With phisherfolk ever keen to cash in at the end of the tax year, a new study has analyzed the public DNS records for 200 domains likely to be impersonated for tax fraud and finds that 78 percent are not adequately protected.

The research from email security company Valimail looked at Fortune 100 businesses, US states' departments of revenue, federal tax agencies and well-known tax preparation services.

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Some people are obsessed with keeping up to date with breaking news, and this is something that's true of more and more people given the current situation with the coronavirus pandemic.

Microsoft has a solution available for news addicts in the form of the News Bar beta. This free app adds a news ticker to the top or bottom of your screen, or you can use a side-panel at either edge of the screen. You have a choice between a text or image-based version in all cases, and you'll be shown headlines from thousands of trusted sources. It can display stocks too.

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This weekend, Microsoft has given an insight into the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on its services. The company says that there has been a huge increase in Teams usage, and there are not over 44 million daily users.

In regions where there are isolation and home sheltering orders in place, Microsoft says that there has been a colossal 775 percent increase in usage of its cloud services. Despite the surge in demand, there have not been any significant service disruptions.

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If you've used Firefox, Chrome or numerous other browsers, you'll be used to the extensions you install synchronizing between device. This simple but wonderfully handy feature is something that has been sadly lacking from Microsoft Edge, but now this is changing.

Microsoft has promised extension syncing for a little while, and the company is finally starting to roll it out to users. But not everyone is going to get the feature right now.

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The recently open sourced ProtonVPN has issued a warning about a bug in iOS that leaves some VPN traffic unencrypted.

Apple is yet to release a fix for the VPN bypass vulnerability which affects iOS 13.3.1 and later. The flaw means that some connections may exist outside of the secure VPN tunnel for several hours, leaving traffic open to interception and potentially exposing users' real IP addresses.

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Microsoft is racing to prepare an out-of-band patch that will hopefully fix VPN problems introduced by February's KB4535996 update. This update was released to address search and print problems in Windows 10, but users complained of slowed performance, issues with sleep.

On top of this, Microsoft also acknowledged that the update could cause connectivity problems for VPN users, as well as for various applications. With so many people currently remote working, there is pressure to get these issues addressed, hence the rush job on an out-of-band fix.

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After an investigation by Motherboard's Vice, video-conferencing app Zoom was found to be sharing user data with Facebook. Data was being sent from iPhones to Facebook, regardless of whether users had Facebook accounts or not, and the fact that data was being shared was not made apparent in privacy policies.

Zoom's popularity has skyrocketed recently, with more and more people looking for remote working solutions during coronavirus lockdowns. Now the company has apologized for the secretive data sharing, saying that it takes privacy extremely seriously. There's also a new version of the app available that doesn't use the Facebook SDK.

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Are you sick of hearing about the Coronavirus (COVID-19)? Yeah, me too. Fatigue is definitely setting in. Quite frankly, I'd be happy to no longer cover anything related to it on BetaNews. And yet, we must, as it is important that we are all educated on the subject. Many people are getting sick, and even worse, some are actually dying.

Unfortunately, here in the USA, testing for the disease has been woefully deficient. We are behind many other countries, such a China and South Korea, in this regard. Many people don't know how to get tested, where to get tested, or even if they should get tested. Making matters worse, you could be infected yet asymptomatic and contagious. Today, Apple announces it is trying to help regarding this, as the company launches a special app and website for COVID-19 screening. Even the much-maligned Siri voice assistant is getting in on the action. And yes, it is all based on official CDC guidance.

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All solid state drives are fast -- when compared to a mechanical hard drive, at least. With that said, not all SSDs are created equally. SATA based SSDs are the slowest of the bunch, with PCIe-based drives being the fastest. Of course, there are different generations of PCIe that have gotten continually faster. Currently, consumers have access to some computers and motherboards with PCIe Gen 4.0.

If you have a newer computer with PCIe Gen 4.0, congratulations -- you have a nice rig. If your SSD isn't PCIe Gen 4.0, however, you might be missing out on some potential speed. There aren't many of those drives on the market, but today, one more is unveiled. Called "PX4480," this new SSD from KINGMAX is insanely fast, making SATA SSDs look like straight trash!

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Research published by security firms Trend Micro and Kaspersky reveals details of a watering-hole campaign targeting iPhone users.

Dubbed Operation Poisoned News, the campaign used malicious links on local news websites to install the LightSpy malware. Hackers have been exploiting vulnerabilities in iOS to install the spyware which can gather huge amounts of information and can also be used to take remote control of a device.

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The internet is currently straining under the pressure of millions of people around the world working from home or self-isolating because of the coronavirus pandemic. There is additional strain because of people using homeworking as a reason to using streaming video services and online gaming more.

Many tech companies have had to take steps to meet increased demand, with the likes of Netflix reducing video quality to cut back on bandwidth. Now Microsoft is asking that developers limit the updates released for Xbox games.

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With so many people now working from home, video conferencing service Zoom has become a household name virtually overnight. But while millions of users appreciate the ability to connect with the office, colleagues, friends and family for free, a worrying privacy issue has been found.

The Zoom iOS app has been spotted sharing data with Facebook... even for users that don't have a Facebook account. So what's going on?

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Next Tuesday is World Backup Day and to mark the event AOMEI is offering a 12 month free subscription to its Backupper Professional product. The offer is available from now until April 2nd.

With more people working at home on their own machines due to the Coronavirus, security and protection of data is more important than ever.

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Podcasts are wildly popular these days, and it is not hard to see why. If you can think of a topic, there is probably a podcast about it! For instance, the coronavirus is the hot subject of the moment, and there are countless shows dedicated to that pandemic. If you want a distraction from the virus, however, you can listen to podcasts that cover sports, news, cooking, and more.

Just as there are many podcasts, there are also many podcast apps too. If you are an iPhone user, for instance, you can use Apple’s stock podcast app or head to the App Store to download a third-party option. Now, iPhone users are getting yet another option. You see, Google has long had a podcast app for Android, and the company recently redesigned it. Now, the search-giant is bringing the newly refreshed app to iOS.

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Last week, software publisher IObit launched a giveaway site, making 50,000 licenses of its paid PRO products -- including Advanced SystemCare Ultimate and Malware Fighter -- available for free.

It did this in response to the coronavirus pandemic and to improve people's PC experience. Today it takes another step in helping those suffering from slower internet as a result of ever greater numbers working from home, by making Internet Booster PRO free for a limited time.

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