An update is rolling out to the Google Wifi app which gives parents greater control over the websites their children can visit.

The update adds Site Blocking to Google Wifi's family controls, making it possible to block more than 8 million sites at the flick of a switch. These are sites that Google has determined are inappropriate for children.

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We're in the middle of Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Google is taking part. The company has launched two updated protection tools to help keep internet users safe online.

While Google refers to "two new protections," these are really updates rather than completely new offerings. Both the Security Checkup tool and Google Safe Browsing have been updated to make them more personal, and both of them will adapt over time to protect against new threats.

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Earlier today, news broke about the KRACK vulnerability that affects the WPA2 protocol. Security researchers have warned that the problem affects millions of devices running everything from Windows to Android and Linux.

Microsoft has announced that it has already released a security patch to fix the vulnerability in Windows. Google says that a patch for affected Android devices will be released "in the coming weeks."

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Last week it transpired that PureVPN had helped the FBI track down a cyberstalker from Massachusetts. This came as something of a surprise to other PureVPN users who were under the impression that using the service made them completely anonymous -- a belief strengthened by the company's assertion "We do NOT keep any logs that can identify or help in monitoring a user's activity."

Strictly speaking, this is true, but that's not to say that the company doesn’t maintain IP logs that can be used to identify users. The company does exactly this, logging IP addresses and timestamps, and this is how it helped the FBI. In a blog post, the company tries to explain this as it attempts to convince concerned users that it is not logging their activities.

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Things have not been good for Equifax -- or its customers -- recently. Following a huge data breach earlier in the year, the credit reporting company has now suffered a new blow after it was discovered one of its support pages was redirecting to malware masquerading as Flash updates.

Just last month, Equifax revealed a security breach from May that exposed the personal details of around 145.5 million Americans and 15.2 million people from the UK. Now the company site has been found delivering fake Flash updates, and the offending page has been taken down.

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Twitter has said that it is working on a bookmarking feature, overcoming one of the complaints users have about the micro-blogging service. Twitter users currently have the option of liking tweets, but this means running the risk of influencing the algorithms that control what appears in your timeline -- and perhaps making it appear as though you like something you actually disagree with, or result in you publicly liking something you'd rather keep private.

The company's head of product, Keith Coleman, made the new bookmarking revelation on Twitter, saying it is a frequently requested feature. The new 'read it later' option came out of Twitter's HackWeek, and while no launch date has been announced, it is coming "soon" and an early design has been previewed.

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No longer operating under the illusion that the internet offers a mask of anonymity, increasing numbers of people are turning to VPN software to protect their privacy and mask their identity online.

But a recent case shows that the FBI used the logs of PureVPN to track down a user believed to be an internet stalker. This may make PureVPN users think twice about just how anonymous they really are, particularly when the company claims: "We do NOT keep any logs that can identify or help in monitoring a user's activity."

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One of the problems with Facebook -- and the internet in general -- is that it has been incredibly democratizing in terms of who is able to publish news and other messages online. Democratization of anything is usually perceived as a good thing, but as the genuine problem of "fake news" (i.e. not the notion peddled by Trump that anything presenting an opposing idea is fundamentally untrue) demonstrates, it can also be a bad thing.

To help with this, Facebook is testing a feature that helps to add context to stories and links that appear in your newsfeed.

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It's no secret that Russia tried to influence the outcome of the US election last year using a variety of techniques including the use of advertising on Facebook. The social network recently said that it would share details of these ads with Congress, but would not be making them public.

But while the company is not making the ads themselves available for all to see, it has revealed some more details about them -- including the fact that they were seen by an estimated 10 million people in the US. Facebook also says that 44 percent of more than 3,000 Russian-placed ads were seen prior to the election.

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Google has announced changes to the requirements it places on websites that provide news on a subscription basis. With a large number of news sites locking content away behind a paywall, Google had required publishers to provide people with access to three free articles per day or face demotion in search results.

Scrapping what was known as the First Click Free Policy, Google is dropping any such requirement to provide free access to content. A new approach -- Flexible Sampling -- lets publishers decide how many, if any, free articles they provide.

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Mozilla has announced an update to Firefox's Privacy Notice which aims to better inform users about what data is collected and why.

As well as making its privacy policies more understandable, Mozilla is also trying to ensure that more people actually see them. For new installations, the Privacy Notice is automatically displayed in a tab. But it's the layout and accessibility of the updated document that's the real change.

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A bug has been uncovered in Internet Explorer which makes it possible for websites to view anything that is typed in to the address bar. This means that web addresses and search terms could be accessed by a hacker or malicious website.

The vulnerability was discovered in the very latest version of Internet Explorer, and Microsoft is yet to release a patch for it. Discovered by security researcher Manuel Caballero, the attack can be made completely invisible to a victim.

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With the launch of macOS High Sierra, Apple is making some changes to Safari. One of the key changes is the introduction of differential privacy technology which gathers data about the websites users visit in order to identify those that are problematic because of high memory usage or crashes.

As the name of the technology implies, as well as gathering useful data from users, one of the key features of differential privacy is that it respects the privacy of individuals. The AI-powered technology keeps, according to Apple's Craig Federighi, "the information of each individual user completely private" while still collecting data that will enable Apple to decide the priority with which it should tackle problematic sites.

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As well as handing over Russian ads to Congress to allow for investigation into election interference, Facebook is also overhauling its rules for political ads. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, claims that: "We do not know how to place an advert on Facebook. We have never done this, and the Russian side has never been involved in it" -- but there is still a firm belief that Russia tried to influence the outcome of the election.

In a bid to prevent this from happening in the future, Facebook has announced a series of updates to its policies governing political advertising. Part of the changes are increases in transparency, making it possible for people to see what ads are being run by advertisers, and how they are being targeted.

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Cryptocurrencies have been in the news a lot recently as the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum bounces up and down. But cryptocurrency miners have also been in the headlines after it was discovered that the Pirate Bay had secretly embedded a miner in its code, and then that the SafeBrowse extension for Chrome was also mining in the background.

To help protect users who do not want their computers to be used for such things without their permission and who don't want to give up CPU cycles to generate profit for others, Adblock Plus has released a filter that will block hijacks by cryptocurrency miners. It works with Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Android.

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