Yahoo has the dubious honor of having been on the receiving end of the largest data breach in history. As a consequence, the company has recently agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide free credit monitoring services to its impacted users. The company actually suffered a pair of breaches in 2013 and in 2014, although this information was not disclosed by the company until 2016. All of the company's 3 billion users were impacted, and more than 200 million of them saw losses arising … Read more
Archives for November 2018
Deleting Your Google Search History Will Soon Be Easier
Google is rolling out some important changes that will make it easier for people who use their services to control their data. They're starting with their most widely used service, which is search. In the weeks ahead, it will be easier than ever for users to delete their search history, on both PC and Android devices. The official company announcement reads, in part, as follows: "Today, we're making it easier for you to make decisions about your data directly within the Google products … Read more
Google Finally Cracking Down On Manufacturer Device Updates
Security in the Android ecosystem is awful. There's just no other word to describe it. In large part, the blame for that can be placed at the feet of Google. Although they have succeeded in creating a wildly successful platform, their management of OEM devices (in particular, security updates for them) have been virtually nonexistent. This has led to a situation where many device manufacturers don't bother to push critical updates at all. It costs money to do so, and until now, there … Read more
IBM Invests Billions To Purchase Popular Red Hat Linux
IBM has recently announced what is to be the largest open source acquisition in history. They're buying Red Hat for a staggering $34 billion dollars. This, as the saying goes, changes everything. IBM has lagged behind its competitors for years in the area of cloud computing. When the ink dries on this deal, they'll move from a virtual non-entity in the market to the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider. If you're a Red Hat supporter, don't worry that the company is going away. The company … Read more
Some Tumblr Users May Have Had Their Data Breached
Do you use Tumblr? If so, be aware that your personal information may have been exposed. Tumblr recently added a feature called "Recommended Blogs" that presents you with a list of blogs you might enjoy based on your past viewing habits. It's a great idea in theory, but unfortunately, there were problems with the way the feature was implemented. Any blog on the recommended list was placed there in such a way that it left the blog owner's personal information exposed, including: IP … Read more
New Fake Antivirus Tech Support Scam Tricking Users
McAfee has long been a popular target of scammers, but recently, they've changed the nature of their game. In years past, they'd display a webpage informing you that any McAfee products on your computer are out of date and provide a link to the company's virtual storefront where you could renew. Unbeknownst to the people clicking on those links, they were being redirected by an affiliate link, so any purchases made would generate a commission for the site owners. It was an unscrupulous, … Read more
Uninstall Fake App Called “The Album by Google Photos”
If you take a lot of photos with your Android device, you're probably constantly on the lookout for a better way to organize them and access them. That's exactly what the authors of the malicious app called "The Album, by Google Photos" are hoping for. The app put in a brief appearance on the Microsoft store, where it claimed to be from Google but it's clearly not. Unfortunately, the authors have gone to great lengths to make it appear legitimate, and as such, it has been downloaded and … Read more
