Many of us rely on MS Defender as one layer of our security on and offline. For that reason, when I saw the article linked above, I decided I'd be remiss were I not to bring it to your attention. The article gives not such great news, if AV-Comparatives' March testing is to be believed. Note MS Defender's position re: offline detection rate as opposed to its online detection rate. It still ranked in the highest group, but not in first place. MS Defender's overall ra...
Caveat emptor. At some point you just have to laugh. So the news is Edge is getting a "free" Cloudfare VPN attatched to it in a security update. This is a very special "VPN". You have to sign into your MS account to use it. Hmm...what does that remind me of? Even more amusing? The 'P' in VPN stands for 'Private'. A VPN hides you and your browsing from data merchants, and hides..."awkward" searches, health care questions, and the like. The MS VPN hides those searches, etc. from ver...
Preston Gralla did us all a service with his articles: A concise, centralized listing of and guide to the updates to date to W10 and W11 and what each did. I think that's a handy reference to have. Updates to W10 guide and list : https://www.computerworld.com/article/3199077/windows-10-a-guide-to-the-updates.html Updates to W11 guide and list : https://www.computerworld.com/article/3636790/windows-11-a-guide-to-the-updates.html Also, How to handle W10 and W11 Updates ...
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols isn't paranoid. He's actually rather smart, and his reasoning is excellent. I'm not an anti-W11er for no reason. I felt all along the it was essentially unnecessary, as W10 could be continually developed, and that the processor requirement and TP2 dustup were basically nonsense because as long as code will exist, hackers will as well, and no code is un-hackable. "Yes, the Windows 11 security updates are good — if you have the right hardware. But &n...
When my redneck friend (yeah, the one I always 'shop') sent me this Windows 12 tidbit, I figured "He's seeking vengeance for all my miserable shops." Then I started researching it. As with most things MS, there are two sides. One says it's in the works, the other says nah, 11 is barely here. It seems it's all based on a SwiftSecurity tweet which was supposed to be a joke, and was deleted. Well, that stopped nothing in our current age of conspiracy theories, of course. What th...
Continuing in MS's tradition of faulty releases and the need to release patches to fix coding errors, Power Toys 0.55.2 has been released to repair "This is a patch release to fix issues in v0.55.1 due to an installer bug and .NET 5 doing an update for the runtime. We deemed important for stability based on incoming rates. See v0.55.0 for full release notes. #16203 - Installer didn't handle when a newer version was released for .NET 5" PowerToys is Microsoft's open-sou...
Everyone loves free software, and there are plenty of places on the web to download desired proggies legally. I've summarized the linked article for you, but please do take a gander at the source. Hits count, after all. Most important is downloading software safely. Here's a URL to check the safety of a website: https://www.urlvoid.com/ . It works on the same principle as virus signatures in an antivirus program...so, you can quickly realize that it isn't perfect, as you won't g...
Got this little gem in my email. I can't tell you how many times my screen has frozen and I resorted to Restart (losing all the work I did up to the freeze). Had I known this trick, the air in the room would have had a far less blue tint. So much for cliff hangers... "To reset your graphics drivers when your computer is frozen, press the following key combination: Win + Ctrl + Shift + B ." - MUO What's so great about this command is that all the apps currently...
Hi, folks. Happy Thanksgiving from Israel, here in the Galilee! I saw the article linked above, and thought how you power users might like enabling all those tools from a desktop link (in an appropriate fence). Link: https://www.reviewgeek.com/103171/windows-11-has-a-god-mode-too-heres-how-to-activate-it/
Not about "my browser can beat up yours". This is about the endless privacy invasions by Chrome, and Google selling info and your security without a second thought (see external link above). Enough is enough! Here are four good ones and four to ditch asap. https://privacyaustralia.net/best-secure-browser/
Make sure to update your browsers, if you use Chrome or any of the browsers using Chrome's engine. Google has issued "high" security warnings regarding possible points of code compromise, but hasn't given a lot of information about the vulnerabilities in order to allow users of the world's most popular browsers time to update before hackers can utilize the vulnerabilities. Thanks, Hank. 👍
Most of us appreciate privacy and not becoming a supposedly anonymized piece of data for sale. Brave has entered this field now, as well with a search engine which has more privacy than others. “Brave Search is the industry’s most private search engine, as well as the only independent search engine, giving users the control and confidence they seek in alternatives to big tech,” Brave co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich says . “Unlike older search engines that tra...
Norton...remember how much we loved it? Me either. “As the crypto economy continues to become a more important part of our customers’ lives, we want to empower them to mine cryptocurrency with Norton, a brand they trust,” said Vincent Pilette, CEO of NortonLifeLock. “Norton Crypto is yet another innovative example of how we are expanding our Cyber Safety platform to protect our customers’ ever-evolving digital lives." Really? Is he joking? This is incredi...
MS finally released WinGet 1.0 which was planned and mentioned at Build 2020. “A package manager is designed to help you save time and frustration,” Microsoft’s Demitrius Nelon explained when the firm announced its plans for WinGet. “Essentially, it is a set of software tools that help you automate the process of getting software on your machine. You specify which apps you want installed, and it does the work of finding the latest version (or the exact on...
I receive Ghacks updates routinely. Today I received one which while nothing out of the ordinary for MS, caused me some concern regarding the March 2021 Cumulative Update issued on Patch Tuesday (yesterday). "The updates patch security issues, all with the second-highest severity rating of important. One of the additional issues that these updates patch is a printing to FILE ports vulnerability. The issue is patched in updates for all versions of Windows, from Windows 7 to Windows 10...Accor...