A US senator wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Yahoo's handling of a major data breach. Mark Warner says the company left the public, and specifically investors, in the dark.
Last week the company announced that it was hit in late 2014 by an attack that it... + continue reading
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A US senator wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Yahoo's handling of a major data breach. Mark Warner says the company left the public, and specifically investors, in the dark. Last week the company announced that it was hit ... in late 2014 by an attack that it believed to have been backed by a foreign government. Around 500 million accounts were affected and the stolen data included names, email address, dates of birth, phone numbers and passwords. The good news is that the passwords were encrypted. The bad news is that the data also included security questions and ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader "Ainsley" writes: " Dear Dennis, I'm using Windows 10. My screen has two big black bars on either side of it taking up approximately 2 inches on each side, shrinking my available screen. I have tried updating the video driver and ... restarting. This did not help. I have googled the issue and found your article ' How to Fix: Windows 10 Black Border (Shrinking Screen) ', but I don't see the windows registry entry that starts with 'DALR6 DFPI'. Please advise. Thank you. " My response: This is one of the most frequently asked questions I receive, having written 5 articles on the ... (view more)
A British consumer group charity has slammed Microsoft over Windows 10. It says it's received more than a thousand complaint from users disappointed with the upgrade. The report comes from "Which?" (also known as the Consumers Association) - an ... organization similar in concept and operation to Consumer Reports in the United States. In many cases, the complainants said they either felt nagged to get the upgrade, or had it installed against their will. The organization said that for many of its members, "Windows 10 has been foisted on them like an unwelcome house guest. ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader "Ivar" writes: " Dear Dennis, I just upgraded to Windows 10 and am using a monitor with 60hz and 1600x900 resolution. Since the upgrade, I have encountered problems with my screen shifting whenever I play some games. When this ... happens, my screen shifts to the left, leaving a black bar of about 4 centimeters on the right side. This only seems to happen when the games change resolution to 1024x768 - however, in Windows 7, changing resolutions worked flawlessly. I came across your article on how to calibrate your screen , and looked for the 'auto calibration' button you ... (view more)
North Korea has just 28 websites, an audit has revealed. It includes sites for education, travel and cookery. What information was already known about the secretive country showed that it has its own Intranet: a restricted, internal network that ... appears to be the only information accessible to the few North Koreans with access to computers. However, the country does have a few sites on the worldwide Internet, all with addresses ending in .kp in the same way that many Canadian sites often end in .ca. Until now, nobody was sure exactly how many such sites existed. Full Domains List Exposed Like ... (view more)
Comcast is to offer cellphone service next year, targeting its existing customers. It will use a combination of cellphone towers leased from Verizon and its own wireless hotspots. The company is not revealing too many details at this point, but it ... appears it believes it will be able to offer a wider coverage area by using its existing network of around 14 million wireless hotspots. Customers Own Routers Part of Network That network is so large because it not only covers devices in public places such as coffee shops but also uses a "guest mode" on the wireless routers of many cable ... (view more)
Opponents of proposed changes that could make government surveillance of computers easier have warned time is running out. The changes will take effect on December 1 unless Congress passes a law to stop them. The debate involves the Federal Rules of ... Criminal Procedure, which is effectively the rulebook of the judicial system. Rule 41 sets out how search warrants work in federal cases. Earlier this year the Supreme Court agreed to a request from the Justice Department for three changes to Rule 41. The first is an exception to the usual principle that a local judge can only issue a search ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Elijah N. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an HP laptop with Windows 10. Yesterday the laptop was working perfectly fine, but this morning I tried to turn it on and all I get is a black screen. The power light turns on, and the ... screen appears to be on (the screen backlight is on), but the screen is black and it won't boot into Windows 10. Nothing happens. What can I do to get my laptop working? " My response: This is a fairly common issue, and is either a hardware problem or a Windows boot problem. Some possibilities include: the laptop motherboard or display may have died, or ... (view more)
Infopackets Shelly R. writes: " Dear Dennis, Every once in a while, when I try and delete a folder on my network share, Windows tells me that 'This action can't be completed because the folder or file in it is open in another program'. I click the ... 'Try again' button multiple times but that rarely ever works. Can you please tell me why this keeps happening and what I can do to delete the file / folder? " My response: The reason why you receive the 'File in use' error (or 'Folder in use' error) is exactly that - the file or folder is in use by some other program, however, Windows isn't saying ... (view more)
The House of Representatives has passed a bill banning companies from gagging clauses that stop customers leaving online reviews. But the law doesn't mean customers are exempt from libel and related laws. The Consumer Review Fairness Act doesn't ... affect the legality of writing reviews itself. Neither is it anything to do with criminal law. Instead it's all about the terms and conditions that companies insist customers agree to before placing an order. These documents sometimes include a non-disparagement clause that says customers won't publish negative reviews of the companies ... (view more)
Netflix has called upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to examine whether data caps are harming the expansion of broadband data. The company, which also has close interest on the subject, says the FCC might have a legal duty to take ... action on the matter. The company complained in particular about monthly data limits on home broadband such as those imposed by Comcast, which recently enforced a 300GB a month cap on some customers - along with steep overage fees ($10 per 50GB). However, Comcast now says the cap has been bumped to 1TB , with unlimited data available in some areas, ... (view more)
Elon Musk, the man behind the Tesla electric cars, says that the "Autopilot" and other self-driving systems will never be perfectly safe. Instead, he insists that safety for such features is improving, and the latest changes would have prevented a ... recent death. In the case of Tesla models, the autopilot cars are not fully autonomous in the same way as self-driving cars, such as Google's test vehicles . Instead, the technology is pitched somewhere between such cars and the far more common 'cruise control' feature. The Autopilot feature on the Tesla Model S combines a windshield camera, a radar ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Jane T. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and have been using the Edge browser fairly extensively. One thing that really bothers me is that when I first start Edge, it displays a bunch of photos on the ... screen, including: My News feed, News, Entertainment, Sports, Money, Lifestyle, and Autos. Is there any way to disable these permanently so that only Edge shows up? I really don't care to read any of those items - in fact, I'd much rather just have Google as my home page. Can you help? " My response: By default Edge will display the items you mention, ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader "AJ" writes: " Dear Dennis, After having a conversation with Microsoft tech support yesterday, I realized that I was scammed. I took necessary steps to cancel credit card. I do not do business on my machine - just communication ... with friends, etc. I do see that the techs that took my money have done some work on my computer and it seems to run a lot better. Question: is it still harmful to leave my computer as-is, or should I hire another tech to clean my machine again? The people that took my money also gave me their phone numbers so that I can be in contact with them at ... (view more)
A hack of nearly 800,000 accounts on an adult entertainment site could be among the most embarrassing ever. The breach at "Brazzers" may expose some of the very personal tastes of the site's users. The stolen data doesn't come from the main Brazzers ... site, which sells access to videos the company has made itself. Instead, it comes from the site's discussion forum, where users can discuss the scenes on the site and talk about what they'd like to see in future videos. Passwords Stored Without Encryption The data is said to include 790,724 email addresses (not including ... (view more)
Several tech giants have backed Microsoft in its attempt to overturn what it calls a gagging order over government data requests. The company says such orders are a double breach of the constitution. The case relates to the Store Communications Act, ... which is related to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. In a nutshell, the law allows law enforcement officials to get a court order forcing tech companies to hand over details of customer activity, if it relates to an ongoing investigation. The controversial part is that the government can also ask the court to order the tech company not ... (view more)
An attempt to prevent the piracy of Warner Brothers movies has backfired, with several Warner Brothers official pages being reported in violation to Google. It appears to be an overzealous campaign by an agency hired to protect the company's ... copyright. The TorrentFreak site noticed the blunder while looking through a database of filings made to Google to report alleged breaches of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Such reports are designed to persuade Google to remove copyright-infringing sites from its search index. (Source: torrentfreak.com ) This doesn't remove the page ... (view more)
Infopackets reader Julia R. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently installed Windows 10 and while cleaning things up, inadvertently installed a program called 'Advanced PC Care' from my Download folder. Now when I go to use Internet Explorer 11 and Edge ... in Windows 10, I receive an error message stating: 'There is a problem with this website's security certificate,' no matter what website I try and visit. I have uninstalled the Advanced PC Care program but both IE11 and Edge are broken. I am completely at my wits end. Can you help? " My response: I asked Julia if she would like me to connect to her ... (view more)
A 2012 hacking incident has turned out to be far worse than initially believed. It turns out that the theft of more than 60 million account details also included passwords. Online storage company Dropbox admitted to the breach at the time, but only ... said a list of email addresses of customers had been stolen. It either didn't know or didn't say that passwords were also compromised. The incident was particularly embarrassing at the time, as the hack proved simple thanks to a Dropbox employee's poor lack of judgement. The employee's LinkedIn password had been stolen as part of a ... (view more)
A high profile extradition case involving an alleged piracy site will be streamed online. The judge in the Kim Dotcom hearing imposed some restrictions on the streaming, though they are unlikely to make much difference. Dotcom, who changed his legal ... name from Kim Schmitz, was the man behind the controversial file hosting site Megaupload. Prosecutors in the US say he broke the law because the site was widely used for sharing files that breached copyright such as unauthorized movie video files. The heart of the case is what level of responsibility Dotcom bears for the actions of users. He ... (view more)
Users of the Opera browser's sync tools have been warned to change their passwords for every website. The organization behind Opera says the warning is with "an abundance of caution." The warning only covers people who use Opera's system for ... synchronizing bookmarks, passwords and other information so that they can access the feature on any computer. This covers around 1.7 million people among the 350 million who use the browser. Writing on a company blog, Opera's Tarquin Wilton-Jones said an attack on the system had been detected and, although quickly blocked, was ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Tom S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an older Windows Vista machine and I'm trying to upgrade it to a clean install of Windows 7. The problem is that this PC is an all-in-one unit, and the DVD drive is broken; replacing it would ... be extremely difficult. I had a friend of mine convert the Windows 7 installation DVD into a bootable USB thumb drive, but it appears that my system does not support booting from USB. I also tried running the Windows setup.exe file from the thumb drive on my Vista desktop, but I receive a message that 'Windows installation could not be started from ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader David L. writes: " Dear Dennis, I read your article about still being able to upgrade to free Windows 10 even after the deadline. I've downloaded the Windows10Upgrade24074.exe file and ran it; however, it takes over an hour to ... download the files and then the Windows 10 upgrade assistant gets stuck at 99% complete. I have tried doing this 5 times and the upgrade assistant keeps getting stuck at 99%. I've left it for an entire day and - as you may have guessed - Windows 10 upgrade assistant is still stuck at 99% complete. What can I do to get the free Windows 10 upgrade, and/ ... (view more)
Facebook users in the US may be able to find out if the site thinks they are conservative- or liberal-leaning. It's a side-effect of a new tool that makes it easier to influence advertisements which appear on the users' newsfeed. As reported ... recently, Facebook recently added new options which allow users to indicate that they don't want to see advertisements in the news feed related to specific topics. The new changes come as Facebook also prepares to roll out additional measures to prevent ad-blocking software from working on the site. To view the settings, users can visit their ... (view more)
A consumer rights group has slammed Windows 10's privacy settings. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says Microsoft is unfairly linking privacy to security in its update system. The attack comes in a lengthy blog post by the EFF's Amul Kalia, ... published just after Microsoft released its Windows 10 Anniversary Update. It starts by recapping the numerous complaints about Microsoft using unfair measures to try to maximize the number of people upgrading to the system, including closing an on-screen window as consent for the installation. (Source: eff.org ) Data Transfer Is " ... (view more)
Netgear is launching its own take on a multi-router system in order to improve WiFi across an entire home. It's not a new idea, but Netgear says its tweaks should give it a significant edge over rival setups. The logic of Netgear's Orbi and similar ... systems is that a single wireless router isn't always enough to cover an entire home adequately. Wireless signals can be weakened by passing through walls and floors, as well as being affected by metal such as pipe work. While that problem has always existed, it's become more noticeable as demand for high-bandwidth activity such as ... (view more)
How to Fix: Windows 10 Webcam Not Working Infopackets Reader Alan S. writes: " Dear Dennis, Paul Thurrott over at Thurrott.com (previous author of WinSupersite) has suggested that the latest Windows 10 Anniversary update has broken 'millions' of ... webcams . I have read his article and tried the registry fix, all to no avail - my webcam simply will not work. I have also reviewed other websites for similar registry fixes, but nothing works. Do you have any suggestions? " My response: From what I read on the Paul Thurrott's website, the registry fix he describes is a workaround - though it's not ... (view more)
Infopackets Reader Sammy G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just upgraded to Windows 10 following your advice. Everything looks great, however, my Windows 10 clock is missing - it's just up and gone - completely disappeared! I don't understand how or why ... the windows 10 clock went missing, but I'd like to get it back. Can you help? " My response: Based on my experience, the Windows 10 clock can disappear in one of two ways: either by a misplaced (or corrupt) system setting, or if your user account - or Windows itself - is corrupt. How to Fix: Windows 10 Clock Missing Adjusting Task Bar Settings ... (view more)
AT&T is dropping overage charges for mobile data plans. Instead of charging extra fees, it will slow down the connections of users who exceed their monthly data allowance. The move is accompanied by a general price rise, though it will only ... affect new customers or those existing customers who choose to change plans. The change makes AT&T the last of the three biggest carriers to drop mandatory fees for customers who go over their monthly data cap, an issue that became even more important as truly unlimited data plans were phased out across the industry. T-Mobile dropped overage ... (view more)
Microsoft has confirmed some Windows 10 computers may freeze up after the latest update. It says starting in Safe mode is one way to get round the problem while a permanent fix is developed. The problem comes with the Windows 10 "Anniversary Update" ... (Build 14393.51), which is the recently-released biggest set of changes since Windows 10 was released. In previous editions of Windows, this significant update might be considered the equivalent of a Service Pack. According to Microsoft, the Anniversary Update problem only affects computers with a specific set-up, namely that the ... (view more)
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I can help! Send me a message on the bottom left of the screen (using the Zopim Chat button), or click my picture to read more about how I can fix your computer over the Internet. Optionally you can read all about my credentials, here.
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