John Lister

T-Mobile has fixed a bug that let hackers get sensitive personal data just by using a phone number. In theory, it could have been possible to collect details on all the company's customers, though T-Mobile denies this. The problem was discovered by ... Karan Saini, a security researcher who discussed the problem with the Motherboard Vice website. The site then approached T-Mobile about the problem. It said "we were alerted to an issue that we investigated and fully resolved in less than 24 hours. There is no indication that it was shared more broadly." (Source: vice.com ) The bug had to do with T ... (view more)

Users of a popular ad-blocking tool have been warned to watch out for a bogus version of the tool. One copy of the fake Adblock Plus was downloaded 37,000 times before being removed from the Google Chrome store. The legitimate version of Adblock ... Plus is one of the most popular tools available as a Chrome extension: a third-party tool that can be added directly to the browser itself. The makers claim that more than a hundred million devices are actively using the tool. The bogus version is particularly ironic, though not in a way that victims would appreciate: rather than block ads, it ... (view more)

Microsoft says it won't add any new features or devices for Windows 10 Mobile. It's a sign that hopes Windows 10 would revive the company's smartphone presence have largely failed. While what was then called Windows Mobile was once technically the ... most common smartphone operating system, it faded behind Apple's iOS and Google's Android as smartphones became more widely used. The attempt to relaunch under "Windows Phone" failed to make a breakthrough, and the system fell well under a one percent market share. The most recent figures suggest just one in every three thousand phones ... (view more)

Yahoo has admitted that a hacking incident in 2013 affected three billion user accounts. That's three times more than it originally disclosed and means every account was affected. The incident was one of two Yahoo hacks revealed last year. The ... first, announced in September, involved 500,000 accounts being hacked in 2014 . The second, announced in December, was said to have involved a hack of a billion accounts in 2013 . It's the 2013 attack that Yahoo now says it believes "all Yahoo user accounts were affected." It's keen to stress that it only recently discovered that the number was bigger ... (view more)

The US government and court system asked Google to provide information about more than 33,000 people in the first half of the year. The figure was a new record. The numbers come from Google's twice-yearly "Transparency Report", which is designed to ... track trends in the number of requests and prompt debate about the balance between privacy and security. For the US alone, Google received 16,823 requests for data about 33,709 users (though it's possible this may include the same user being counted twice for multiple accounts. That compared with a total of 48,941 requests about 83,485 from ... (view more)

Google has confirmed its top search results misidentified the man responsible for the Las Vegas shootings. The automated results took the information from a controversial message board site rather than a mainstream media outlet. The information ... appeared in the results when people searched for the name of a man who was not responsible to or connected with the shooter. Instead the misidentified man shared a surname with a woman who had been named a "person of interest" by police and was in a relationship the actual shooter. Man Misidentified As Shooter When somebody searched for the innocent ... (view more)

A newly discovered Internet Explorer bug means rogue websites can track the next site a user visits, or even the next search the user makes. While it's not necessarily devastating in itself, the researcher who found the bug says it is a sign ... Microsoft isn't paying enough attention to its old browser. The bug means that a 'rogue' web page could access the content of whatever the user types in to the Internet Explorer address bar as soon as they press the Enter key. This would normally be another website address, but the way Internet Explorer works means it could also be a search term. Security ... (view more)

Microsoft has confirmed it will sell another standalone edition of the Office suite for people who don't want an annual subscription. It will receive updates, but only for an unspecified period. Despite the name, Office 2019 will come out in the ... second half of next year. It's described by Microsoft as both a "perpetual release" and a "perpetual update", which is a somewhat unwieldy way to distinguish it from Office 365. (Source: office.com ) Office 365 is a subscription model in which users get continuous updates for as long as they pay either a monthly or annual subscription, but when they ... (view more)

The content of video ads you see on YouTube could be personalized based on your online history, thanks to new advertiser tools. The video clips could automatically adjust based on sites you've visited, apps you've downloaded and even the places ... you've been. It's all possible thanks to Google offering a series of new tools for advertisers. One is known as "Custom Affinity Audiences," which means ads aren't simply placed next to (or before) relevant videos. Instead they are specifically targeted at users who are likely to find the content relevant. While the tool has already been ... (view more)

Microsoft claims Windows 10 performance is improving while glitches are less common. It appears one explanation may be a slowdown in the update rollout process. The claims come in a blog post comparing the two most recent 'major update' versions of ... Windows 10, the twice-yearly updates that bring new features rather than just fixing performance and security bugs. It cites figures collected in telemetry reports, in which it tracks the activity on computers, something that Microsoft says helps improve the system, but raises privacy concerns among some critics. Boot Time And Log-In Speedier ... (view more)