Miscellaneous Tech News

mlnews

Avast packaged detailed user data to be sold for millions of dollars

The data doesn't include personal information, but experts fear it could be 'de-anonymized.'
The popular antivirus program Avast has been selling users data to giant companies like Google, Home Depot, Microsoft and Pepsi, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag found. Avast reportedly scraped data from its antivirus software and handed it off to its subsidiary Jumpshot, which repackaged the data and sold it, sometimes for millions of dollars. While Avast required users to opt-in to this data sharing, the investigation found that many were unaware that Jumpshot was selling their data. The investigation incriminates a lot of big name companies. We don't know for certain which are past, present or potential clients, but the list includes Expedia, Intuit, Keurig, Condé Nast, Loreal and more. Microsoft said it doesn't have a current relationship with the company. Yelp said Jumpshot was "engaged on a one-time basis," and Google did not respond to Microsoft and PGMag's request for comment.

mlnews

Microsoft issues second 'final' Windows 7 update

Microsoft has issued a fresh update for Windows 7, just days after it said it would provide no more patches for the ageing operating system.
It made the U-turn after it emerged there was a bug in its "final" patch. It caused "wallpaper issues" for users who configured their computers with the stretch option for their background desktop, causing a plain black screen to be shown when Windows was restarted. And users took to Reddit and Microsoft own support forums demanding a fix. Security consultant Graham Cluley tweeted: "That didn't take long. Microsoft backs down on 'no more updates for Windows 7' in order to fix stretched wallpaper bug." Initially, Microsoft said it would issue the new fix only to those who subscribed to its extended security updates (ESU) program.

coliver

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/linus-torvalds-pulled-wireguard-vpn-into-the-5-6-kernel-source-tree/#p3

Dashrender

@coliver said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/linus-torvalds-pulled-wireguard-vpn-into-the-5-6-kernel-source-tree/#p3

That's cool!

mlnews

Facebook settles facial recognition dispute

Facebook has settled a long-running legal dispute about the way it scans and tags people's photos.
It will pay $550m (£421m) to a group of users in Illinois, who argued that its facial recognition tool was in violation of the state's privacy laws. The case has been ongoing since 2015, and the settlement was announced in its quarterly earnings. It comes as facial recognition use by the police, and in public spaces, comes under intense scrutiny. The lawsuit against Facebook was given the go-ahead in 2018 when a federal judge ruled it could be heard as a class action (group) case. The appeals court disagreed with Facebook's attempts to stop this, and in January the Supreme Court also declined to review its appeal.

Dashrender

@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Facebook settles facial recognition dispute

Facebook has settled a long-running legal dispute about the way it scans and tags people's photos.
It will pay $550m (£421m) to a group of users in Illinois, who argued that its facial recognition tool was in violation of the state's privacy laws. The case has been ongoing since 2015, and the settlement was announced in its quarterly earnings. It comes as facial recognition use by the police, and in public spaces, comes under intense scrutiny. The lawsuit against Facebook was given the go-ahead in 2018 when a federal judge ruled it could be heard as a class action (group) case. The appeals court disagreed with Facebook's attempts to stop this, and in January the Supreme Court also declined to review its appeal.

seems like such a drop in the bucket, especially considering this damned thing dragged on for 4 years.

mlnews

WhatsApp to stop working on millions of phones

Messaging service WhatsApp will no longer work on millions of smartphones from 1 February.
Android and iPhone devices which only support outdated operating systems will no longer be able to run the Facebook-owned app. WhatsApp said the move was necessary in order to protect the security of its users. Smartphones using Android 2.3.7 and older, and iPhone iOS 8 or older, are those affected by the update. The operating systems that WhatsApp is dropping support for are legacy operating systems, which are no longer updated or installed on new devices. Most users will simply be able to update their operating systems in order to continue using the messaging service.

scottalanmiller

Microsoft Teams is down for us. Hundreds impacted here.

Dashrender

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Microsoft Teams is down for us. Hundreds impacted here.

OK I was wondering if it was having an issue - I couldn't get logged in.

scottalanmiller

@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Microsoft Teams is down for us. Hundreds impacted here.

OK I was wondering if it was having an issue - I couldn't get logged in.

Global issue, @Romo got the notification.

black3dynamite

https://fedoramagazine.org/enable-remote-collaboration-with-tmate-io-on-fedora/

dafyre

@black3dynamite said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

https://fedoramagazine.org/enable-remote-collaboration-with-tmate-io-on-fedora/

That's... kinda interesting. It's like Zoom or Webex... but for terminals, lol.

mlnews

Diversity in gaming: Industry promises to improve

Diversity is a "necessity" if the gaming industry is to continue to grow, says the body that represents people who make games.
Around one in 10 people working in the UK industry are from ethnically diverse backgrounds - slightly higher than the national working average. But women make up less than 30%, the research by Ukie and the University of Sheffield suggests. It means some women have "no-one to look up to", says Kat Welsford. She works in marketing at independent games developer Bossa Studios - and says when it comes to women in games, it's a mixed picture. "At my studio I'm really lucky that we have great gender diversity. "But there are other places I've been to where it's disappointing when you see how few women there are, especially in leadership roles," Kat tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.

mlnews

'State actors' may have accessed Twitter contacts

Twitter has warned that hackers acting on behalf of governments may have accessed the phone numbers of some users.
A security researcher discovered a flaw in its contacts upload feature in December that allowed him to access the phone numbers of senior politicians. Around that time, Twitter said it saw a "high volume of requests" to use the feature from Iran, Israel and Malaysia. It declined to say how many users' phone numbers had been exposed. In a statement published on its blog Twitter said: " It is possible that some of these IP addresses may have ties to state-sponsored actors. We are disclosing this out of an abundance of caution and as a matter of principle."