John Lister

Google has ditched a feature that could automatically navigate websites and complete forms. The biggest problems with "Duplex on the Web" were that hardly anyone knew about it or needed it. The feature launched in 2019 and was all about automating ... common sequences of actions on a website. The idea was to remove the need for the user to repeatedly click "next" buttons and confirm choices. Among the examples Google gave were ordering food on a restaurant site, buying tickets on a movie theatre website, and checking out of an online store. Google Assistant Control The feature worked with the ... (view more)

Windows 8.1 will no longer receive security updates from next month. It is said to effect millions of users. Microsoft has reminded users that January 10th, 2020 is the "end of support" date for the system. That means it will continue to work, but ... users will no longer get any updates or fixes, whether for security or performance bugs. The deadline also means an end to technical support from Microsoft of any kind. (Source: microsoft.com ) The system has already past the mainstream support deadline in 2018. That's when Microsoft stopped adding any new features. No Pay-To-Secure Option Unlike ... (view more)

Two US government apps have been revealed as using code from a Russian company that falsely claims to be based in the US. It's also claimed one of that company's developers has a history with malware. The initial revelation came from Reuters which ... highlighted "thousands" of smartphone apps included code from a company called Pushwoosh. The apps included one for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and another used by the US Army. Both have now removed the code. (Source: reuters.com ) The Pushwoosh code lets apps put together profiles of users and send notifications without ... (view more)

Windows 11 may soon show whether or not users are connected to a VPN. It's a simple feature, but it's significant since the technology is getting such mainstream acknowledgement. VPN stands for virtual private network, a feature that has three main ... benefits. The first is that it creates an "encrypted tunnel" for data going back and forth between the user and the Internet. One analogy is that ordinary Internet traffic works like a glass tube, while a VPN is more like a totally enclosed road tunnel. In simplistic terms, it means nobody else can see what is happening as data is sent and received ... (view more)

A theory involving donuts has helped crack a proposed government security algorithm. It's nothing to do with distracting security guards, Better Call Saul-style, but rather advanced mathematics. Government agencies and others involved in security ... are constantly looking for new ways to encrypt data, with quantum computing seen as a potentially major threat. Most encryption methods used at the moment rely on length and complexity to deter brute force cracking techniques that simply try every possible decryption key. The idea is that it should take so many tries (on average) to get the right ... (view more)

Intel claims it can spot 96 percent of "deepfake" videos. The trick appears to be tracking blood flow in the face. A deepfake is a more sophisticated version of the comparatively basic task of replacing one person's face with another in a video. ... Common uses include making the person appear to be saying something they never actually said (creating political distrust) or making it look like they performed lewd actions. The "deep" element comes from deep learning, where a computer program tries out and develops different tactics for performing a task better. In this case, the ... (view more)

Nine in ten Americans are now online according to new figures. But it's the United Kingdom that is "most online" and least subject to Internet restrictions. The figures come from Proxyrack, a company with a clear interest in places where users may ... want to disguise their identity of location. It wanted to see if there was any connection between how widespread Internet use was and how freely people could use the Internet. (Source: proxyrack.com ) The usage figures came from Statista and shows 99,231 out of every 100,000 people in the UK had used the internet recently. That was followed by Japan ... (view more)

Microsoft Defender has come in last in two separate tests of Windows 11 security software. It's a surprise result given it generally did well on Windows 10. There's some comfort for Microsoft, however, as the nature of the testing means many users ... won't notice that much difference in practice. That's important given Microsoft Defender (previously Windows Defender) is built-in to Windows 11. The first rankings came from AV-Test, which describes itself as "The Independent IT-Security Institute." It ran a series of tests on 19 products using "realistic test scenarios" and "real-world threats." ( ... (view more)

Android users have been urged to check their phone has the latest security patches. It follows a researcher accidentally uncovering a significant flaw in the screen lock. The researcher discovered the problem on a Google Pixel 6 and replicated it on ... a Pixel 5. The problem appears to affect phones running Android 10 or later that use a SIM card, not just those made by Google. However, some reports suggest it doesn't affect Samsung handsets. The problem is with the personal unblocking key (PUK). That's a way to regain access to a handset that's been locked after forgetting the phone's passcode ... (view more)

"Password" and "123456" continue to battle it out for the worst password choice according to two annual studies. While this tells us very little about why users continue to use such weak passwords, there's some mixed news elsewhere. Several ... companies chase headlines each year by publishing lists of the worst passwords, meaning the ones that appear most frequently. The data source is usually a collection of stolen website login databases published online. Sometimes these are stored in plain text while sometimes cyber criminals have successfully cracked decryption. The ... (view more)