Meta has announced major changes to Instagram that it will be hoping will keep regulators satisfied. Like all social media platforms, Instagram has long been under pressure to do more to protect younger users from seeing inappropriate content; with this in mind, Meta says Teen Accounts will be guided by the PG-13 movie rating.

What this means in practice is that teenagers should only be able to “see content that’s similar to what they’d see in a PG-13 movie, by default”. Acknowledging that this will not be enough to keep everyone happy, parents will also have the option of making controls stricter if they feel it necessary or preferable.

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Google has announced a series of updates and changes for YouTube, kicking off with a new-look user interface. The updated UI sees various buttons and control elements getting a visual refresh, but there are changes beyond the aesthetic.

An addition that will please many YouTube users is threaded replies. It is now not only possible to reply to comments on a video, but also to reply to those replies and have these comments visible in a tree structure. But there is still more.

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With Google Wallet, Google has helped to lighten our load by reducing the number of physical cards and tickets we need to take out with us. Debit and credit cards, loyalty cards, boarding passes, travel tickets and more can be stored electronically and accessed instantly.

But with the widespread switch from physical tickets, passes and cards, there comes a new problem – identifying individual things contained within Google Wallet. With a new update, Google is taking steps to try to address this by adding a new nickname option.

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However good your defenses, cyberattacks can still happen. However, in many cases, the aftermath can be worse than the attack itself, as enterprises struggle to calm nerves and reassure staff, customers, and shareholders.

We spoke with Daniel Tobok, CEO of incident response specialist CYPFER, to discuss how organizations can recover from a cyberattack and why the leadership's response is vital.

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Want to know a secret? If you don’t like Windows 11, you don’t actually have to use it. With Windows 10 support officially ending today, millions of PCs are being left behind. For users who want to keep their existing desktop or laptop, Linux offers another way forward, and Zorin OS 18 arrives just in time as one of the best Windows replacements available.

Zorin OS 18 is one of the most user-friendly Linux distributions around and introduces a new design, updated features, and improved compatibility with more of the tools people rely on every day.

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Ashampoo has released Privacy Inspector 3, a new version of its Windows privacy management software. The latest release gives users more transparency about what data their systems store, as well as how activity logs, device histories, and hidden files could leak personal information.

Privacy on Windows is a big concern for a lot of users as the OS and related applications gather information in order to improve functionality and deliver personalized experiences (as well as serving up personalized ads).

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A new study of over 1,000 US parents with children at home between the ages of two and 20 finds that 35 percent of families have experienced a phishing scam via text, email or chat, and 25 percent have had a game or social media account hacked.

The report from Bitwarden finds that children as young as three to five are already using the internet, and 42 percent of parents in this age group say their child has unintentionally shared personal information. Nearly 80 percent of kids ages three to 12 have their own tablet, making device access nearly universal by early elementary school.

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The latest AI Readiness Index from Cisco is based on a study of over 8,000 AI leaders across 30 markets and 26 industries. It finds that what it calls ‘Pacesetters,’ about 13 percent of organizations for the last three years, outperform their peers across every measure of AI value.

Of these Pacesetters 98 percent are designing their networks for the growth, scale and complexity of AI compared to 46 percent overall.

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Today, October 14, is most notable for being the day when Windows 10 reaches its end of life, but it’s also Global Cat Day. One of those may leave you feeling sad, while the other feline great (sorry).

To mark the cat day, Opera has introduced a playful feline companion within the interface of Opera Air, the company’s mindfulness-focused browser, and also launched a project to help street cats in Istanbul, often (and for good reason -- they're everywhere) called the cat capital of the world.

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A new study from fraud prevention specialist Fingerprint finds 41 percent of over 300 fraud and technology leaders surveyed say their organizations are already facing AI-powered attacks.

These sophisticated threats, which range from generative AI phishing schemes to automated bot attacks, are creating a significant operational crisis. According to the report, 93 percent of fraud teams have seen noticeable operational impacts, with 38 percent of organizations citing higher costs from manual review and triage as a top business concern.

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IObit has launched Advanced SystemCare 19, the latest version of its popular all-in-one PC optimization software. The new release promises faster performance, improved cleaning, and stronger protection for Windows users.

There have been a number of big changes made, starting with Junk File Clean which can now detect and remove a greater range of obsolete data types, including leftovers from Microsoft Store apps.

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A new study finds that 82 percent of UK data center operators say they have delayed site builds or expansion due to optical fiber availability. 95 percent of these operators say that access to new high-capacity fiber networks will now influence their expansion plans.

The survey, carried out by Censuswide for B2B connectivity company Neos Networks, included data center operators, enterprise IT leaders and local government stakeholders -- 100 of each. Across all three groups, there’s an overwhelming consensus that core fibre networks are the foundation of the UK’s AI infrastructure.

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Following an investigation that started back in June, UK regulator Ofcom has issued 4chan with a fine for failure to comply with two requests for information under the controversial Online Safety Act.

Ofcom’s investigation had multiple threads, including looking into whether the site was protecting users from illegal content. After several months, only concerns about failing to respond to information requests were upheld. The fine? Just £20,000 – or a little over $26,500.

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Not content with giving users new control over sponsored results in its search engine, Google has also started the rollout of its AI visual model – known as Nano Banana – into Search.

Accessible from Google Lens and AI Mode, Nano Banana provides easy access to artificial intelligence powered image editing and transformation. We are not talking about boring “remove the background from this photo” type stuff (although this is possible), but rather more creative ideas.

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The impact of Internet Explorer is still being felt years after the world moved on from the web browser. Microsoft has announced that it is “Restraining IE Mode Access” in Microsoft Edge, citing concerns about exploitation of 0day vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer’s JavaScript engine.

That Internet Explorer continues to live on in Edge remains astonishing to many, but it has been retained for compatibility issues. Nonetheless, Microsoft is now taking steps to plug holes that have enabled threat actors to gain access to devices.

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