Technologies

How to Sign Documents Using Your iPhone or Android Phone

There are tools built directly into iOS and Android for signing your documents.

If you receive a PDF or other digital file that requires your signature, you can easily do so using your phone. Whether you use an iPhone or an Android phone, both include built-in options for adding a quick signature to a document, saving a new copy and sending it off.

These tools work in a pinch, but I wouldn’t recommend them if you’re marking up a more in-depth document that requires multiple signatures and filling out many text boxes. A more advanced signing tool like DocuSign or Microsoft 365 is better optimized, and frankly, if you’re signing something like an apartment lease, you might want to break out a bigger screen like a computer or tablet.

Most documents that need your signature are much shorter and simpler, so if you’re dealing with one of those, then Apple’s Markup tool and the Google Drive app each include a quick way to get your documents filled out and on their way.

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Sign with Google Drive on Android or iPhone

The Google Drive app — included on all Android phones and can be downloaded onto an iPhone — includes markup tools that make it easy to sign a document.

When using Google Drive on Android, you’ll first need to open the PDF that you want to sign.

When it’s open, depending on the file, you’ll either get an Edit option marked with a pencil or an Annotate option marked by a pen with squiggly lines. If you have the Edit option, you can then select Form Filling to enter your additional information. If you have only the Annotate option, you can tap it to bring up a pen tool, and you can use that to give a quick signature to your document.

However, Google Drive doesn’t consistently detect PDFs that should get the Form Filling option, and if you do need to edit the document to include plain text, you may want to use a more robust alternative service instead. If the above steps did accomplish what you need for your document, you can then tap Save in the top right to save those changes. If you want to make a separate copy with these changes, you can tap the More button marked by three vertical dots and tap Save as.

The iPhone version of Google Drive has less flexibility. After opening a PDF, you’ll see a Fill out form option at the bottom indicating whether Google Drive can fill out the form. Otherwise, there’s no annotation option to fall back on. Apple has its own built-in tool for signing a document, which can be used instead.

Sign with Apple’s Markup tool on iPhone

Apple’s Markup tool allows for annotating documents and photos with text, images, emojis and signatures. You can access this tool from across iOS, either directly while viewing a PDF or from Apple’s Share menu.

You’ll first want to open up the PDF that you want to sign — whether that PDF is from an email attachment or from a website. Depending on the app you are using to view it, you might already see the Markup tool on the bottom-right corner of the screen, represented by a pen tip within a circle. If you don’t, tap the Share icon marked by a square with an upward-facing arrow, and in the pop-up menu scroll up to find and tap Markup.

After Markup is turned on, you’ll first get the option to scribble directly onto the document using a variety of pen tools — but don’t use those to sign the document. Instead, tap the Signature icon marked by a rectangle with a pencil, which will likely be in the top row of the Markup menu. This will then bring up a + icon into the bottom-right of the screen, and after tapping that you’ll either select Add Text Form Box or Add Signature. The former is good for typing in print text, while the latter is for handwriting signatures.

If selecting to add a text box, you’ll first be able to move the text box by dragging and resizing it as needed. Then you can tap into the text box to bring up the keyboard for entering text. When you are finished, you can tap outside of the text box to make the keyboard disappear and then tap Done in the top-right to save those changes.

If you are adding a signature, you’ll first use the pop-up menu to sign your name using a finger. That signature can be saved and used again for future documents. After setting up that signature, you can tap Done to move it into a text box in the document. You can then use your finger to drag, drop and resize as needed.

Whether you are using the text box option or the signature option, you can make additional adjustments with each box by tapping an option icon alongside each box, marked by three dots (…). This pop-up will let you Cut, Copy, Duplicate or Delete the box as needed.

When you are done making your adjustments, you can either select Done to save your changes or use the Share icon to send the amended document to another app like your email or cloud storage.

Technologies

A New Bill Aims to Ban Both Adult Content Online and VPN Use. Could It Work?

Michigan representatives just proposed a bill to ban many types of internet content, as well as VPNs that could be used to circumvent it. Here’s what we know.

On Sept. 11, Michigan representatives proposed an internet content ban bill unlike any of the others we’ve seen: This particularly far-reaching legislation would ban not only many types of online content, but also the ability to legally use any VPN.

The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.

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VPNs (virtual private networks) are suites of software often used as workarounds to avoid similar bans that have passed in states like Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as the UK. They can be purchased with subscriptions or downloaded, and are built into some browsers and Wi-Fi routers as well.

But Michigan’s bill would charge internet service providers with detecting and blocking VPN use, as well as banning the sale of VPNs in the state. Associated fines would be up to $500,000.

What the ban could mean for VPNs

Unlike some laws banning access to adult content, this Michigan bill is comprehensive. It applies to all residents of Michigan, adults or children, targets an extensive range of content and includes language that could ban not only VPNs but any method of bypassing internet filters or restrictions.

That could spell trouble for VPN owners and other internet users who leverage these tools to improve their privacy, protect their identities online, prevent ISPs from gathering data about them or increase their device safety when browsing on public Wi-Fi.

Read more: CNET Survey: 47% of Americans Use VPNs for Privacy. That Number Could Rise. Here’s Why

Bills like these could have unintended side effects. John Perrino, senior policy and advocacy expert at the nonprofit Internet Society, mentioned to CNET that adult content laws like this could interfere with what kind of music people can stream, the sexual health forums and articles they can access and even important news involving sexual topics that they may want to read. «Additionally, state age verification laws are difficult for smaller services to comply with, hurting competition and an open internet,» John added.

The Anticorruption of Public Morals Act has not passed the Michigan House of Representatives committee nor been voted on by the Michigan Senate, and it’s not clear how much support the bill currently has beyond the six Republican representatives who have proposed it. As we’ve seen with state legislation in the past, sometimes bills like these can serve as templates for other representatives who may want to propose similar laws in their own states.

Could VPNs still get around bans like these?

That’s a complex question that this bill doesn’t really address. When I asked NordVPN how easy it would be track VPN use, privacy advocate Laura Tyrylyte explained, «From a technical standpoint, ISPs can attempt to distinguish VPN traffic using deep packet inspection, or they can block known VPN IP addresses. However, deploying them effectively requires big investments and ongoing maintenance, making large-scale VPN blocking both costly and complex.»

Also, VPNs have ways around deep packet inspection and other methods. CNET senior editor Moe Long mentioned obfuscation like NordWhisper, a counter to DPI that attempts to make VPN traffic look like normal web traffic so it’s harder to detect.

There are also no-log features offered by many VPNs to guarantee they don’t keep a record of your activity, and no-log audits from third parties like Deloitte that, well, try to guarantee the guarantee. There are even server tricks VPNs can use like RAM-only servers that automatically erase data each time they’re rebooted or shut down.

If you’re seriously concerned about your data privacy, you can look for features like these in a VPN and see if they are right for you. Changes like these, even on the state level, are one reason we pay close attention to how specific VPNs work during our testing, and make sure to recommend the right VPNs for the job, from speedy browsing to privacy while traveling.

Correction, Oct. 9: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated how RAM-only servers work. RAM-only servers run on volatile memory and are wiped of data when they are rebooted or shut down.

Technologies

AWS Outage Explained: Why Half the Internet Went Down While You Were Sleeping

Reddit, Roblox and Ring are just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of sites and services that were impacted when Amazon Web Services went down.

The internet kicked off the week the way that many of us often feel like doing: by refusing to go to work. An outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) rendered huge portions of the internet unavailable on Monday morning, with sites and services including Snapchat, Fortnite, Venmo, the PlayStation Network and, predictably, Amazon, unavailable for a short period of time.

AWS is a cloud services provider owned by Amazon that props up huge portions of the internet. As with the Fastly and Crowdstrike outages over the past few years, the AWS outage shows just how much of the internet relies on the same infrastructure — and how quickly our access to the sites and services we rely on can be revoked when something goes wrong.

Just after midnight PT on October 20, AWS first registered an issue on its service status page, saying it was «investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region.» Around 2 a.m. PT, it said it had identified a potential root cause of the issue, and within half an hour, it had started applying mitigations that were resulting in significant signs of recovery.

«The underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated, and most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now,» AWS said at 3.35 a.m. PT. The company didn’t respond to request for further comment beyond pointing us back to the AWS health dashboard.

Around the time that AWS says it first began noticing error rates, Downdetector saw reports begin to spike across many online services, including banks, airlines and phone carriers. As AWS resolved the issue, some of these reports saw a drop off, whereas others have yet to return to normal. (Disclosure: Downdetector is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

Around 4 a.m. PT, Reddit was still down, while services including Verizon and YouTube were still seeing a significant number of reported issues.

Technologies

Verum Messenger: How to Protect Your Personal Data and Why Choosing a Secure Messenger Matters

A major data leak has been reported involving users of the Russian messenger MAX. Hackers claimed to have obtained the platform’s entire database, which includes 46,203,590 records. To prove their claims, they published part of the stolen data publicly.

According to preliminary information, the attackers gained access to users’ personal details, including contact numbers, chats, IP addresses, and other sensitive data. Cybersecurity experts warn that such incidents can lead to serious consequences — from account takeovers and extortion to large-scale phishing attacks.

Why these leaks happen

The main cause of such breaches is the storage of personal user data on servers without adequate protection or encryption. If attackers gain access to these servers, users’ information becomes fully exposed.

Additionally, many popular messaging apps require users to register with a phone number and provide extra personal information, increasing the amount of data that can be stolen.

How to reduce the risks

The only reliable way to protect your personal messages and data is to use messaging platforms that do not store personal information on their servers and rely on true end-to-end encryption.

One such solution is Verum Messenger — a next-generation app built on the principle of maximum privacy. The platform:

does not store users’ personal data;
uses unique encryption keys generated locally on the user’s device;
does not require a phone number or other personal information to register;
has no access to messages, calls, or files;
provides effective anti-spam and anti-scam protection;
offers private chats and group channels with flexible security settings.

Even in the event of a server breach, attackers would not be able to access message content — because encryption keys simply do not exist on the company’s side.

Freedom of communication without the risk of leaks

In addition to its strong security foundation, Verum Messenger offers a built-in ecosystem of tools — from encrypted email Verum Mail and an integrated VPN for anonymous connections to free crypto mining with Verum Coin and eSIM connectivity in over 150 countries worldwide.

As data breaches become increasingly common, choosing a secure messenger is no longer just about convenience — it’s about personal safety.