Still got a Yahoo Mail account? You need to start telling lies
As we reported earlier this week Yahoo has suffered yet another major security breach. This will have sent many users scurrying to change their passwords, but what else can you do to protect your account?
Adam Levin, chairman and founder of identity protection specialist IDT911 suggests that users need to start telling lies. He doesn't mean lying about the fact that you have a Yahoo account -- though given the severity of breaches it has suffered that might save you some embarrassment. No, he means telling lies in the answers to your security questions.
0-day alert: Your favorite Linux distro may not be as secure as you think
Popular Linux distros such as Ubuntu and Fedora -- including the newly-released Fedora 25 -- are vulnerable to zero-day exploits, shattering the myth that the open source software is ultra-secure. Vulnerabilities can be exploited that allows an attacker to run any code he wants on a victim's computer -- with potentially devastating consequences.
Security researcher Chris Evans has published details of exploits that can be used to compromise systems running Linux. All it takes is a malicious audio file to hijack a computer, or even just having Google Chrome installed. One of the exploits takes advantage of a flaw in the Game Music Emu library, an audio library used by the gstreamer framework to emulate music from games consoles such as the SNES.
UK IT pros believe Brexit will not impact their career
It seems that Brexit fears, at least when IT is concerned, have been largely unsubstantiated. A new report by Dice says IT experts have reasons to feel optimism as they head into 2017, based on a poll of 1,000 tech professionals.
Just under a quarter (22 percent) feel optimistic about the future of the tech job market. More than half (53 percent) don't think Brexit would have a negative impact on their career plans. Almost one in ten (nine percent) are now "much more optimistic". One in five (19 percent) believe Brexit will have a positive impact on the country’s tech sector before 2017 ends.
Evernote issues yet another privacy policy statement: makes note snooping opt-in only
With the world so focused on privacy, Evernote should really not have been surprised when there was something of a backlash at an update to its privacy policy that said company employees would be able to access users' unencrypted notes.
Forced to clarify the situation, CEO Chris O'Neill issued an apology for any "confusion" and "angst" the announcement caused, but this was seemingly not enough. Faced with mounting pressure and criticism, the company admits it "messed up" and has now announced that employees will only be able to access notes if users opt-in to allow this. Furthermore, Evernote "will not implement the previously announced Privacy Policy changes that were scheduled to go into effect January 23, 2017".
Windows 10 Creators Update gains a secret new System Reset option
Over time, Windows can become sluggish, and beset with problems. A good system clean might be enough to keep you going a while longer, but not always. Worse, if you get hit with malware -- ransomware in particular -- or encounter major hardware problems, your only option might be to reinstall Windows.
Windows 10 offers users two choices here -- go into Settings > Update & recovery > Recovery. Click the Get started button under Reset this PC and you’ll have the option to keep your files (removes apps and settings only) or remove everything (a total fresh start). However, in the Creators Update there’s going to be a new option.
Businesses believe IoT can drive customer engagement
Every fifth business is planning on adopting the Internet of things (IoT) to help address customer demand, and improve engagement. This is according to a new report by analytics firm SAS.
These companies are mostly focused on improving front-end processes and efficiency. Only after tackling these issues will they focus on internal processes.
Facebook reveals what it is doing to tackle fake news
The issue of fake news has been in the headlines a lot recently, and it is Facebook that has borne the brunt of criticism. The social network is in the throes of revamping news feeds in a bid to help stamp out the problem. But Facebook is aware that fake news is not going to be eliminated overnight, and so is focusing on "the worst of the worst".
Today, the company sheds a little light on the work it has undertaken, and what is still being done to help stem the flow of fakery. The initial targets are "the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain", but this is just the beginning.
No more Windows 10 Insider Preview builds until next year, but there is some good news
Microsoft has been rolling out new Insider Preview builds of Windows 10 on a weekly basis, with just one or two exceptions.
A new build was anticipated for this week, but the software giant isn’t happy with the choice of options, and didn’t want to risk pushing out an unstable release this side of Christmas.
Chromebook's future is bleak
A few days ago, one of my Google+ followers, Steve Kluver, commented on an August 2014 share: "I am shopping for some more Chromebooks this Holiday Season, and found this post via G+ hashtag #chromebook search. How current is your ebook now?" He refers to Chromebook Reviews, which is available from Amazon for sale or for free reading with Kindle Unlimited. I apologized that the tome, published more than two years ago, is "way out of date". If I'm not going to revise, I really should remove the title.
I offered to give him buying advice, which got me to thinking about Chromebook as a concept and computing edifice. While a big fan, and owner of both generations of Google-made Chromebook Pixel, my primary laptop was a MacBook Pro for most of 2016. Measure of commitment: I bought the new 15.4-inch Touch Bar model just a few weeks ago. I've moved on, and got to thinking about why in crafting my response.
What to do when your Mac displays a blank screen and the cursor after a macOS update
In the three years of using my MacBook Air, I have never had any major problems with it. It was totally reliable, even after I accidentally spilled coffee on it. However, updates in the macOS Sierra 10.12 and macOS High Sierra 10.13 families ruined its streak, leaving me with a blank screen that only displayed the cursor.
I initially blamed the update for this, but after I saw no similar reports from other users I started doing some digging. As it turns out, this problem predates Sierra and High Sierra by a couple of years. Apple has not addressed it yet, but, don't panic: it is pretty easy to fix it yourself.
Facebook Messenger gains a powerful new camera with art and 3D effects
Facebook Messenger doesn’t just let you chat with friends, you can also use it to play games.
Today, the chat app introduces a faster, and easier to use camera that will let you spice up your conversations, and capture and share moments as they happen. There’s more to it than just that, though.
News we aren't supposed to know
I’m writing this post on Wednesday evening here in California. Normally I wouldn’t point that out but in this case I want to put a kind of timestamp on my writing because at this moment we’re at the end of the second day of a concerted attack by the UAE Electronic Army on various DNS providers in North America. If you follow this stuff and bother to check, say, Google News right now for "UAE Electronic Army", your search will probably generate some Facebook entries but no news at all because -- two days into it -- this attack has gone unnoticed by the world at large. My last column was about fake news. This one is about real news you never hear about.
We have a great example of such news this week in the Yahoo one billion account hack. Sure, it’s all over the web but it happened in 2013. Are we really supposed to believe that one billion user records were stolen from Yahoo and it took three years for somebody to notice??? The story is that law enforcement officials came across the stolen data, or some of it, and took it to Yahoo for verification. Maybe, but having written these stories for 30 years I think it is much more likely that somebody already knew about the breach and simply chose not to say when it happened. This is not to say that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer knew or didn’t know about the breach, just that shit happens and often isn’t reported if jobs are perceived as being on the line.
IT leaders look to the cloud for backup and recovery
A new survey of over 250 senior IT executives reveals that 89 percent of IT leaders are planning on implementing more cloud based disaster recovery in the next year.
The study by disaster recovery and business continuity specialist Quorum also reveals that 80 percent of IT leaders say it takes more than an hour for them to recover from a server failure, with more than 25 percent saying they need more than two hours.
There's no off switch for IT managers during the holidays
The lack of skilled workers in the IT industry is putting pressure on IT professionals in more ways than we'd previously imagined. A new report, recently released by Unified Security Management and AlienVault says IT managers that will take days off during the holidays will actually spend them worrying about work.
The "good news" is -- less than a third (29 percent) will actually take time off during the holidays. The rest will just keep on working.
Why enterprises are struggling with WAN management
Companies are struggling to manage and secure their WANs, especially at branch locations, according to the findings of a new report.
The study, conducted by Dimensional Research for Versa Networks, finds almost all participants state that maintaining security policies, network devices and complexity due to cloud and mobile applications are the most difficult aspects of managing the WAN.
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