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Google has warned users of some Android handsets to turn off some voice call features. A series of vulnerabilities could mean attackers can compromise a handset just by knowing its phone number. The problem involves four vulnerabilities in a ... Samsung-made component called an Exynos chipset. It's used for voice calls made over mobile data rather than the voice network. At the time of writing, Google says the affected products include phones made by Samsung (A04, A12, A13, A21s, A33, A53, A71, M12, M13, M33, S22), Google itself (Pixel 6 and 7) and Vivo (S6, S15, S16, X30, X60, X70) along with ... (view more)

Microsoft has experimented with one of its most audacious attempts yet to persuade users to prefer the Edge browser over Google Chrome. It appears the plan, which effectively involved full-size banner "ads" on the Chrome website, will not proceed ... after the tests. Technically speaking, the Microsoft Edge browser is built using "Chromium" code (which is open source), which is the exact same code that Google's Chrome browser uses. The only difference between Edge and Chrome is that Edge has been customized with its own set of unique features and is branded as being Microsoft Edge. That ... (view more)

Microsoft and Google have both put plenty of effort into artificial intelligence in recent months. After an initial wow factor, they've been plagued with a host of problems. Interest in AI-text shot up with the public release of ChatGPT, a tool that ... can not only simulate conversations with the user and answer questions, but also write articles and other text in a variety of styles. While it appears extremely clever, it's effectively an extremely souped-up version of the auto-predict feature many phones offer when sending text messages. ChatGPT is produced by an independent developer called ... (view more)

The next version of Android may make it much harder to install and run apps from third party sources. The change will mainly affect older apps that haven't been updated in some time. Unlike with Apple's iPhones, Android handsets aren't restricted to ... apps from the official App Store. Users may either use other app stores (other than the Google Play Store), or download and manually install apps from the web in a process known as "sideloading." Doing this doesn't require any "hacking" of the device, though users do have to change the phone's settings and confirm they understand the ... (view more)

Google's Chrome browser will soon be unsafe to use on Windows 7, 8 or 8.1. Google is about to finally ditch support for the systems, meaning no more updates. Version 109 of Chrome, scheduled for a full public release on January 10th, 2022, will be ... the last available for those editions. Starting with version 110, expected in February, new versions will only be available for Windows 10 and later. (Source: google.com ) Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 users can still run Chrome 109 (or earlier versions) but the browser will become increasingly outdated with no new features or performance fixes. More ... (view more)

Android users have been urged to check their phone has the latest security patches. It follows a researcher accidentally uncovering a significant flaw in the screen lock. The researcher discovered the problem on a Google Pixel 6 and replicated it on ... a Pixel 5. The problem appears to affect phones running Android 10 or later that use a SIM card, not just those made by Google. However, some reports suggest it doesn't affect Samsung handsets. The problem is with the personal unblocking key (PUK). That's a way to regain access to a handset that's been locked after forgetting the phone's passcode ... (view more)

Two researchers say voice controlled "assistant" devices could harm children's development. The claims are more of a warning than proven results at this stage. The claims come from Ananya Arora and Anmol Arora, both of the School of Clinical ... Medicine at the University of Cambridge. They were writing in the publication Archives of Diseases in Childhood. (Source: bmj.com ) The pair say they have three main fears about the uses of devices such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home, along with Apple's Siri. In all three cases, the researchers say it appears some parents may have mistaken ... (view more)

A popular malware-fighting tool left users unable to access Google and YouTube after a blunder. It's the second time Google has been hit by false positives in the past few weeks. This problem affected Malwarebytes, one of the more popular security ... tools other than those built in to operating systems. Specifically, the problem was with the premium version of Malwarebytes that integrates with web browsers, checks links the user might visit, and blocks the link if it points to a domain believed to pose a security risk. Such risks can include look-alike sites used for phishing scams to try to ... (view more)

Google is to test a plan to exempt political campaign messages from its spam filter. It says users will have a clear opportunity to opt out. The move has proven unpopular with many people, particularly since users will need to opt out on a ... sender-by-sender basis. There won't be a simple way to opt out of all political emails. Previously Google had labeled many campaign emails as spam because, well, that's what they often are. In many, if not most, cases people were receiving messages despite not explicitly giving permission for their address to be used in that way. The spam filter appeared to ... (view more)

Two more applications have been removed from the Google Play Store after turning out to be a front for malware. As always in such cases, users who already have the apps installed need to uninstall them as this won't happen automatically. The apps in ... question are called Mister Phone Cleaner and Kylhavy Mobile Security. They had 50,000 and 10,000 downloads respectively before Google pulled the listings. The scam in these cases has a couple of key differences from the familiar story of scammers disguising malware as legitimate apps and finding a way to bypass Google's security checks. That ... (view more)