mobile phone signal strength

Mobile Phone Signal Strength Chart

Understanding what your mobile phone is telling you when you look at the signal strength status is important if you are having specific connection issues.

Symbol G on mobile phone signal status

The G symbol means GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and this allows for voice calls and an Internet Speed of up to 50 kb/s. This will work for all normal data usage such as emails and app notifications but will not work for video.

Symbol E on mobile phone signal status

The E symbol means EDGE (Enhanced Data GSM Evolution) and this allows for voice calls and an Internet Speed of up to 100 kb/s. This will work for all normal data usage such as emails and app notifications but will not work for video.

Symbol 3G on mobile phone signal status

The 3G symbol means Third Generation which is also known as UMTS / WCDMA / CDMA2000 and this allows for voice calls and an Internet Speed of up to 2 Mb/s. This will work for all normal data usage such as emails and app notifications including video.

Symbol H/H+ on mobile phone signal status

The H/H+ symbol means HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) and this allows for voice calls and an Internet Speed of up to 10 to 100 Mb/s. This will work for all normal data usage such as emails and app notifications including video.

Symbol 4G (LTE) on mobile phone signal status

The 4G (LTE)  symbol means Fourth generation or Long term evolution which is also known as LTE or WiMax and this allows for voice calls and an Internet Speed of up to 100 Mb/s. This will work for all normal data usage such as emails and app notifications including video.

Symbol No Symbol on mobile phone signal status

If no  symbol is being displayed this means If signal bars get more than 1 bar you can use voice calls only.

Mobile Signal Strength Chart

Blocking YouTube For Parental Control

how to block youtube

We have an interesting enquiry, for parental control reasons we asked how to block YouTube.

The basics had been done and this was blocking youtube.com at the router level and on a PC this was working.

However, the YouTube APP was still working on mobile devices and tablets so we were asked to help.

We looked at the traffic usage by the APP in the routing table and worked out that the APP actually uses different URL paths.

To Block YouTube On A PC and APPS

At the router to block completely YouTube on a PC, MAC or APP you need to block the following:-
youtube.com
youtu.be
ytimg.com
ytimg.l.google.com
youtube.l.google.com
googlevideo.com

Sky Broadband Shield – Blocking YouTube

Sky Broadband Shield is an online protection tool available at no extra cost to all Sky Broadband customers.

Sky provide a complete help site:- https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-broadband-shield-explained
However, they miss a trick here:-
Sky Broadband Shield help

How do you login to SKY Shield? You need to visit https://broadbandshield.sky.com/

Once logged into your SKY account you will find the main settings easy to use:-
Sky Broadband Shield Settings

You can then set up specific settings to suit your children with limits set to certain times.

To show an example here we setup PG only between the hours of 09:30 to 21:00. Outside of these hours, there will be no control in place.

You can also setup a viewing watershed allowing 18 rated viewing only between certain hours.

Sky Broadband Shield Settings watershed

When you change the timing of the Watershed this changes the time for the first tab also:-

Sky Broadband Shield Settings watershed settings

You can now set up more than simply blocking a website or domain. On the “Block & Allow website” tab you find the area to enter domains and to block YouTube you enter the information we supplied above:-

Sky Broadband Shield Settings Block Sites

Google reCAPTCHA Badge Always Showing – Hide It

When you enable the new Google reCATPTCHA V3 it will display by default “protected by reCAPTCHA” on your website at all times and this badge will be visible in the bottom right corner of the screen. When your mouse goes over the badge the larger badge will appear as a pop out.

Google reCAPTCHA badge always showing

This doesn’t look too bad on a desktop but on a mobile device this is a real pain and there are no options to hide this.

When you accept the reCAPTCHA Terms and conditions part of this is to inform visitors to the website that you are using the reCAPTCHA new system.

Google reCAPTCHA V3 Terms and Conditions

So what options do you have to hide Google reCAPTCHA V3 Badge?

Google released in December 2018 a new update and with this information which can be found here https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/faq

Should I use reCAPTCHA v2 or v3?

reCAPTCHA v2 is not going away! We will continue to fully support and improve security and usability for v2.

reCAPTCHA v3 is intended for power users, site owners that want more data about their traffic, and for use cases in which it is not appropriate to show a challenge to the user.

For example, a registration page might still use reCAPTCHA v2 for a higher-friction challenge, whereas more common actions like sign-in, searches, comments, or voting might use reCAPTCHA v3. To see more details, see the reCAPTCHA v3 developer guide.

I’d like to hide the reCAPTCHA badge. What is allowed?

You are allowed to hide the badge as long as you include the reCAPTCHA branding visibly in the user flow. Please include the following text:

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google
Privacy Policy and
Terms of Service apply.
For example:

Google reCAPTCHA V3 Options

How To Hide The Google reCAPTCHA Badge

Reading online various people suggesting using display: none; in the CSS but this will override the system and the Google reCAPTCHA will not function.

.grecaptcha-badge {
display: none;
}

NOTE: This is not the correct method to hide the Google reCAPTCHA Badge.

The correct method from our testing to hide the Google reCAPTCHA Badge is to use:-

.grecaptcha-badge {
visibility: hidden;
}

Now it is important to add the message Google reference’s in the link shared earlier with the links to https://policies.google.com/privacy for the Privacy Policy and also the https://policies.google.com/terms for the Terms of Service.

Hide The Google reCAPTCHA Badge On All Pages Other Than Your Contact Page If Using WordPress

If you want to take the above advice and then make it still appear on the contact page you can do this. First, you need to find the page ID number.

  • Login to your WordPress website site and navigate to the Pages menu in your admin dashboard.
  • Click on the contact page.
  • Once in the edit screen, look at the URL in your web browser.
  • The Page ID is the number in the URL.

On Chameleon we have this:- https://www.chameleonwebservices.co.uk/wp-admin/post.php?post=45&action=edit

This means that page ID is 45 and now we can add the following CSS:-

/* Hides Google reCAPTCHA Badge on all pages */
.grecaptcha-badge {
visibility: hidden !important;
}

/* Enable Google reCAPTCHA Badge on the contact page */
.page-id-45 .grecaptcha-badge {
visibility: visible !important;
}

Note: You have change the page ID number to your page ID for obvious reasons.

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