has a new trick up its sleeve. On the official Reddit iOS app, you will now find a new tab at the top next to Home and Popular. Reddit now serves you the News.

The cool part about the News tab is that it breaks you out of your filter bubble. It won’t only show you the news from subreddits you are interested in, it will showcase the most important article links, shared across different subreddits. Sure, you can still add topics you are interested in, like sports or science, but the basic “All Stories” tab will help much more.

Due to how Reddit’s upvoting system works, Reddit News also benefits by showing you the most upvoted article about any event. And instead of that article’s comments thread, you can come back to engage with the Reddit audience after you’re done reading.

Download: Reddit for iOS | Android (Free)

Inside (Web): Newsletters on Various Topics, Curated By Real People

Just because an event takes place, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is news. If what you want is impactful news, then an app like Inside is much better for you than reading Google News.

Instead of relying on algorithms like Google, Inside has a team of human experts that curate the news from a wide variety of sources. Each topic (like the Daily Brief, bitcoin, Donald Trump, streaming media, wine, etc.) has a different expert. That expert’s curation turns into an email newsletter, which is sent daily, weekly, or twice weekly, depending on how regularly there is impactful news on that topic. If you want to see how they look before subscribing, you can sample the recent issues.

I’d recommend Inside for the Daily Brief and the ReadThisThing newsletters wholeheartedly. It’s also great for a lot of other topics, depending on your interests. But if you’re mainly interested in following technology news, you might want to check out some of the other excellent curated tech news digests.

YetiGoGo (Web): Universal Search for 100 Top News Media

A while back, Elon Musk asked for a new system that ranks news organizations by their trustworthiness. While that will take some time, for now, we have YetiGoGo to fill the void.

Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication. Thinking of calling it Pravda …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 23, 2018

YetiGoGo indexes the 100 most popular News sites in the USA. Enter a search term and it will show you a chronological list of all the top news around that keyword. So if you want to see what President Trump is doing today, just search for him.

The site stands out for its simplicity since all you get is a big list of headlines. You already know that it’s from a popular and respected news outlet. YetiGoGo also doesn’t mess with the headlines or club them together for a single topic, like Google News does.

When you want to read about any issue, forget about searching for it on Google News. Use YetiGoGo instead.

News For Mom (Web): A Son’s Weekly News Blast for His Mom

News For Mom is everything that is charming and amazing about the Internet. Chris Barr and his mom don’t entirely agree on everything, but they share a common pursuit of intelligence and respectful sharing of ideas. So Chris decided to make a weekly newsletter for his mom to share the different news topics he comes across. And now you can subscribe to that newsletter.

Here’s Chris on what News For Mom is all about: “I created this newsletter to open up new paths of conversations with my mom about issues that have an impact on our lives. In each letter, I try to share articles that fall below the fold on issues that are relevant to her: health, education, arts and local/rural/Appalachian issues. I try to avoid argument-inducing national politics and season the email with a bit of humor, a few personal updates and things that capture my imagination.” Here is a sample of one of the recent issues.

If you’re in the US, News For Mom is one of the coolest ways to read hand-curated news about things that don’t get widely shared on social media or talked about at prime time news shows.

Microsoft News (Android, iOS): AI + Human Curation

Microsoft has long sought to provide alternatives to Google, and Microsoft News is the latest salvo. It’s a repackaged version of MSN News, which has been around for decades now. But what Microsoft does differently from Google is that apart from AI and algorithms, it also uses a team of human editors who curate the news.

You could argue that Google’s AI-only approach is the better way to go since it reduces human bias. However, such AI-only approaches to news are seen as some of the problems with getting news from Facebook. If you prefer to balance AI and human interaction, Microsoft News might be the way to go.

The app itself is simple to use. Add topics you’re interested in, and it will serve the news about any major happenings around it. You can play videos in the app, read articles, choose a light or dark theme, and even get alerts. It’s not the features that set it apart from Google News, it’s the technology behind how it curates news.

Download: Microsoft News for Android | iOS (Free)

News Overload? Smartly Read Important Things

With the news overload that we face in the world today, you can miss some of the important things you should know about. You obviously don’t want that to happen, which is why we have the above list of apps to stay up-to-date, and this other list of smart apps to simplify the news.

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How to Repair or Recover Data From a Corrupted PDF File

If you can’t open a PDF, it might be because it’s corrupted. If you haven’t backed up your data, discovering a broken file can be a nightmare. We’re going to help you fix your PDF through tools and Windows techniques.

It may be possible to fully repair the entire PDF, restoring it to its original state, or you might only be able to extract elements and rebuild the rest. Anything you can get, right?

After checking out these tips, pop into the comment section at the end to let us know if you’ve ever suffered PDF corruption and how you managed to resolve it.

Check Your PDF Reader for Errors

Are you sure that the problem is with the PDF file? Instead, it might just be that the program you’re using to view the PDF is playing up.

Repair Adobe Acrobat Reader

The most common PDF viewer is Adobe Acrobat Reader. That’s not necessarily because Adobe offer the best program, but simply because it’s what most people associate with the format. The PDF file type was created by Adobe in the 1990s and became an open standard in 2008. If you’re using Adobe Acrobat Reader, let’s run some quick troubleshooting.

First, check the program is running the latest version by launching it and going to Help > Check for Updates. You’ll either be told the program is up to date or that there are updates to install. If there are, go ahead and install them. Try opening your PDF now.

If that doesn’t work, keep Adobe Acrobat Reader open and navigate to Help > Repair Installation. It might be that the files the program relies on to run have become corrupted and this method will try to patch them up.

Still no luck? Press Windows key + I and click Apps. Search adobe acrobat reader, click it on the list and click Uninstall. Then head to the Adobe website to download and install the latest version. If your PDF still doesn’t open after this, we can safely dismiss Adobe’s program as being the problem.

Try Using an Alternative Reader

Adobe Acrobat Reader is by no means your only option for viewing PDFs. It’s worth trying out a different program to see if that’s able to open the PDF.

In the past we’ve rounded up alternative lightweight PDF readers that are focused on the reading of a PDF rather than anything extraneous. Two of the best choices, and both free, are Foxit Reader and Sumatra PDF. Download these and give them a shot with your PDF.

You might also find that Okular and Evince are able to read your PDF file when other software cannot. This is because they use a different rendering method to display PDFs.

If you’re still having problems then it’s time to start focussing on repairing the PDF file itself or at least scraping it for what you can save.

Repair or Recover the PDF File

We’ve previously written about corruption with Office files, but some of those techniques can also apply to PDFs, namely looking for previous versions of the file and using third-party applications.

Restore a Previous File Version

If your PDF used to work and has become corrupted, you could try restoring an old version. Windows 10 has a built in back up facility that could help. You can access it by pressing Windows key + I and navigating to Update & Security > Backup.

If you haven’t been using the Backup feature then you can’t retroactively use it to restore your PDF. Nevertheless, it might be wise to enable it now. You can find out about this and more in our ultimate Windows 10 backup guide.

If you have enabled it, you can try using the File History feature to roll back your PDF to a previous version. To do this, open File Explorer and navigate to your PDF. Right click it and click Restore previous versions.

This will bring up a list of all the old versions of the file contained within your backup. You can Open the copies to check them out and then use the Restore button to bring them back to life.

A similar technique would be to use a data recovery program, like Recuva, that will scan your drive and look for old files that have been deleted from your system. If you had an old copy of the PDF file that you’ve removed, this technique might be fruitful.

Try Using PDF Repair Apps and Utilities

There are applications out there that will try to repair your PDF. Some of these don’t require you to download any software and can be run in the browser, like PDFaid, Repair PDF, and PDF Tools Online. Give these all a shot, but if the corruption is severe then they may not be able to help.

You can also try specialist file repair programs like FileRepair1. This will scan the PDF, identify the failure, and fix what it can. It’s not always successful in every case, but you may find it helpful.

Extract the Data From the PDF File

If you’re not able to repair the entire PDF, then you may still be able to extract elements like the text and images.

For the text, you can use programs that will convert your PDF to a Word file and allow you to get the text that way. However, I find one of the best tools is actually the online application PDF to Word Converter offered by Nitro; although some characters may look a bit funky depending on the type of corruption.

If your PDF contains images, try following our guide on how to extract images from a PDF. Again, this may have varying results depending on the level of corruption, but it’s definitely worth seeing what can be pulled out.

Save Your Corrupted PDF Document!

Hopefully these methods have been useful in saving your PDF. You might not have been able to recover everything (such is the bane of corruption), but at least you may have saved elements of the file.

Remember, you should always have a stable Windows backup plan in place to ensure that corrupted data doesn’t cause your world to come crashing down. Always have a secondary copy to restore from.

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How to Start Winning eBay Auctions by Sniping With Automatic Bidding

When it comes to winning auctions on eBay, there are few practices as controversial—or effective—as sniping.

Sniping is simple: You wait until the end of the auction, then swoop in with a low bid that’s just high enough to win before anyone else can raise their maximum bid. Sniping apps usually take care of the bidding, so you don’t even need to be around to win the auction. It’s a viable but irritating strategy.

Why does eBay sniper software work so well? To understand, we have to talk about how eBay bidding works first.

How eBay Bidding Works

When you enter a bid in an eBay auction, you aren’t entering a bid like you would in a regular auction. You’re entering your maximum bid. If you enter your maximum bid as $20, and the current highest maximum bid from any other bidder is $12, eBay might enter a bid for you at $12.50. And you very well may win at $12.50.

Let’s say your maximum bid isn’t the highest bid, though. If someone else bid $21, your bid of $20 would drive their current bid down to $20.50 or so. Then you’d have a chance to outbid them again. This system is known as proxy bidding because the eBay bidder is acting as a proxy for you.

The problem with the eBay autobidder is that you don’t have much control over the timing of your bid. If someone outbids you, your bid goes up. The proxy system ensures that the winner pays the minimum amount required to win. It also helps eBay sellers make money.

That’s where eBay sniping (a different kind of automatic bidding) comes in.

Instead of letting the eBay automatic bidding system bid for you, your eBay auction sniper will place the bid right at the end of the auction, not giving anyone a chance to adjust their maximum bids.

Does Sniping Really Work?

Most of the evidence points to yes. Bidnapper has collected a number of quotes from researchers that support this idea. The research is getting dated, but in general, experts believe that sniping is effective. According to a 2001 Harvard Study:

“Moreover, the data indicates that incremental bidding significantly diminishes with experience (as measured by the bidders’ feedback numbers), while last-minute bidding increases with experience.”

In short, more experienced bidders are sniping. Sniping allows you to conceal information (always a good idea in auctions) and bid without giving anyone else time to react. It’s a win all around.

However, there are some important caveats, especially for eBay beginners.

The Balance notes that eBay’s proxy bidding system and the increasing popularity of fixed-price listings mean you could actually win fewer auctions with sniping. It depends on a lot of factors. Remember that the maximum bid you enter for your snipe can still be beaten, no matter how late your bid is entered. If someone else has a higher maximum bid, your snipe is defeated immediately.

In short, sniping generally works very well, but it won’t always win, and it won’t always result in you paying less. If you really want something that doesn’t show up on eBay very often, sniping probably isn’t the best way to go. But in general, it’s a good strategy.

Why Is eBay Sniping Controversial?

Some people think that sniping goes against the spirit of auction sites. Without sniping, if you want to make sure that you win the auction, you need to either enter a very high bid or rearrange your schedule so you can be there at the end of the auction to make sure you win. Sniping software means you can put in a single bid and then totally forget about the auction.

When a snipe bid wins an auction, whoever was previously in the lead to win can feel like they’ve been cheated. Even if they were willing to enter a higher bid, they didn’t get a chance. It feels like someone has stolen the item out from under you.

Interestingly, eBay doesn’t have a problem with sniping. It’s an allowed and effective practice. In eBay’s own words:

“Bid sniping—including the use of software that places bids for you—is allowed on eBay, but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll win an auction.”

It’s completely legal and allowed. And after you start doing it, you’ll see that it’s a great strategy—eBay’s standard automatic bidding just raises the price of items (which is exactly what eBay wants) and makes people get emotional. When emotion gets in the way of reason, prices go up.

How to Start Sniping Auctions on eBay

eBay sniping couldn’t be easier. There are many websites that help you do it. We’ll take a look at Gixen because it’s totally free.

But there are a lot of other options, including:

• JustSnipe
• EZ sniper
• Auction Sniper
• Bidnapper

Some are paid, and some require software downloads, but Gixen is free and browser-based. Many sniping tools also offer browser extensions that save you a couple of clicks.

Keep in mind that to use any of these services, you’ll need to hand over your eBay login information. It might be a good idea to use an extra email address or an entirely different eBay account if you’re going to be sniping.

Let’s walk through a bidding process using Gixen.

Sign in with your eBay username and password to get started. Then go to eBay and find the item you want and make a note of the item number. You can find the item number in the URL or in the top-right corner of the Description box.

Enter the item number and your maximum bid in Gixen and hit Add. You can also group items so you can place snipe bids on multiple copies of the same item without winning them all. If you win one, the other bids won’t be raised in response to someone else bidding.

That’s all there is to it. The sniper’s automatic bidding software will take care of the rest.

Of course, using paid services gives you more options. But Gixen is a great way to snipe a few times and see if it’s worth investing in.

And it’s worth mentioning that you can always snipe using eBay’s proxy bidding system. Just hang out on an item page until the auction is almost over, and register your bid right before it ends. If you feel like sniping software is cheating, this strategy might appeal to you.

This method can work, but you need to be around when the item is ending.

A Few Things to Remember

Sniping is generally pretty straightforward, but there are a few important things to keep in mind.

Don’t retract your eBay bids. You might be tempted to if you won an item and have placed bids on other copies of it, or if someone drove up the price too quickly. But retracting bids violates eBay’s terms of service except under specific circumstances. So don’t do it.

Be careful about over-bidding. When you get started with sniping, it can be easy to put a ton of items on your list. And if they end close together, you might end up winning more of them than you expect.

Remember that sniping isn’t always going to work. If an item has a huge number of bidders or a single very committed bidder, you’re likely to get outbid by eBay’s automatic bidding system. Sniping is best used on smaller items that aren’t seeing a huge amount of competition. Remember that sniping isn’t a guarantee of anything—it might save you a few bucks here and there, but it’s not likely to get you a $1,000 item for $10.

As long as your expectations are reasonable, sniping can be a great strategy for winning eBay auctions. Just know the limitations, don’t go crazy, and you’ll be fine.

How to Bid on eBay and Win

eBay isn’t always the cheapest shopping site, but using an eBay sniper can help you save some cash. It’s not going to win every auction, and it could actually end up losing you a few, but it remains a viable strategy in many circumstances.

With all of the eBay snipers available online, both as web apps and software downloads, you have plenty of options. Try out a few of the options and start sniping eBay auctions. You’ll get a feel for how effective it is and how to best place your bids to win.

Read the full article: How to Start Winning eBay Auctions by Sniping With Automatic Bidding

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Amazon’s Echo Dot Kids Edition adds support for Spotify

Amazon is addressing one of the larger issues with its Echo Dot Kids Edition — support for Spotify’s streaming music service, with the option to filter out explicit lyrics. The news was announced on Friday alongside new content from Disney for the Kids Edition device. However, Amazon says the Spotify support would not be available until next week.

Lack of access to one of the most popular streaming services was one of my personal critiques with the Kids Edition. As a Spotify household, it was hard to use the device here because of its limited support for music services outside Amazon and iHeartRadio Family. Our favorite playlists and music was not available, because we don’t pay for Amazon’s on-demand music service. This will be a welcome change.

When Spotify is enabled, Amazon says the explicit filter will also be turned on by default — but parents can turn it off on their FreeTime dashboard.

Along with the support on the Kids Edition device, the update will also now allow Spotify customers who don’t subscribe to FreeTime the option to turn off explicit lyrics, as they already can do with Amazon Music and Pandora.

In addition, Amazon says the Echo Dot Kids Edition is gaining a host of new content from Disney this week and next.

It has already added a new kids skill called Disney Dailies that includes jokes and sketches taking place in the “Zootopia” world, which are updated every day.

Next week, there also will be new character alarms featuring characters from Pixar’s “Coco,” Disney’s “Moana” and others. And Disney has updated its Daily Stories with stories from “Incredibles 2,” “Doc McStuffins,” “Wall-E,” “Moana” and more.

The Kids Edition is a combo package of an Echo Dot with a protective case and a year of FreeTime Unlimited, which includes exclusive Alexa skills for Kids Edition owners, as well as other content, like games, apps, books and videos. It’s $79.99 on Amazon.

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How to Send Completely Anonymous Emails: 5 Effective Methods

Have you ever had the need to send anonymous emails to someone? Maybe you’re discreetly declaring your love to someone. Or maybe you’re a journalist and need to secretly communicate with an informant.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons someone may want to send anonymous email. There are free online services on the web that allow you to do this. Or you can use a VPN and an anonymous burner email account (i.e. throwaway).

These days it’s very easy to send emails without having to reveal your true identity. In this article, you’ll learn how to send an anonymous email using the five most effective methods we’ve found.

1. Burner Email Account + VPN

Using a web-based email account like Gmail is a great option. You can sign up for a Gmail account without providing any actual identifying information, and then use that address as a kind of burner email account.

When you send anonymous emails from Gmail’s web-based email client, the originating IP in the SMTP envelope is Google’s server, not your own computer’s IP. This is a nifty way to hide your IP address from the receiver.

If someone were to trace the IP that show up when you send an email from the online Gmail account, it would only trace to the nearest Google server to you. Which, in my case, is the Wichita, Kansas area.

With that said, your actual IP address is stored on Google’s systems. So, if the government or any other authority ever came knocking and asked for your location, Google could provide it.

If that’s not enough privacy for you, you can add another layer of anonymity by encrypting your connection with a VPN service. We recommend avoiding free VPN services and instead pay for a reputable one like ExpressVPN or CyberGhost.

Once connected, you can then use Gmail through the encrypted VPN.

Now, when you go to your Gmail account and send an email, the originating IP will still show up as one of Google’s servers, but there will be two differences.

First, the Google server won’t likely be located anywhere near your actual location. Second, if Google is ever asked to provide your actual IP, they’ll only be able to provide the erroneous IP address hosted by the VPN service.

Note: An anonymous burner email account isn’t quite the same as a disposable email account!

2. Email Client + VPN

Another solution that avoids the need for any anonymous email service is using an email client like Thunderbird on your own PC.

There are three steps you’ll need to follow to make this approach work:

• Sign up for a throwaway email address (like Gmail).
• Install Thunderbird or any other email client and connect it to your throwaway email account.
• Install and connect to a VPN service (like ExpressVPN or CyberGhost).

All you have to do is fire up your preferred VPN service and make sure your computer has a remote IP address.

Then, just send an email via your throwaway email account using your desktop email client, just like you normally would.

The difference is that now, instead of the header providing your actual originating IP address, it’ll show your VPN’s IP address located some place far away. It’s a quick and easy way to send anonymous emails with very little effort.

3. AnonEmail

AnonEmail is a service by AnonyMouse. It allows you to send anonymous emails by resending your email several times through random nodes, thus making it impossible to trace back.

In AnonEmail, you can fill in your recipient, the subject, and a short plain-text message. Contrary to many other services AnonEmail does not (seem to) log your IP. However, we urge you not to use it for anything illegal!

As an extra security measure, AnonEmail will wait for an unknown period of time before sending your email along. Why? So no one will be able to prove your “guilt” based on time/location, or make geographic presumptions based on timezones.

4. Send Anonymous Mail

Like the name implies, this is another web-based, anonymous email tool. Although it lacks the complete anonymity of AnonEmail, it’s the simplest option to use.

You’ll be able to specify a sender’s address and a fake origin email address for your secret message. This one logs your IP address, so you’ll need to use a free VPN service if you want to fully cover your tracks.

Also, neither Send Anonymous Mail nor AnonEmail allow the recipient to reply to your email, so these solutions are only best if you want to send a one-way anonymous email message.

5. ProtonMail

If you absolutely need secure, anonymous, two-way email conversation, ProtonMail is a popular solution. Many say that ProtonMail is better than Gmail.

I’ve personally used ProtonMail when communicating with a journalist living in China. The journalist was using a VPN to access his ProtonMail account, providing several levels of security from prying government eyes. Not only was his originating IP address located outside of China, but all communications using ProtonMail are encrypted.

Some features of ProtonMail include:

• End-to-End Encryption: Messages are not only encrypted when they’re sent from ProtonMail servers, but all stored messages are encrypted as well. Without access to the appropriate ProtonMail account, no one can access your messages.
• Private User Data: ProtonMail’s encryption process, which uses an encryption key on your own client computer, mean even the system administrators at ProtonMail can’t access your messages. On the downside, this means they can’t recover your account for you. On the upside, it means they can’t provide messages to any governing authority either.
• Open Source Cryptography: Since ProtonMail uses open-source cryptographic libraries, you can be sure there are no “back doors” available for anyone to access your emails. That includes both system administrators or hackers.

If you have a need for regular two-way encrypted emails, you may want to consider signing up for a ProtonMail account and just using it as your regular email service.

Start Sending Anonymous Emails Your Way

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to send anonymous email. You can use a local solution with a VPN and either an email client or through a throwaway online email account. You could use a secure, encrypted email service like ProtonMail. Or you could just use one of the free websites that let you send one-way, fully-anonymous messages.

The choice really depends on why you’re sending the message and what level of security and anonymity you need.

Not sure which VPN service is right for you? See our comparison of the best VPN services. If you’re looking for other ways to bolster your personal security, you may also want to take a look at boosting your PC’s security.

Read the full article: How to Send Completely Anonymous Emails: 5 Effective Methods

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Tinder bolsters its security to ward off hacks and blackmail

This week, Tinder responded to a letter from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden calling for the company to seal up security loopholes in its app that could lead to blackmail and other privacy incursions.

In a letter to Sen. Wyden, Match Group General Counsel Jared Sine describes recent changes to the app, noting that as of June 19, “swipe data has been padded such that all actions are now the same size.” Sine added that images on the mobile app are fully encrypted as of February 6, while images on the web version of Tinder were already encrypted.

The Tinder issues were first called out in a report by a research team at Checkmarx describing the app’s “disturbing vulnerabilities” and their propensity for blackmail:

“The vulnerabilities, found in both the app’s Android and iOS versions, allow an attacker using the same network as the user to monitor the user’s every move on the app. It is also possible for an attacker to take control over the profile pictures the user sees, swapping them for inappropriate content, rogue advertising or other type of malicious content (as demonstrated in the research).

“While no credential theft and no immediate financial impact are involved in this process, an attacker targeting a vulnerable user can blackmail the victim, threatening to expose highly private information from the user’s Tinder profile and actions in the app.”

In February, Wyden called for Tinder to address the vulnerability by encrypting all data that moves between its servers and the app and by padding data to obscure it from hackers. In a statement to TechCrunch at the time, Tinder indicated that it heard Sen. Wyden’s concerns and had recently implemented encryption for profile photos in the interest of moving toward deepening its privacy practices.

“Like every technology company, we are constantly working to improve our defenses in the battle against malicious hackers and cyber criminals” Sine said in the letter. “… Our goal is to have protocols and systems that not only meet, but exceed industry best practices.”

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