Mobile technology makes it virtually hassle-free to follow professional sports from your fingertips, as access to the latest scores and important sports news has become nearly instantaneous from any location. Sports fans have cashed in on mainstream professional sports like football and basketball for ages now; however, there are lesser-watched sports out there that are deserving of big-stakes bets. With the increasing advancement in mobile devices, following these sports on your handheld device is easier than ever before. If you’re looking to cash in on some non-traditional betting sports, take a look at a few of these favorites.

1. Ice Hockey

This popular sport is fast-paced and high-scoring, making it an excellent alternative for American football fans. Place a bet for the underdog, or choose a straight bet on who you think will win. Of course, do your research on the teams first so that you can make an intelligent bet, but generally favor teams with a better goalie and a stronger team. As this eHow article explains, a team with finesse may be more entertaining, but a bigger and more powerful team can usually wear down their opponents faster.

2. Boxing

This sport has been a favorite for wagers for over a hundred years. Unlike soccer, baseball, and other sports, boxing has a wildcard element that can throw off even the most accurate predictions—the knockout. One fighter can dominate all 12 rounds of a fight only to be caught off-guard and knocked out in the final round by a strong right hook.

This surprising element means the underdog always has a chance to win, even if every round has been against him. As the fight takes place over several rounds, you can bet on many different things, including how many rounds the fight will last, if it will be won by a knockout, and how many times a fighter will be knocked down.

3. Golf

A slow-paced game, golf is easy to liven up with a bet with sportsbook.com. Golf is also a prime sport for betting because so many people already play it. Whenever you begin betting on a sport, you must be very knowledgeable about it so that you can make the right picks and predictions. Not only does this mean knowing the players’ style and records, it also means having an intimate knowledge of the game itself. Since many people already play golf regularly, betting on it can come more intuitively than betting on a new sport.

Betting on a new sport can be exciting and interesting, but just make sure you are very knowledgeable about the sport before you start placing bets. As thesportsgeek.com says, if you know the sport, bet under five percent of your bankroll, and make bets while sober and unemotional, you can enjoy the energy of a great sport and a great wager.

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Do you know all the ways that you’re being tracked through the Internet and your smartphone? Data aggregators, including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and more, are tracking everything you do. Are you okay with that?

Privacy Online

When we post things online, perform web searches, and write emails, many of us assume that that information is private. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The information that is found through this mining is stored on a database and with the right resources, this information can be pulled together and given to those interested.

Reported in the New York Times article, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” such a thing happened to Stacy Snyder, a 25-year-old student teacher who in 2008 posted a picture of herself drunk on her MySpace page. Because of that photo, the university denied her degree just weeks before her impending graduation. She’s not the only one. Others have lost jobs for posting negative things on Facebook about their jobs. Some companies even require you to login to Facebook before they will hire you. Suddenly, there’s no disconnect between your personal life and your professional life; the Internet is bridging the gap.

Apps Tracking What You Do

But it’s not just the Internet that is tracking what you do. Apps that you put on your phone can track you as well. For example, Pandora reportedly asks you to give it permission to track your location. Many apps ask for this; it makes sense for a map app or for one that helps you find cheap gas near where you’re at. But why would Pandora need to know where you are?

Other apps are doing even worse. Researchers analyzed 10,000 apps for Android cell phones and found that 8 percent of them ask users for access to the International Mobile Equipment Identity number, a unique code given to each cell phone. There is no reason these apps would need this unique identifier.

Is It Possible to Be Private Online?

In an interview with Tom Ashbrook on Boston’s NPR station, Michael Fertik privacy advocate and CEO of Reputation.com, shared the idea that there needs to be a barrier between us and the companies that we interact with.

So if you want to go on Netflix and indicate which movies you like and what you don’t like, it’s anonymous. Instead of connecting these preferences to our real names, it would be connected to something like user10537. So it is possible, but will it happen?

For now, be careful about what you post online and check the privacy settings on all social media websites.

. . . in 1974.

It’s now going to be much easier.

Facebook is moving to verified accounts for celebrities, and they will be able to create other accounts with fake names.