data

Fri
09
Apr
John Lister's picture

500M Phone Numbers Exposed in Facebook Leak

A data leak has exposed the phone numbers of an estimated 500 million Facebook users. The data comes from a breach in 2019, but has just been made public. According to Facebook, the breach was "found and fixed" in 2019, which has raised some ... eyebrows given the company never warned users their details may have been compromised. It argues the data wasn't hacked but rather "scraped" from publicly accessible information through a bug in its feature that lets users find the Facebook accounts of people in their phone contacts. That may not be enough to satisfy data protection officials in several ... (view more)

Wed
27
Jan
John Lister's picture

Google Says Cookie-Free Advertising Works

Google believes it's found a way to replace privacy-breaching cookies while still letting advertisers find success. It's testing a way to effectively combine data from thousands of users to target ads. Cookies fall into two main types: first and ... third party. First-party cookies are generally uncontroversial as they simply identify a user on a website, including any previous activity such as website preferences. For example, a premium website could let somebody log in to an account and then use cookies so they don't have to log in again for a set period such as a week. Third-party cookies are ... (view more)

Tue
26
Jan
John Lister's picture

Ransomware Gets Doubly Dangerous

Ransomware infections used to be about forcing victims to pay to regain access to their files. Now it appears more and more scammers are treating it as an exercise in blackmail. A new cybersecurity report says 18 known ransomware gangs have switched ... their focus to threatening to publish stolen data unless the victim pays up. That's led to some businesses paying the ransom even though they had access to backups in order to restore their files. Traditionally ransomware has been about file encryptions. Scammers get access to a victim's computer or network through malware, then the infection " ... (view more)

Thu
14
Jan
John Lister's picture

WWW Creator Reenvisions How Personal Data is Stored

World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee wants to rethink the way people control online data. He says his "pods" proposal would bring the online world closer to his original vision of the web. Berners-Lee has launched an open-source project and ... associated business to try to counter what he sees as the web's biggest problem: major companies collecting user data and exploiting it as a core part of their business. His new idea is "pods", or personal online data store. This would involve users having a space on a server that acted like a digital safe and contained a range of data. This could be ... (view more)

Fri
08
Jan
John Lister's picture

Chrome Defaults to Secure Website Version

Google Chrome will now look for a secure version of a website first by default. It could mean a tiny delay accessing some sites, but should nudge more sites to increase security. The change to the browser involves how it handles cases where users ... simply type in the domain (such as infopackets.com) rather than the full website address (such as http://www.infopackets.com or https://www.infopackets.com ). The browser being able to convert one to the other makes it much quicker to type website addresses and allows browsers to use a single space for users to input both website addresses and search ... (view more)

Mon
07
Dec
Dennis Faas's picture

Acronis True Image 2021 Review

If you lost all of the data on your PC, would you be devastated? According to a recent report, cyber crimes are booming thanks to the covid-19 pandemic . That's because cyber criminals are counting on the fact that most users are working remotely at ... home and/or retired, increasing their chances in converting a "sale". The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that in 2019, cyber criminals raked in $3.5 billion targeting individuals and businesses in the USA. Of that, $8.9 million was attributed to ransomware attacks, while scammers posing as fake technical support stole $54 ... (view more)

Thu
03
Dec
John Lister's picture

Microsoft Rethinks 'Employer Snooping' Feature

Microsoft is rewriting a "Productivity Score" feature that businesses could have used to monitor staff performance. The data will now be only available in aggregated form. The feature is designed for IT and network administrators in businesses that ... use Microsoft 365, the subscription version of what was once known as the Office suite. The idea is that the administrators can get a better idea of which features are being used most, which would show where IT administrators might need to focus support. Individual User Data Revealed The problem was that the feature showed these figures on an ... (view more)

Fri
27
Nov
Dennis Faas's picture

Nakivo Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Review

Infopackets Reader Paula M. writes: " Dear Dennis, I own a small business that has 15 employees. We process upwards of 100 emails a day, many of which contain important contracts and attachments. We use MS Outlook 365 as our email client and ... OneDrive to share attachments between employees and devices (such as smartphones). The emails and documents are critical and I need a way to backup both Microsoft Outlook 365 emails and OneDrive files locally in case our workstations are compromised. Do you know of an Office 365 backup program that can backup Outlook as well as OneDrive? Much thanks! " My ... (view more)

Wed
25
Nov
John Lister's picture

Comcast to Impose New Broadband Data Caps Nationwide

Comcast is to impose a 1.2TB monthly data limit on its broadband customers in all locations across the United States. The move affects 12 states that weren't already under the cap. Customers will be able to get unlimited data, but will have to pay a ... fee of $30 a month above their current charges. Those who don't "upgrade" will face an overage charge of $10 for each 50GB they use, with a maximum overage charge of $100. (Source: stopthecap.com ) The company already had the cap in 27 of the 39 states it served. Many of the remaining 12 covered markets where Comcast had competition with Verizon, ... (view more)

Tue
24
Nov
John Lister's picture

Google Tightens Chrome Extension Privacy Rules

Google is making Chrome extension publishers give users more details about the data they collect. They will also have to promise to follow a new policy limiting the way they use the data. Extensions are third-party tools (called plug-ins or add-ons ... with some browsers) that interact with a web browser to provide a useful function. Examples include password managers that automatically fill in log-in details on a site, and an official Amazon plug-in that can send a copy of a long web page article direct to a Kindle e-Reader. One of the main concerns about extensions is that they inherently need ... (view more)

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