Latest Technology News

With its invasive advertising, scant regard for privacy, and often poor approach to security, Facebook has done little over the years to win itself many friends. But to help boost your list of friends, it is possible that Facebook may have uploaded your email contacts without your knowledge.

The aim of this was to help find people you might know on the social network, but as there was little warning about the uploading of such private and sensitive information, there was an understandable backlash. If you're concerned about what Facebook has uploaded on your behalf, here's how to delete the contacts that may have been scraped from you.

Three-hundred-and-thirty-one in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Windows Store in the past seven days.

The May 2019 Update for Windows 10 is still being tested. MSDN subscribers can get their hands on Windows 10 version 1903 builds already.

With no fanfare whatsoever, Facebook has revealed that it stored the passwords for millions of Instagram accounts in plain text.

The news came as the company quietly updated a blog post from last month in which it revealed that it had stored hundreds of millions of unencrypted Facebook passwords on its servers. At the time, the company said "tens of thousands" of Instagram users were affected. Revising this figure upwards, Facebook says: "We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users".

Growing up I loved playing text adventure games, and most of my favorites came from Infocom. I was lucky in later life to write about the famed adventure company and even got to meet and interview some of the greats behind the best games.

If you’re a fan of interactive fiction and Infocom, the fantastic news is the source code for all of the company’s adventures have been uploaded to GitHub, making it possible for programmers to peruse and download the code, and even build upon it.

TVs are available to buy in truly huge sizes these days, and with 4K (and upwards) resolution, movies and TV shows really come to life. But there’s something even more magical about watching a film projected onto a screen or a wall. With the right setup, it can be like having a cinema in your home.

You don’t necessarily need to spend a fortune on a projector though. Nebra Anybeam can turn your Raspberry Pi into a cinema projector that you can slip into your pocket and take anywhere.

Amazon Fire TV provides a really great media consumption experience. And yet, I do not use it. Why? Well, I am a huge YouTube user -- both the regular video service, plus YouTube TV, and unfortunately, Google kept those services off of Amazon's TV hardware. In a bit of "tit for tat," Amazon kept its own Prime Video from Google's Android TV and Chromecast devices. Ultimately, this hostility hurt consumers, which is very unfortunate.

Today, Google and Amazon finally bury the hatchet. YouTube apps are coming to Fire TV, while Prime Video is coming to both Android TV and Chromecast. Even Google's YouTube Kids app will be coming to Amazon's hardware!

Having been hit with a fine by antitrust regulators in Europe, Google has said that it will roll out new default search and browser choice options for Android users. The move is comparable to Microsoft's Browser Choice which was introduced following similar anti-competition complaints.

Starting today, European Android users will be presented with a screen that invites them to download alternative search apps and browsers.

The endpoint is on the front line of the network security battle, but a new study from Absolute reveals that endpoint security tools and agents fail, reliably and predictably.

The study analyzed data from six million devices and one billion change events over the course of a year. It finds the complexity of endpoint device controls creates a false sense of security among organizations while, in reality, causing security gaps and significant risks due to regular and reliable tool failure.

Christmas. Thanksgiving. Ubuntu release day. What do those three things have in common? They are days that cause many people to get excited. Back in the day, computer users would get excited about a new version of Windows too, such as Windows 95, XP, and 7 to name a few. Since Windows 8, however, Microsoft's new operating systems are hardly a reason for celebration. New versions of Ubuntu, the extremely popular Linux-based operating system, does pique the interest of many, including yours truly.

Today, Linux users around the world should celebrate, as Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" is finally here! Following the Beta release, the stable version is now available for download. Keep in mind, version 19.04 is not LTS (Long Term Support), meaning it is only supported until January 2020.

A few days ago, a security vulnerability in Internet Explorer came to light. A flaw in the handling of certain files can be exploited by hackers to steal files from users, and -- most worrying -- it doesn't matter whether the victim is an Internet Explorer user or not.

Microsoft is yet to create a fix for the vulnerability, so someone else has stepped up to the plate. Specialists from ACROS Security have create a micropatch for Windows 10 that addresses the issue, once again beating Microsoft in securing people's computers.

It seems that barely a week passes without another Facebook scandal emerging, and this week is no different. The company has revealed that it accidentally uploaded the email contacts of up to 1.5 million users who signed up for the social network since 2016.

A glitch meant that new users who signed up for email password verification had their email contacts scraped and uploaded without consent. As of last month , Facebook stopped offering this verification option to first-time users, although it's not clear if this is because of the privacy issue.

On 15 April, a fire broke out on the roof of Notre-Dame, in Paris, France. The iconic cathedral, which survived both World Wars largely unscathed, was severely damaged. Much of the 850-year old Gothic building's roof and the historic spire were completely destroyed, but thankfully the main building was saved.

A restoration fund has been started, and to raise awareness for it, French video game publisher Ubisoft is giving away the PC copy of Assassin’s Creed Unity for a limited time, and has also pledged €500,000 ($565,000) towards repairs.

Distracted driving isn't just stupid, it is dangerous too. If you aren't paying attention, instead opting to look at your smartphone while in the driver's seat, you aren't only risking your life, but more importantly, the lives of countless other drivers sharing the road with you. Don't do it.

Thankfully, there have been huge improvements with hands free communication. Not to mention, thanks to virtual voice assistants, you can perform tasks without taking your eyes off the road too. The problem? Some people drive with their phone in their pocket, meaning the voice assistant can't hear its wake word, such as "Alexa" or "Hey, Google." This can also happen in loud environments, such as when music is playing or when kids are fighting in the backseat. A new product from Anker called "Roav Bolt" aims to improve the Google Assistant experience in the car.

In 2018 bad bots accounted for one in five website requests (20.4 percent of web traffic), while good bots decreased slightly to make up 17.5 percent of traffic.

This is among the findings of Distil Networks' latest annual Bad Bot Report which investigated hundreds of billions of bad bot requests from 2018 over thousands of domains to provide deeper insight into the daily automated attacks.

A new survey of IoT developers reveals their top concerns are security (38 percent of respondents), connectivity (21 percent), and data collection and analysis (19 percent).

Performance (18 percent), privacy (18 percent), and standards (16 percent) are also areas cited as particularly challenging. These findings come from The Eclipse Foundation which has surveyed more than 1,700 developers via its IoT Working Group.