Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Among the supposed benefits of downloading apps and other digital products from an official store is that they should be safe and reliable. But as users of the Microsoft Store, Google Play and the App Store will attest, making an appearance in such a repository is really no indication of quality or trustworthiness.

And the same is true of browser extensions. Once completely unpoliced, this is an arena that Google tried to take control off by introducing the Chrome Web Store. Now the company is introducing two new features which it believes should help Chrome users find extensions that are of a high standard.

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Over the course of the pandemic and COVID-related lockdowns, video conferencing tool Zoom went mainstream. The company is not resting on its laurels following its swelled popularity, and the latest update to the desktop apps illustrate this perfectly.

One of the stand-out additions will be familiar to anyone who has used Zoom on an iPhone or iPad: Gesture Recognition. This new feature brings new ways to interact with Zoom and your fellow meeting participants via your web cam, but it is far from being the only thing worth exploring in the latest update. There are also changes to breakout rooms and more.

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To celebrate the first anniversary of its Autofill tool, Microsoft has added new capabilities to its password security utility.

Available to use with Microsoft Edge natively, on iPhones and Android devices via an app, and in Chrome using an extension, Microsoft Autofill makes it easy to store and sync passwords in the cloud and have them automatically entered in logon forms. A new update to Microsoft Authenticator app means that it can now be used to generate strong passwords on demand.

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While the Russian security firm has fallen out of favor in recent months, Kaspersky has announced that it has managed to crack the Yanluowang ransomware.

Yanluowang was discovered by Symantec last year, and now Kaspersky has identified a vulnerability in the encryption algorithm it uses. This has enabled the company to develop a free decryption tool which can be used by ransomware victims to get their data back without having to pay a cent.

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Microsoft has announced that it is beginning the final phase of disabling the SMB1 file-sharing protocol in Windows. Having already disabled SMB1 by default in Windows 10 and Windows Server, the company is now doing the same for Windows 11 Home.

While conceding that the ditching of SMB1 may "cause a consumer pain among folks who are still running very old equipment" and acknowledging that this is a "group that's the least likely to understand why their new Windows 11 laptop can't connect to their old networked hard drive", Microsoft says that the time has come for the aging technology to be dropped.

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A team of security researchers at ESET have unearthed a trio of vulnerabilities with Lenovo laptops. More than one hundred different models of laptop are affected, meaning that millions of owners are at risk.

Two of the vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-3971 and CVE-2021-3972) affect UEFI firmware drivers and are extremely worrying because of the potential implications of exploitation. CVE-2021-3970 is a slightly less serious memory corruption problem, but it remains concerning.

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Shares in Netflix plummeted by more than a fifth after the streaming company reported a drop in subscriber numbers for the first time in more than a decade. In the first quarter of 2022, Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers and the prediction is for things to get much worse over the rest of the year.

For those subscribers who are sticking around, there is a double whammy of bad news. Not only is there the threat that Netflix will introduce advertisements, but also that it will charge higher subscription fees to anyone who shares their account with others.

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While some versions of Windows 10 are reaching the end of support and many people are making the upgrade to Windows 11, Microsoft continues to push newer editions of Windows 10 to users.

For those people who either do not want to upgrade to Windows 11 -- or find that the hardware requirements mean that they are simply not able to -- there is Windows 10 version 21H2 (Windows 10 November 2021 Update as it is also known). Microsoft has just announced that this particular edition is now designated for broad deployment.

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Widgets in Windows 11 have proved somewhat divisive, but it is safe to say that the feature has not proved as popular as Microsoft would have hoped.

Part of the problem is the lack of interesting and useful widgets that are available, and Microsoft has previously hinted that it may offer support for creations from other companies which could be installed and updates via its own software store. Now further evidence has emerged that Windows 11 users could soon be able to install third-party widgets via the Microsoft Store.

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Over the years, Microsoft has found a variety of ways to bombard its customers with ads. As well as using Windows 11 to promote its own Edge web browser, the company has also used the Start menu to "recommend" apps to people.

And now it seems as though Xbox gamers are next. A new report says that Microsoft is working on a program that will display third-party ads in Xbox games. So, what is going on, and is it as bad as it sounds?

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A few days ago, Microsoft released a new build of Windows 11; while this was primarily a problem-fixing release, there were a handful of new additions and changes.

For many people, having issues addressed is the most important feature of any update to Windows 11, but new tools, toys and options are always welcome. With the release of Windows 11 build 22598, Microsoft has some treats for users of Task Manager -- power users in particular.

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Patch Tuesday may have come and gone, but this does not mean that Microsoft has finished pushing out updates for Windows. The latest to be released is the KB5012643 update for Windows 11 and it is jam-packed with fixes for various issues.

Among the numerous improvements are a fix for an issue that caused extremely slow startup times, as well as addressing a memory leak. The update also improves the Secure Boot and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) components.

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While most iOS users will remain iOS users for life, and the same can be said of those who choose Android, there are some people who switch allegiances. There are also some who like the idea of switching platforms, but are put off by the potential complexity.

To help anyone looking to make the jump from an iPhone to an Android handset, Google has quietly launched an app called, appropriately enough, Switch To Android. But while the app sounds great in theory, it is found sadly wanting.

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Windows 11 users have an important update to install. The KB5012592 update takes the operating system up to build 22000.613 and not only includes a number of important security fixes, but also introduces several significant changes.

Like the previously released KB5011563 update, the new KB5012592 update makes it possible to display up to three high-priority toast notifications simultaneously as well as fixing issues with OneDrive. The update also introduces a simpler way to change the default web browser in Windows 11, although it is a change that has been met with disdain from like likes of Mozilla and Vivaldi.

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Towards the end of last year, we learned that 2022 is the year that DuckDuckGo's privacy-focused web browser is coming to the desktop.

Today the company has launched the beta version of DuckDuckGo for Mac -- meaning macOS users will have another alternative to Chrome et al before people running Windows 11. The DuckDuckGo browser is billed as offering a high level of security, fast performance, and privacy by default which is more than just a replacement for Incognito Mode.

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