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Smartphone owners are increasingly accustomed to picking up their phones and hearing recorded voices on the other end, meaning they've received robocalls.

Often, the recordings are threatening and mention taking action to avoid arrests or financial penalties. A human representative never comes into the equation unless the person receiving the call wants further information, usually by pressing a button on the phone's touchscreen.

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Email and data security company Mimecast has released the results of its latest Email Security Risk Assessment (ESRA) which finds that mail security systems inaccurately deemed nearly 17,000 dangerous files 'safe' this quarter.

That represents a 25 percent increase over the previous quarter. Dangerous file types like jsp, .exe, .dll and .src are rarely emailed for legitimate purposes and can be used launch a cyberattack.

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Even though cloud storage is ubiquitous these days, I still love a good ol' USB flash drive. They are great for installing various Linux distributions -- it is handy to have, say, Fedora and Ubuntu install media ready to go. But also, sometimes -- for various reasons -- you may just need to share files offline.

Today, ADATA launches a beautiful new USB Type-A flash drive. Called "UE700 Pro," it is very fast and slim. It features a retractable design, which I prefer -- there is no cap to lose. Best of all, it is offered in capacities up to 256GB.

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A new study reveals that 60 percent of organizations globally have suffered two or more business-disrupting cyber events -- defined as cyberattacks causing data breaches or significant disruption and downtime to business operations, plant and operational equipment -- in the last 24 months.

What's more the research, carried out by the Ponemon Institute for cyber risk specialist Tenable, shows 91 percent have suffered at least one such cyber event in the same time period.

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Despite newer technologies, most of us still rely on passwords to secure our accounts. We are not, however, very good at choosing them or looking after them.

Password management company Dashlane has produced a list of the 10 worst password fails of 2018.

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It used to be easy to spot a phishing email, you just looked out for bad grammar and URLs that clearly didn't correspond to the organization being impersonated.

Recently though they've become harder to detect. According to the latest Global Threat Report from Comodo Cybersecurity, phishing really is getting better and it now represents one in every 100 emails received by enterprises.

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2018 has been quite the wild ride, and it isn't even over yet! Sure, there has been a lot of negativity in the news, but let us not forget -- there are many positive things happening too that simply don't get reported. The world isn't all bad.

With Google being the most popular search engine on Earth, it has the ability to offer great insight into the interests of people all over the world. Today, the search giant reveals its 2018 top global search trends.

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RGB lighting makes everything better. Yeah, there are some "haters" out there that decry these lights being added to so many products, but you know what? Those folks are just devoid of joy. As far as I'm concerned, every PC component and accessory should contain them! I mean, look, you can always just turn them off.

Nowadays, even sticks of RAM have RGB lighting. If your existing memory doesn’t have this lighting, it would be foolish to replace them to get it -- that just wouldn’t make financial sense. Thanks to a new product from Thermaltake, however, you can add RGB to your existing sticks of RAM. Called "Pacific R1 Plus," it fits over your existing RAM. How cool is that?

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Windows 10 is a very good operating system, but the October 2018 Update has left a bad taste in many users' mouths. It caused a multitude of problems, got pulled, and even after it was made available again, new issues surfaced. The April 2018 Update rolled out to users at lightning speed, but the October 2018 Update has only been installed on about 3 percent of systems to date. Ouch.

Microsoft has said previously that Windows 10 will be the "last version of Windows", but is it time to rethink that idea and give users an operating system that goes up to 11? Take a look and make up your own mind.

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Over the last few years, OnePlus has jumped from being a weird indie outsider to being something of a household name. Its twice-yearly smartphone releases are always eagerly awaited, and there have been a handful of special editions thrown in for good measure.

The latest of these is the OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition, and it is the epitome of going over the top. Packing a rather excessive-seeming 10GB of RAM, the latest addition to the OnePlus stable rocks not only a headline-grabbing amount of memory (which is probably the point), but also the incredibly fast Warp Charge 30 charging system… and a $699 price tag.

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Earlier this year we looked at Duo Security's research into Twitter bots which focused on fake followers. The company has now published some further research looking at amplification bots.

So what is an amplification bot? They exist to boost content through likes and retweets. Duo has produced an algorithm to identify these bots and was able to find more than 7,000 over a 24 hour period.

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As businesses embrace digital transformation, things like the growth of distributed workforces and remote work are impacting both the day-to-day responsibilities and long-term plans of IT managers.

Software and cloud managed services company Unify Square has commissioned a survey from Osterman Research to sample the views of IT managers who oversee unified communications (UC) and workstream collaboration (WSC) environments.

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When shopping for a gaming monitor, it is easy to get attracted to high-resolution models, such as 2K or 4K. And yeah, the higher the resolution the better is true for normal computing use, but for gaming, that means you need a more powerful gaming card to push that resolution. If you are on a budget and your video card isn’t top of the line, a 1080p model is still a great choice.

Today, MSI unveils a new model that is beautiful in design. The Oculux NXG251R, as it is called, is a FHD display that supports NVIDIA G-Sync technology. It is 24.5-inches, which is what I consider the "sweet spot" for 1080p. Best of all, it offers an insane 240Hz refresh rate!

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With the news that Microsoft Edge will be ditching its own browser engine in favor of Google’s Chromium, those wishing to strike a blow against monopolization the net should be looking at Mozilla’s Firefox, which continues to develop its own independent Gecko engine. Firefox Quantum 64.0 has just been released for desktop, along with Firefox for Android 64.0.

Mozilla has made its own pitch for why the news about Edge could be bad for the wider net, but in the meantime Firefox 64.0 delivers a smattering of new features, and various other changes.

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Many people will be receiving new tech gadgets over the Christmas period, including smartphones, gaming consoles, tablets, connected toys, and a whole range of apps to go with them.

But new research from from cybersecurity training organization the SANS Institute finds that while people are aware of the risks these devices can pose, they may not have the skills to properly protect them.

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