John Lister

Fri
28
Dec
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Google Hunts Bogus Reviews

Google says it removed "millions" of bogus reviews and ratings for apps in a single week. It's tweaked its approach to detecting fake feedback to avoid mistakenly flagging legitimate reviews. The company says it wants to address three problems with ... user reviews in the Google Play store. One is to address reviews that are "genuine" but contain hateful or profane language or aren't relevant to the app in question. The second problem is "fake" ratings that are part of a campaign to manipulate the overall average score rather than being a real verdict by a ... (view more)

Tue
18
Dec
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Chrome To Combat Sticky 'Back Button' Websites

Google is to fight back against websites that make it deliberately hard for users to leave their pages. It's tweaking the way the Chrome browser responds to the back button. The back button sounds like something simple that would intuitive take the ... user to the page they were on before navigating to the current page. However, the way it works has proven open to abuse. In reality the back button doesn't reverse the most recent "move" between pages. Instead it tells the browser to visit the most recent page in its history list. To the user it makes no difference, but to the browser it's ... (view more)

Mon
17
Dec
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Android Phone Security Duped by 3D Printed Head

A 3D printed model head fooled facial recognition security features on four Android phones. It's not exactly a practical blueprint for thieves, but does show the security of such features varies dramatically between handsets. Thomas Brewster of ... Forbes commissioned a 3D model of his head that combined data from 50 cameras. It cost him a little over £300, equivalent to around $375 USD. (Source: forbes.com ) Angle ...<a href="/news/10470/android-phone-security-duped-3d-printed-head" class="more-link">view more

Thu
13
Dec
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Android Ad Scam Hijacks Phones; Drains Data, Battery

22 Android apps are eating up data allowances to benefit scammers at the expense of phone owners, a security firm says. The apps are using smart phones to carry out fraud against online advertisers. Sophos says it's found 22 offending apps with a ... total of two million downloads. They are each described as offering simple games or basic utilities such as keeping the phone's flash activated to act as a flashlight. While they work as described, which helps get good online reviews and build credibility, the scam is happening behind the scenes. (Source: sophos.com ) The apps are used for click ... (view more)

Wed
12
Dec
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New Features Revealed for Win10 April 2019 Release

Microsoft has revealed a few of the changes coming in future Windows 10 updates. They are mostly tweaks rather than new features, though that will likely reduce the chances of performance bugs. The changes have been unveiled as part of the "Fast ... Ring" of the Windows 10 Insiders Program. That means they're going out to the people in Microsoft's test program who've signed up to try out changes before anyone else, knowing it carries the biggest risk of new features not working well or even having bugs that affect Windows and other applications. New Windows 10 Changes Go Public April ... (view more)

Tue
11
Dec
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MS: New Edge Rebuild to Support Chrome Extensions

Microsoft has confirmed Edge will now use the same code as Chrome . It's also said it plans to support Chrome extensions on Edge. The news bears out previous reports, though notably it appears Microsoft will stick with the Edge name for the revamped ... browser. That may be because it put so much effort into branding Edge as the replacement of Internet Explorer. It's all to do with rendering engines, the part of a web browser that actually turns the code of a web page into what the users sees on screen. Microsoft is ditching its own EdgeHTML and adopting "Chromium," an open source ... (view more)

Thu
06
Dec
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Quora Site Hacked; Names, Emails and Passwords Stolen

Question site "Quora" has become the latest high-profile hacking victim, with details of more than 100 million users breached. Fortunately, the implications likely won't be as serious as some previous hacks. The site lets users post questions and ... then get answers from other users. A voting system means more helpful answers from its community means the best answers float to the top. Quora says its systems were accessed without authorization and that it discovered the breach on November 30, 2018. It says the exposed information included account information such as name, email address ... (view more)

Wed
05
Dec
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Report: Microsoft to Ditch Edge Browser

Sources close to Microsoft suggest that the company may ditch its Edge browser as the default option in Windows 10. Its replacement would run on the same underlying code as Google's Chrome. While Edge has failed to win the hearts of most users, it ... appears the main reason behind the move is that site developers are tired of having to do extra work to make their sites work on the browser. The most recent statistics show Chrome dominating the browser market, being used on more than 70 per cent of computers, compared with just four percent running Edge. Given that Edge is the default option on ... (view more)

Tue
04
Dec
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Report: Cellphones 'Dirtier Than Toilet Seat'

A hygiene company says the average smartphone is "seven times dirtier" than a toilet seat. People using them in bathrooms could be the cause. The company says it swabbed 50 phones with a device that lights up spots on a surface housing live ... bacteria. On average it found 1,479 such spots on a phone, compared with 220 on a toilet seat. Not all phones are equally icky however. Phones with a wipe-clean plastic covers had slightly fewer bacteria spots than the average handset. The worst offender was a phone in a leather case that doubled as a wallet and had nearly 17 times as many bacteria spots ... (view more)

Thu
29
Nov
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Web Users Warned Over Browser Green Padlock Trickery

Security researchers have warned that nearly half of all phishing sites falsely display the browser padlock symbol commonly associated with secure websites. It's a reminder that the browser padlock symbol only covers one aspect of security. Most ... major browsers display the padlock symbol when a website uses a technology, most commonly Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), to encrypt data as it passes between the user's computer and the website, or vice versa. Such sites have an address starting "https://" rather than "http://". The purpose of the padlock symbol is to indicate to the user that the ... (view more)

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