John Lister

A court has blocked a "click to cancel" rule that would have made it easier to end unwanted memberships and subscriptions. The rule, introduced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), would have made canceling as easy as signing up in the first ... place, meaning a simple website button in some cases. The rule was scheduled to take effect on July 14, 2025, but was blocked by a federal appeals court. The block wasn't based on the measures themselves, but rather the procedural technicalities of the way the FTC made the rule. Auto-Renewals Restricted Officially titled the Negative Opinion Rule, the ... (view more)

More than two million Chrome and Edge users installed extensions that later turned into malware. The 18 extensions all delivered their advertised functionality but some unwanted bonus features. Extensions (known as add-ons in Edge) are a third-party ... tool for web browsers that interact with the browser to bring additional features. Most have perfectly legitimate uses, for example sending the text of a long article on a web page to the user's Kindle e-reader, or blocking ads. Because the tools have varying levels of access to a user's browser and online activity, security is a must. That's why ... (view more)

A campaign group want users to sign a petition calling on Microsoft to automatically extend support for Windows 10. It says existing plans where users can sign up to an extra year of support cheaply or free of charge don't go far enough. The ... petition is the work of the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), which describes itself as "an advocate for consumers, advancing solutions to problems that affect our health, our safety and our wellbeing." It commonly campaigns on tech topics including the "right to repair" as a way to benefit consumers while reducing environmental waste. Millions Of ... (view more)

Windows 11 has finally become more popular than Windows 10 according to one estimate. But there's still a serious amount of work to do to persuade people to upgrade before Windows 10's "end of life" this October. The figures come from Statcounter, ... which says that 51.77 percent of Windows computers are now running Windows 11, ahead of Windows 10 on 45.02 percent. The remaining three percent are running even older systems, including a tiny but measurable user base for Windows XP. (Source: statcounter.com ) Statcounter is a company that helps websites measure and analyze their traffic, so its ... (view more)

A boy who started hunting computer bugs aged 13 has been dubbed Microsoft's youngest security researcher. 'Dylan' is the reason the company lowered its minimum age for officially reporting security vulnerabilities. Everything we know about the boy ... comes from a Microsoft report, which notes he is currently in his junior year at high school. Because of his age, it appears reporters don't consider it appropriate to try to independently verify any of the details. (Source: microsoft.com ) According to Microsoft, Dylan was a tech enthusiast for a young age, but became more interested in security ... (view more)

A tech enthusiast has built a prototype of a real-world ad-blocker. It involves a pair of "smart glasses" which detect and block out billboards, newspaper ads and other promotional material. It's the work of Stijn Spanhvove, who explained on social ... media site X that "I've been building an XR app for a real-world ad blocker using Snap @Spectacles. It uses Gemini to detect and block ads in the environment. It's still early and experimental, but it's exciting to imagine a future where you control the physical content you see." (Source: x.com ) The video shows the user's view as they walk round a ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced Windows 10 users won't have to pay for updates for the first year after its "end of life". It's the most significant move yet away from a potential security nightmare. This October will still be the official point at which ... Microsoft no longer offers any updates. With previous systems, that meant a complete end to security updates for consumers, with businesses able to pay a significant fee (doubling every year) to get the patches through a three-year Extended Security Updates program. Microsoft had already announced that for the first time, consumers would be eligible ... (view more)

An AI company acted lawfully by training its models on published books without the author's consent, a judge has ruled. But Anthropic will be on the hook for downloading more than seven million pirated books to use in the training data. The case was ... brought by three authors who said Anthropic had breached their copyright by adding the text of their books to a training database for Claude. That's a large language model (LLM), which works a little like autocorrect on a phone's texting tool. The difference, other than the speed and power, is that the LLM doesn't predict words based on one person ... (view more)

Microsoft has started public testing on a range of new Windows 11 features. They deal with a nagging display annoyance, the controversial Recall technology, and touchscreen interfaces. The changes have been unveiled in the Dev Channel. That's one of ... four options for people who join the Windows Insider program and is the one where most new features roll out to the public for the first time. If something's in the Dev Channel, Microsoft usually intends to make it part of Windows but may withdraw it if the testing goes badly. The most useful change for the average user is arguably a minor ... (view more)

A collection of 16 billion login credentials has been discovered by security researchers. Despite the huge number, the researcher say the real problem is just how commonly records appear online. The discovery was made by Cybernews which assigned ... researchers to trawl as many online locations as possible to discover records. They found 30 datasets, of which just one had been widely known about and reported in the media. (Source: cybernews.com ) The datasets ranged from one of "just" 16 million records to one, apparently made up of details of Portuguese speakers, which had 3.5 billion records. ... (view more)