Tech Help and Discussions

YouTube is illegally making “substantial profits” from children’s personal data, according to a group of 23 child advocacy, consumer and privacy groups that have filed a complaint asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to make it stop. Kids are on the platform en masse, the group said, citing a study that found that 96% of children aged 6-12 are aware of YouTube and that 83% of children that know the brand use it daily. In fact, last year, YouTube topped the list of favorite online kid brands, according to the study: No wonder kids have come to adore YouTube: the Google-owned company has been working hard to get their love and their little eyeballs on adve…

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Henry replied January 5Jan 5

On Tuesday, Facebook took yet another stab at transparency in these days of users’ and politicians’ outrage. It came in the form of the first release of the company’s Community Standards Enforcement Report, and it was stuffed with the type of detail that Mark Zuckerberg told so many Congresspeople he’d need to get back to them on when he was first lightly sautéed and then flame-grilled in two days of testimony. For years, Facebook has had Community Standards that explain “what stays up and what comes down.” Last month, for the first time, Facebook published the internal guidelines it follows to enforce those standards. Tuesday’s release of the first ever Commu…

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Henry replied January 5Jan 5

I shop online and have never had any problems and have never used a VPN. Should I be using one? I am seeing ads that I should. . .

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Henry replied January 5Jan 5

Oh, no! A hacker (says he) planted a Trojan, (claims he) took over your computer’s camera and microphone, (purportedly) filmed you watching porn, (theoretically) has the password to your email account, and is threatening to forward the scandalous video to all your email and social media contacts unless you fork over Bitcoin! “It must be true,” many people have unfortunately thought about this new twist on an established sextortion scam. After all, he’s (apparently) sending email from your very own email address! Good news: thankfully, it’s not true. The sextorting phisher has not, in fact, demonstrated that he’s hacked your email. All he’s done is demonstrate that a…

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1stop replied January 5Jan 5

Microsoft has been actively tracking a widespread credential phishing campaign using open redirector links. Attackers combine these links with social engineering baits that impersonate well-known productivity tools and services to lure users into clicking. Doing so leads to a series of redirections—including a CAPTCHA verification page that adds a sense of legitimacy and attempts to evade some automated analysis systems—before taking the user to a fake sign-in page. This ultimately leads to credential compromise, which opens the user and their organization to other attacks. The use of open redirects in email communications is common among organizations for various reas…

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Trips replied November 27, 2024Nov 27

Mozi is a peer-to-peer (P2P) botnet that uses a BitTorrent-like network to infect IoT devices such as network gateways and digital video records (DVRs). It works by exploiting weak telnet passwords1 and nearly a dozen unpatched IoT vulnerabilities2 and it’s been used to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, data exfiltration, and command or payload execution3. While the botnet itself is not new, Microsoft’s IoT security researchers recently discovered that Mozi has evolved to achieve persistence on network gateways manufactured by Netgear, Huawei, and ZTE. It does this using clever persistence techniques that are specifically adapted to each gateway’s p…

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Tony D replied August 23, 20213 yr

Hello I am an average user so find the links to doing the subject difficult. I have watched videos also but they are not easy. I do have a flash drive I downloaded from the MCT and used to install Windows 10 Pro. I can only see the files within the MCT when I use the flash drive I made with .esd. Maybe you could help me do this in steps. is the first thing I do, install a blank flash drive and save the MCT to it? Thank you

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peterr replied July 2, 20195 yr

So far I am liking what I see with Chromium based Edge. They released a version for MacOS yesterday. I installed it this morning on Mojave and have been using it all day. I like the clean look. What blows me away is the speed of it. It is faster than Firefox and Safari. Just a tad slower then Chrome. Microsoft did a good job making the UI look and act like all other MacOS apps. If only there was an Adblocker available to make it the perfect browser.

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allheart55 Cindy E replied May 14, 20195 yr

Because I have seen Doug uses IPhones I am asking this question here. The title, when enabled, causes our phones not to ring. We both have the iPhone XR. We have read the function of this but it we cannot understand how enabling a feature which stops the phone from ringing all together is worthwhile. We have gotten all sorts of answers from Apple. One person said to use it if at a meeting, another said the hardware is faulty etc. Do you think enabling this features should stop the phone from ringing?

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peterr replied January 26, 20195 yr

Oh, those incorrigible password abusers. After all these years of being shamed (if they cared or were paying attention), they’re still using “123456” as a password. This year, according to SplashData’s annual worst password list, that stale cracker came in at No. 1. Again. “password” was the No. 2 dust bunny to roll out from under the bed. Again. “Donald” made it onto this year’s list, at No. 23, as either a feeble nod to POTUS No. 45 or to the Disney duck. Or both. This is what we always say: For shame. Unleash the cybersecurity Harpies, we say; let fly the mocking winged monkeys, etc. etc., yadda yadda yadda. The security industry, and the media that cove…

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Tony D replied December 24, 20186 yr

We take on the problem of , where the address bar in your browser doesn’t tell you the truth about the identity of the website you’re looking at. Apple products had a recently disclosed bug of this sort (now fixed), which led to a lot of coverage of the issue, so we thought we’d explain what URL spoofing is, and what you can do about it. Source: Sophos

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Tony D replied September 20, 20186 yr

Microsoft has taken down thousands of ads for tech support scams that had infested the company’s TechNet support domain in a sly attempt to boost their search ranking. According to Cody Johnston, the self-styled ad hunter who reported the issue to Microsoft, until a few days ago Microsoft’s site was home to around 3,000 of these ads, mostly associated with the gallery.technet.microsoft.com downloads section. The ads covered a wide range of fraudulent support issues, from virtual currency sites to Google Wallet and Instagram. Johnston told ZDNet: I was able to find a total of 3,090 results, ranging back to August 2018. Twelve new ones have been created in the la…

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AWS replied September 12, 20186 yr

It looks like Windows 7 will no longer be free. Microsoft is going to start charging Windows 7 users a monthly fee beginning in 2020. Microsoft 'Confirms' Windows 7 New Monthly Charge We all knew Windows 10 was eventually going the subscription route. Never seen it coming that we would hit Windows 7 users with the monthly fees too.

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plodr replied September 11, 20186 yr

I want to build a VM but my old machine is needs replacing. I think the store to build it may have over sold me. Also if a savings is negligible, I would stick with this. Could you correct any blatant issues please? Also the warranty states no out of pocket or labor or parts for first year but if I buy a two year I think it applies to that also. I live near MC that is why I chose them. Their parts are Power Spec. Importantly, Windows is OEM which I am not hot about b/c it can only be used with this machine and if it breaks I am stuck. Is it advisable not to get OEM?

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Digerati replied September 9, 20186 yr

My wife and I want to get iphones. From the date of manufacturer Apple supports its phones with updates for about 5 years. If we get iPhone 8 or 10 we are losing some support time. This is what I have been led to believe. If so, how can we purchase phones so we do not lose support time? I cannot stand in line yet do not want my number to not be ported over. I want the Apple care insurance not Verizon insurance . How would you go about resolving this?

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peterr replied September 2, 20186 yr