John Lister

Google is making several changes to the way it handles audio collected from phones and smart gadgets such as the Google Home speaker. It follows revelations that humans listened to recordings collected by several tech giants. Amazon, Apple and ... Google were all hit by claims that they'd not done enough to make clear that staff or contractors listened to recordings to check the accuracy of automatic speech recognition. In several cases, human engineers heard sensitive material which appeared to have been collected unintentionally, rather than the user meaning to make a spoken query or request. ... (view more)

Researchers have discovered that many smart gadgets (such as smart TVs and streaming sticks) send data to tech companies, even when idle. The purpose of the experiment was to determine if devices were being used to monitor users, or could ... potentially leak data about the user to a third party. The research was a joint project between Northeastern University and the UK's Imperial College London. They examined 81 devices under the broad category of the Internet of Things (IoT). The study included security cameras, home automation devices such as WiFi plugs, Smart TV sets, smart speakers and home ... (view more)

Users have highlighted two more problems with the latest Windows 10 Update, released September 10, 2019. It's messed up sound for some users, while others can no longer get online. For those keeping track, the problems are with the Windows 10 update ... KB4515384 , which has already given some users a broken Windows search tool and others a mysterious red or orange hue to their screen. Ironically, that update was designed partly to fix problems with a previous update ( KB4512941 ) which broke the Windows Search for some users, and also caused constant high processor demand for others. One of the ... (view more)

Password manager LastPass has suffered an embarrassing security glitch that reveals a user's last used password, though some security experts argue that pulling off the exploit would have been difficult at best. The purpose of LastPass is to solve ... the problem of people having too many passwords to remember, but not wanting to reuse passwords across multiple sites. Once somebody signs up to LastPass, they create a single master password which is completely secret. Even LastPass itself doesn't store this password, so if a user forgets it, they are out of luck. The master password then stores ... (view more)

It's becoming something of a pattern that Microsoft issues a Windows 10 Update that causes a problem , then issues a follow-up that fixes it, but then introduces new problems. And it's happened again. Just last week Microsoft issued an update ( ... KB4512941 ) that fixed problems in the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903), but introduced new bugs with some users finding the Windows search tool didn't work at all, or their processors were under constant strain. Microsoft has since release a new bug fix (KB4515384) for the previous bug fix, but users are reporting new problems. At the time of ... (view more)

Nearly half a million users have been infected with "The Joker" malware through the Google Play store. The malware is particularly nasty and works by signing users up to premium services without their knowledge. The malware, spotted by researcher ... Aleksejs Kuprins, was found in 24 apps with a combined 472,000 downloads - though more apps may be found later. As of this writing, the 24 known apps have been removed from the Google Play store. (Source: techradar.com ) Infected Apps Need to be Removed If you have any of the following apps installed on your phone, they should be removed ... (view more)

Mozilla is to make an important change to Firefox browser security. It could reduce risks for users, but has raised concerns among governments and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), as it could limit their tools for filtering and monitoring online ... activity. The change has to do with a feature called DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), and will first affect users in the US. It's already possible to enable DoH in Chrome, but it takes some technical know-how because the feature currently isn't widely used. DoH is all to do with the DNS (Domain Name System), which is effectively the phone book of the Internet ... (view more)

The latest Windows 10 update ( KB4512941 ) has produced two different problems. Some users report the search function is no longer working, while others have found their processors under immense strain. The problems stem from an update which itself ... fixed several problems with a major Windows 10 Update release in May, also known as Windows 10 version 1903. Note that users who do not have Windows 10 version 1903 won't have KB4512941 installed. You can find out which version of Windows 10 you have by clicking Start, then type in "winver" (no quotes) and hit enter. It will say the ... (view more)

Microsoft has changed its mind about phasing out support for Adobe Flash, which is used to help web browsers view multimedia. Both Internet Explorer and the current edition of Edge browsers will continue to support the technology by default until ... the end of 2020, in contrast to other browsers. Adobe says it's ditching Flash at the end of next year, largely because it's become redundant with website designers now preferring to create multimedia and interactive elements in HTML 5, rather than with Flash. HTML 5 works in modern browsers without the need for plug-ins like Flash. Chrome and ... (view more)

Google has released a security update fixing a major flaw in the Chrome browser. While Chrome normally updates automatically, it's a serious enough problem that it's worth manually checking for updates to the browser in order to be certain. The bug ... was highlighted by the Center for Internet Security, a non-profit organization that crowd sources security problems and fixes. It says the flaw could be exploited simply by the user visiting a compromised web page. It says that: "Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the ... (view more)