Think zillions of times before you sell your phone or give your phone to any repair shop or even to any elite trustable customer service. They can get your data recover even after you have done factory reset and delete your data.

Secrets

Our smartphones are privy to some of our most important secrets. Sensitive business emails, financial details, contact information, and perhaps even very personal photos (first what are such stuff doing on your phone) are not things you want falling into the wrong hands.

Remember

Performing a factory reset nothing more than just a good idea. It certainly not enough that data has been removed.

Remember your data including your personal photos, Google searches, emails, text messages, and contact details can be recovered even after you factory reset, as your data is still not overwritten.

What to do

Follow below four steps to wipe your Android phone, to make sure data is properly gone. (Similar steps can be followed for iPhone)

Step 1: Encrypt your data

The first step is to encrypt your data (If it is not already encrypted or using old Android versions). This option is available built into Android (may not enabled by default). Encryption requires you to enter a PIN or password every time you turn your phone on.

• Fully charge your phone or keep it plugged into the charger while this process is running, because it can take several hours depending on how much data you have.

  Note: The exact method may be differ slightly from phone to phone, however it will generally be like below

• Go to Settings > Security > Encrypt phone.
  
  
• Or Go to Settings > Security & location > Advanced > Encryption & credentials and select “Encrypt Phone”
  
  
• Or on Samsung Galaxy, Go to Settings > Lock screen & security > Protect encrypted data
  
  

Step 2: Factory Reset

Make sure you have already setup your new phone or that you have anything you want to keep backed up before you do this because it will wipe everything. Once phone has reset, there’s no going easy back. The steps are similar for most Android devices, but some manufacturers like to be different.

• Go to Settings > Select System > Advanced > Reset options > Select “Reset phone.”

  Note: If you have a PIN or some other security setup, you’ll be asked to enter it. You’ll get another screen asking if you’re sure this is what you want to do. Are you sure? Then hit the “Erase everything” button.

• Or On a Samsung Galaxy, Go to Settings > General Management > Reset > Factory data reset and then tap Reset device.
  
  
• Or On a Huawei phone, go to Settings > System > Reset > Factory data reset and then tap Reset Phone.
  
  
• Or On a Google Pixel, it’s Settings > System > Advanced > Reset options > Erase all data (factory reset) and then tap Reset phone.
  
  

Step 3: Overwriting with junk data

Now final step is to be absolutely certain, by overwriting the encrypted data with junk data and then perform another last factory reset as done in step 2.

• Simply load a bunch of dummy data onto your phone until the storage is full. A few large movies videos should do the trick.
  
  
• Or Open your camera and keep recording video for hours long (like record open sky or charming birds or beautiful garden) till storage full.
  
  
• Or you can also get an app to do it for you. Install any of these or similar app from Play Store, such as Secure Erase with iShredder 6 or Shreddit.  
  

Note: Do not use your personal Gmail / Google account, instead create new dummy temporary google account to download these app to overwrite storage, as by using or connecting your actual google account you may accidentally restore data back again on device from Google drive.

Step 4: Final Factory Reset

Once above three steps completed and the data is overwritten by these app or video camera recording or you fill up storage with movies, perform another last factory reset as done in step 2. That’s how you completely wipe your Android phone.


Note: Never sell your SD Cards and Hard Drives, break into pieces and throw it away in garbage, even if they are not working or dead.

Scammers, Hackers and Fraudulent are sending emails and messages over social media like WhatsApp, twitter or Facebook to people saying that they are eligible for tax refunds or other similar lucrative. The email asks the user to click a link and get their sums.

Further to that they ask user to login to the system where naive user use their banks or email or social accounts or financials credentials which promptly give hackers and fraudulent access to their information and accounts.

Once the user clicks on the phishing link, it takes them to a website that has similar look and feel that looks like promising and authentic. However, if you look closely, the URL of the website gives it away as it says.

• Do not click on such links and be vigilant and look for URL and SSL certificate (locked / green).
• Do not install Mobile apps and games without looking into permissions what they asks as they would ultimately gets access to mobile and data.
• Be vigilante in giving permission to Mobile apps.
• Be aware of using proxy servers, free Wi-Fi and VPN servers.
• Never share personal Information, PIN numbers, OTP, passwords or Credit or Debit cards number or CCV code, banks, other financial accounts numbers, NTN etc.

گھوٹالے کرنے والے ، ہیکر اور دھوکہ دہی کرنے والے عام  لوگوں کو ای میل یا سوشل میڈیا واٹس ایپ ، ٹویٹر یا فیس بک پر پیغامات بھیج رہے ہیں کہ وہ ٹیکس کی واپسی یا اسی طرح کے دوسرے منافع یا رقم کی وصولی کے اہل ہیں۔ ای میل میں صارف سے کہا جاتا ہے کہ وہ کسی لنک پر کلک کریں اور ان کی رقم وصول کریں۔

اس کے علاوہ وہ صارف سے اس ویب سائٹ یا موبائل ایپلیکیشن میں لاگ ان ہونے کو کہتے ہیں جہاں صارف اپنے بینکوں یا ای میل یا معاشی اکاؤنٹس یا پاس ورڈ کا استعمال کرتے ہیں جو ہیکرز کو ان کی معلومات اور اکاؤنٹس میں فورا رسائی فراہم کر دیتا ہے ۔

ایک بار جب صارف فشینگ لنک پر کلیک کرتا ہے تو ، وہ لنک انہیں ایک ایسی ویب سائٹ پر لے جاتا ہے جو بلکل اصل ویب سائٹ  کی طرح نظر آتی ہے تاہم ، اگر آپ قریب سے دیکھیں تو ، ویب سائٹ کا یو آر ایل دوسرا ہوتا ہے اصل نہیں ۔

• ایسے لنکس پر کلک نہ کریں اور چوکس رہیں اور یو آر ایل اور ایس ایس ایل سرٹیفکیٹ (لاک سائن / سبز رنگ) دیکھ لیں۔
• موبائل ایپلیکیشن اور گیمس انسٹال نہ کریں ان کی permissions پر غور کیے بغیر کیوں کہ ایسا کرنے سے آخر کار انہیں آپ کے موبائل اور ڈیٹا تک رسائی حاصل ہوجاتی ہے۔
• موبائل ایپس کو اجازت دینے میں چوکس رہیں۔
• پراکسی سرورز ، مفت وائی فائی اور وی پی این سرورز کے استعمال سے محتاط رہیں۔
• ذاتی معلومات ، پن نمبر ، او ٹی پی ، پاس ورڈز یا کریڈٹ یا ڈیبٹ کارڈ نمبر یا سی سی وی کوڈ ، بینک ، دوسرے مالی اکاؤنٹس نمبر ، این ٹی این وغیرہ کبھی بھی شیئر نہ کریں۔

ایک نمونہ اور معلوماتی ویڈیو نیچے دیکھیں۔

Al Quran Al Kareem - القرآن الكريم is one of the best full featured app with easy to use UI interface that does not require internet to read Holy Quraan.

Its free from any advertisement, with selection of multiple Quran text script, fonts, audio, multilingual translations, with keep screen on and auto scroll feature.

Just in case if Arabic characters appearing as ????? in your column and if you are using MySql DB along with .NET Provider, 

Check below properties of schema, table and column and connectionstring that use to connect to DB

1. DEFAULT_CHARACTER_SET_NAME = utf8
2. DEFAULT_COLLATION_NAME = utf8_general_ci
3. TABLE_COLLATION = utf8_general_ci
4. COLLATION_NAME = utf8_general_ci
5. CHARACTER_SET_NAME = utf8
6. .NET Connection string set to have = 'charset=utf8'

Connection string example

'datasource=<server>;port=3306;username=<userid>;password=<password>;sslmode=none;database=<dbname>;charset=utf8'

Queries that may help to find above information are 

SELECT * FROM information_schema.SCHEMATA S

WHERE schema_name = "<database-name>";

SELECT * FROM information_schema.`TABLES` T,

information_schema.`COLLATION_CHARACTER_SET_APPLICABILITY` CCSA

WHERE CCSA.collation_name = T.table_collation

AND T.table_schema = "<database-name>"

AND T.table_name = "<table-name>";

SELECT * FROM information_schema.`COLUMNS` C

WHERE table_schema = "<database-name>"

AND table_name = "<table-name>"

AND column_name = "<column-name>";

To write arabic unicode script in MsOffice using shortcut, type fdfa then press alt+x, it will convert into its respective unicode

To write in HTML, type &#xfdfa;  it will render it as respective unicode.

It may be require to increase the font to make it more readable

Below are some examples

fdfa Alt+x صلى الله عليه وسلم

Fdf2 Alt+x الله

Fdf3 Alt+x اكبر

Fdf4 Alt+x محمد

Fdf5 Alt+x صلعم

Fdf6 Alt+x رسول

Fdf7 Alt+x عليه

Fdf8 Alt+x وسلم

Fdf9 Alt+x صلى 

Below URL to list all unicodes

www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/Unicode-3.1/U31-FB50.pdf

On Wednesday, Facebook announced “Wedge”. For layman, think of it as a crucial hardware device that transports Internet information between machines (like a networking switch).

What you don’t know is that Wedge is part of the Open Compute Project (OCP) which is being led by Najam Ahmad, the director of Technical Operations at Facebook. Najam, who was born in Karachi, Pakistan, holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from NED University of Engineering and Technology and later on went to do his Master of Science in Telecommunication Protocols and Computer Science from The George Washington University and prior to Facebook, Najam was the General Manager of Global Networking Services at Microsoft where he looked after the operations, overall architecture, design & implementation of Microsoft’s global online network.

This basically means that Facebook (and other companies who support the OCP) will be able to use and contribute to the open hardware design of these switches and this is bad news for vendors like HP, Dell and Cisco who basically have the monopoly over the $150 billion data center hardware market.

Najam’s role in this whole project, though limited, gives us hope and motivation as there are still hundreds and thousands of engineers here in Pakistan who dream of going to the Silicon Valley and making an impact that can change the world and now they have someone to look up to.

Source:linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140620191201-40259989-meet-the-pakistani-who-is-reinventing-the-internet-well-kind-of