Articles

Microsoft is making two changes to make notifications less disruptive but still useful. The changes affects Microsoft's Edge browser and follow in the footsteps of changes made in Chrome and Firefox. The first change affects standard notifications ... which appear at the top of the screen. They bring information from a website even when the user doesn't have it open. For example, a video streaming site might display a notification when it uploads a new episode of a series the user has watched in the past. Browser makers have struggled to get the balance right between satisfying users who find ... (view more)

T-Mobile says it will give customers free scam-blocking tools to protect against misleading and fraudulent calls. The measures will also cover Metro and Sprint users. The program, dubbed Scam Shield, involves a range of tactics to combat bogus ... calls. The logic is to increase the chances of success against any particular attack. (Source: t-mobile.com ) Two of the features come via a dedicated smartphone app that analyzes incoming calls. The first, Scam ID, tries to identify calls that may be using a bogus identity or making unwanted marketing calls. Spam Calls Auto-Blocked Users can choose ... (view more)

A new strain of Android malware targets both social media accounts and online banking. It's a reminder of the risks of installing software from outside of the official Google Play store. The malware is dubbed BlackRock and appears to ultimately ... derive from the code used in an attack called LokiBot. Now thought to be inactive, LokiBot attempted to gain access to financial accounts through banking and related apps. One technique involved using automated scripts to login to a PayPal account and transfer money to the scammers. (Source: threatfabric.com ) BlackRock looks to take the same tactics ... (view more)

An email with a "winky face" for a subject line has helped a malware campaign become one of the most widespread in the world. It's a scam to expand the reach of the Phorpiex botnet which distributes spam and malware from infected machines to others ... online the Internet. According to researchers at security company Check Point, Phorpiex jumped from the 13th most detected malware campaign in May to the number two slot last month. It reports that one in 50 organizations suffered at least one attempted breach from Phorpiex last month. (Source: zdnet.com ) Ransomware, Botnets and Blackmail The ... (view more)

Two years ago Facebook commissioned an audit on its effect on civil rights. The results are in, and they don't make for pretty reading. The report makes a series of suggestions for Facebook to change its policies, but the company says it won't ... implement all of them. Arguably the most damaging conclusion in the report is that Facebook isn't just hosting extremist views and hatred, but that its very setup may actually be encouraging and boosting such material. The biggest criticism is that Facebook's own algorithms may have pushed users towards "self-reinforcing echo chambers of extremism." The ... (view more)

Microsoft has delayed the latest major Windows 10 Update for some users. The various workarounds aren't ideal, so affected users will probably need to be patient. The problem affects the May 2020 Update, taking Windows 10 to version 2004. It's the ... first of this year's scheduled two major updates that includes new features. Microsoft has previously blocked updates for some specific computers where it knows there will be a significant compatibility problem with hardware. This particular block appears more generic, with the affected users seeing an error message reading: This PC can ... (view more)

Current news floating around the Internet suggests that Windows 10 has developed a couple of bugs likely linked to recent updates, namely: slowed performance and confusing security scan messages. The good news is both problems can be solved to some ... extent. One problem is with update KB4559309 , which replaces the original version of Microsoft's Edge browser with a new version based on the same code behind Google Chrome. Details are still hazy, but some users have reported general slowdowns after the update regardless of whether they use Edge. This can affect apps, games and web pages. The ... (view more)