John Lister

Several tech giants have backed Microsoft in its attempt to overturn what it calls a gagging order over government data requests. The company says such orders are a double breach of the constitution. The case relates to the Store Communications Act, ... which is related to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. In a nutshell, the law allows law enforcement officials to get a court order forcing tech companies to hand over details of customer activity, if it relates to an ongoing investigation. The controversial part is that the government can also ask the court to order the tech company not ... (view more)

An attempt to prevent the piracy of Warner Brothers movies has backfired, with several Warner Brothers official pages being reported in violation to Google. It appears to be an overzealous campaign by an agency hired to protect the company's ... copyright. The TorrentFreak site noticed the blunder while looking through a database of filings made to Google to report alleged breaches of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Such reports are designed to persuade Google to remove copyright-infringing sites from its search index. (Source: torrentfreak.com ) This doesn't remove the page ... (view more)

A 2012 hacking incident has turned out to be far worse than initially believed. It turns out that the theft of more than 60 million account details also included passwords. Online storage company Dropbox admitted to the breach at the time, but only ... said a list of email addresses of customers had been stolen. It either didn't know or didn't say that passwords were also compromised. The incident was particularly embarrassing at the time, as the hack proved simple thanks to a Dropbox employee's poor lack of judgement. The employee's LinkedIn password had been stolen as part of a ... (view more)

A high profile extradition case involving an alleged piracy site will be streamed online. The judge in the Kim Dotcom hearing imposed some restrictions on the streaming, though they are unlikely to make much difference. Dotcom, who changed his legal ... name from Kim Schmitz, was the man behind the controversial file hosting site Megaupload. Prosecutors in the US say he broke the law because the site was widely used for sharing files that breached copyright such as unauthorized movie video files. The heart of the case is what level of responsibility Dotcom bears for the actions of users. He ... (view more)

Users of the Opera browser's sync tools have been warned to change their passwords for every website. The organization behind Opera says the warning is with "an abundance of caution." The warning only covers people who use Opera's system for ... synchronizing bookmarks, passwords and other information so that they can access the feature on any computer. This covers around 1.7 million people among the 350 million who use the browser. Writing on a company blog, Opera's Tarquin Wilton-Jones said an attack on the system had been detected and, although quickly blocked, was ... (view more)

Facebook users in the US may be able to find out if the site thinks they are conservative- or liberal-leaning. It's a side-effect of a new tool that makes it easier to influence advertisements which appear on the users' newsfeed. As reported ... recently, Facebook recently added new options which allow users to indicate that they don't want to see advertisements in the news feed related to specific topics. The new changes come as Facebook also prepares to roll out additional measures to prevent ad-blocking software from working on the site. To view the settings, users can visit their ... (view more)

A consumer rights group has slammed Windows 10's privacy settings. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says Microsoft is unfairly linking privacy to security in its update system. The attack comes in a lengthy blog post by the EFF's Amul Kalia, ... published just after Microsoft released its Windows 10 Anniversary Update. It starts by recapping the numerous complaints about Microsoft using unfair measures to try to maximize the number of people upgrading to the system, including closing an on-screen window as consent for the installation. (Source: eff.org ) Data Transfer Is " ... (view more)

Netgear is launching its own take on a multi-router system in order to improve WiFi across an entire home. It's not a new idea, but Netgear says its tweaks should give it a significant edge over rival setups. The logic of Netgear's Orbi and similar ... systems is that a single wireless router isn't always enough to cover an entire home adequately. Wireless signals can be weakened by passing through walls and floors, as well as being affected by metal such as pipe work. While that problem has always existed, it's become more noticeable as demand for high-bandwidth activity such as ... (view more)

AT&T is dropping overage charges for mobile data plans. Instead of charging extra fees, it will slow down the connections of users who exceed their monthly data allowance. The move is accompanied by a general price rise, though it will only ... affect new customers or those existing customers who choose to change plans. The change makes AT&T the last of the three biggest carriers to drop mandatory fees for customers who go over their monthly data cap, an issue that became even more important as truly unlimited data plans were phased out across the industry. T-Mobile dropped overage ... (view more)

Microsoft has confirmed some Windows 10 computers may freeze up after the latest update. It says starting in Safe mode is one way to get round the problem while a permanent fix is developed. The problem comes with the Windows 10 "Anniversary Update" ... (Build 14393.51), which is the recently-released biggest set of changes since Windows 10 was released. In previous editions of Windows, this significant update might be considered the equivalent of a Service Pack. According to Microsoft, the Anniversary Update problem only affects computers with a specific set-up, namely that the ... (view more)