Q. While traveling by car I frequently use Siri to help me find gas stations and restaurants. I’m only interested in finding ones that are ahead of me, since I have no interest in driving 20 miles in the wrong direction to find a hamburger. Why can’t I specify a direction when asking Siri for help? It seems like a very functional tool for travelers.
A. I don’t think the technology is there quite yet that would allow the Siri app to know which way you are going when showing you search results but it will often tell you if the location is east, west, north or south of your location so you can use that to determine which gas station or restaurant to choose from the search results.
However, Apple maps will show you restaurants on a map, along with your location so you could use that to find places on your route.
To do this, open Apple Maps and then tap on the Search box and you will see a section called Find Nearby which will let you select restaurants, gas stations and a few other categories.
Just select the one you want and it will show you the results on the map along with your location so you can choose from there.
Technology is advancing. Maybe Tim Cook will read this and get his developers working on it for the next version of iOS.
Q. I have been receiving multiple email messages that tell me that messages I have sent could not be delivered. The problem is, I never sent those messages. Have I been hacked?
A. Chances are, you have not been hacked. There’s a very common technique that spammers use to try to get their messages past spam filters which involves using random email addresses for the reply-to address in the messages they send out.
Chances are, your email address is being used for this. When those messages cannot be delivered, the bounce notice is sent to the sender which appears to be you because that is how the spammers sent the messages.
This happens to me on occasion. I’ll usually get a few dozen of these notices and then it will just stop and won’t happen again for months.
Mail server admins are getting better at preventing these kinds of messages from being sent, but not all mail servers have caught up just yet.
That being said, if you suspect your email account has been compromised it won’t hurt to update your password just to be safe.
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