Tech & internet myths
Technology changes fast enough that yesterday's true fact becomes today's myth — and slow enough that today's myth about your phone battery has probably been wrong for a decade. A fact-checked reset.
Privacy & data
Myth
The claim: Incognito or private browsing mode makes you anonymous online.
Actually: It only stops your own device from saving local history, cookies and form data. Your internet provider, network administrator, employer, and the websites you visit can generally still see and track what you're doing.
Myth
The claim: Deleting a file removes it from your device immediately and permanently.
Actually: Deleting usually just removes the file's reference and marks that storage space as reusable — the actual data often remains recoverable until something else overwrites it, which is exactly why data-recovery software and digital forensics exist.
Batteries & devices
Myth
The claim: Charging your phone overnight overcharges and damages the battery.
Actually: Modern lithium-ion devices have built-in charge-management circuitry that stops or trickles the charge once the battery is full, so leaving a modern phone plugged in overnight doesn't overcharge it.
Myth
The claim: You should fully drain your phone or laptop battery before recharging it, to avoid a 'memory effect'.
Actually: The memory effect is a real quirk of older nickel-based batteries, not the lithium-ion batteries in modern devices — for those, frequent full discharges are actually harder on battery lifespan than regular partial charges.
Myth
The claim: Force-closing background apps saves your phone's battery.
Actually: Modern mobile operating systems already suspend and manage background apps automatically. Manually force-quitting them can use more battery, not less, because the app has to fully reload from scratch next time you open it.
Everyday tech claims
Myth
The claim: A higher megapixel count always means a better camera.
Actually: Photo quality depends heavily on sensor size, lens quality, individual pixel size and image processing — megapixel count alone is a poor predictor of how good photos actually look.
Myth
The claim: 5G mobile networks caused or spread COVID-19.
Actually: This conspiracy theory was thoroughly debunked: viruses can't travel on radio waves, and there is no known biological mechanism connecting the two. It's now a textbook case study in how quickly misinformation can spread — see media literacy.
For the human side of confidently wrong tech claims — including the AI kind — see AI hallucinations.