information

Microsoft is to make the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD) a little less likely to leave people feeling helpless. Users may be able to hold a smartphone up to the screen and get a link to an explanation of the problem. The screen appears when ... Windows encounters a serious problem that causes it to completely crash. When this happens, a blue screen with a cryptic error message is displayed, and sometimes the system will reboot automatically. For the most part, a blue screen involves an incompatibility or fault between Windows and software or a hardware device. At the moment, the ... (view more)

A Google-owned app aims to tell you the right time to leave on a car journey based on current traffic. It's something of a chicken and egg situation though, as the more people who use Waze, the more accurate it gets. Waze was developed by an Israeli ... company and bought out by Google in 2013. Unlike most GPS navigation tools, it doesn't work solely by databases of roads. Instead, it gathers anonymized information from users about their journeys, measuring exactly how long they take to cover a particular route and where they are being held up. The idea is to use this crowdsourced ... (view more)

Toy manufacturer VTech has been the victim of a hack that exposed details of five million customers. The compromised data included some details, albeit limited, of the children who use the products. As its name suggests, VTech's product range ... includes many electronic toys that have increased in sophistication over the years. These include several tablet computers which don't allow web access, but do let children share messages with friends and family and download child-friendly apps through a system known as the "Learning Lodge." No Financial Data Compromised The company has ... (view more)

Microsoft has insisted that all Windows 10 data collection is for the benefit of users. Representatives also stress that any data collected is encrypted before transmitted to Microsoft servers. The company has been under attack ever since Windows ... 10's release, and as it became increasingly clear regarding information the system collects and transmits back to Microsoft. While users have control over much of this data collection, it's often switched on by default and finding the relevant settings to switch it off can be confusing. At one stage Microsoft had to defend itself against ... (view more)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has warned that the boom in Internet-connected home gadgets could increase security risks significantly. It's put together consumer advice and says it will work on applying the law to this new area of tech. The FTC ... has published a report on the " Internet of Things ". That's something of a vague term, but the commission defines it as any physical object that can connect to the Internet. Today, the Internet of Things doesn't simply apply to computer and smart phones -- it also applies to billions of other objects, including cameras, home ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'r clee' writes: " Dear Dennis, Every web browser I've used has the option to 'disable third party cookies'. Most articles I've read on privacy say not to allow third party cookies; however, recently, I visited tripadvisor.com to ... read a post, but found my comment wouldn't be accepted unless I enabled third-party cookies. Now, Google is telling me that my Firefox is 'outdated'. When I click the link to find out more detail, it says if I don't enable third party cookies, my email interface will switch to the plain vanilla HTML format ... [Is this] a stab at deeper data mining ... (view more)

Reports that Windows 10 Technical Preview contain spyware-like features have been dismissed as overblown. However, the issue should raise awareness of some of the limitations of using preview software. Several news outlets have made startling claims ... about Windows 10 Technical Preview, suggesting it collects confidential data; some have gone as far to suggest that the operating system contains a keylogger . That's a nasty feature found in some malicious software that tracks what you type on your keyboard, looking for sensitive information such as passwords or financial account details, ... (view more)

A new report suggests that consumers are concerned about digital security threats -- like the rapidly spreading 'Backoff' malware -- but very few make any changes in an effort to better protect their most sensitive information. The report comes from ... Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab, which recently carried out an online survey of 11,000 people based in 23 countries. (Source: kaspersky.com ) Kaspersky's survey revealed that over three-quarters of all respondents use several devices to connect to the Internet. About one in four respondents said they do most of their Internet ... (view more)

A Russian gang is believed to have stolen more than a billion online passwords. But the security firm that discovered the breach has also caused controversy over its handling of the situation, including paid-for services to deal with the breach. ... Hold Security of Milwaukee discovered and publicized the breach. The company is legitimate, and its previous claims of breaches have checked out: it was responsible for detecting a massive breach at Adobe last year. The company says it discovered that a Russian group named CyberVor (which translates as cyber-thief) has gathered together data from 420, ... (view more)

Edward Snowden thinks you should avoid using popular cloud storage service Dropbox . In a recent interview with United Kingdom news source The Guardian, Snowden suggested that the information stored through Dropbox is not secure. As a former systems ... administrator with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA) , Edward Snowden made headlines last year when he released documents unveiling the United States government's invasive PRISM program . The U.S. Department of Justice then charged Snowden with violating the Espionage Act, which prompted him to flee to ... (view more)