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Even though the Federal Communications Commission has repeatedly said that wireless and landline phone providers are allowed to offer robocall-blocking services to their customers, some carriers have continued to incorrectly insist — and provide misinformation to consumers — that they simply don’t have the authority to deploy this technology. In an effort to make things clear once and for all, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has sent letters to these companies that there are no regulatory roadblocks stopping them from helping their customers stop annoying — often illegal — automated and prerecorded robocalls. “Nothing in the Commission’s rules and orders prevents [phone compan…

Apple's legal battle over encryption dominated headlines earlier this year, but another tech giant is fighting a quieter legal war over user privacy: Microsoft. It won a major victory last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit sided with the company, ruling that a U.S. warrant could not be used to force Microsoft to turn over email data stored in an Irish data center. The decision, which the Justice Department is considering appealing to the Supreme Court, could have major implications for tech companies who routinely move data around the world so it can be backed up or quickly accessed by users. The Washington Post talked with Microsoft president…

uBlock Origin is a lightweight ad blocker that consumes fewer system resources than the likes of Adblock Plus (never tested on Firefox where the addon started). The open-source ad blocker is officially available as an extension for Chromium and Firefox, but a New Zealand-based web developer has ported the extension for Microsoft Edge. Nik Rolls has forked the project on GitHub, and a working prototype of the extension is now available for download as a .zip file for those on the Edge Preview. Interested in taking a look? Here's how you sideload the extension on Edge: View the full article

If you don’t already have iOS 9.3.3, you better download and install it — quick. Cisco Talos, a security and research group, recently discovered a bug in Mac and iPhones that allows hackers to steal passwords with a single text message. The researchers at Cisco Talos alerted Apple, and the tech company immediately worked on a patch, which was released this week. “This is very high severity issue,” Craig Wiliams, head of global outreach at Cisco Talos, told Fortune. “The fact that you have an exploit without any user interaction makes me very concerned.” Although the iOS update is out, it doesn’t automatically install itself — people who own iPhones have to …

Redbox is officially venturing back into streaming — on a trial basis, anyway. A Redbox spokesperson told Variety Thursday that the company has started to test its new streaming service, dubbed Redbox Digital, with some customers. Variety first reported in April about Redbox’s plans to launch a new streaming service. “We are testing a potential new transactional digital VOD and EST offering, with a small subset of our customers, designed to complement our core kiosk rental business,” a company spokesperson said via email. “As we test and learn from our customers, we will make evaluations that determine any future course of action.” As part of these tests, Redbox…

Edward Snowden wants you to know at all times whether the NSA is keeping tabs on your iPhone. Along with Andrew Huang, his coauthor and fellow hacker, Snowden presented his research on phone "hardware introspection" at MIT, which aims to give users the ability to see whether their phone is sending out secret signals to an intelligence agency. "This work aims to give journalists the tools to know when their smart phones are tracking or disclosing their location when the devices are supposed to be in airplane mode," the pair wrote in their technical paper. Snowden, an ex-NSA contractor living in exile in Moscow, and Huang, a prominent hacker who has reverse-e…

We reported earlier on France's demands to Microsoft with regards to bolstering its Windows 10 OS to better protect user data, and ultimately, their privacy. The fact that a watchdog would target Microsoft for collecting too much data probably strikes no one as a surprise, as that very complaint has been one shared by many users since the launch of Microsoft's latest OS. In the complaint, France's Chair of the National Data Protection Commission noted a couple of big issues, from the fact that the PIN code can be entered as many times as an attacker needs it to be and also that certain mechanisms of the operating system collect much more user data than is required fo…

If you're a Spotify user, your friends and family aren't the only ones who are able to check out your playlists. The popular streaming service is now the latest platform that is opening its data to targeted advertising. Everything from your age and gender, to the music genres you like to listen will be available to various third-party companies. Spotify is calling it programmatic buying and has already enabled it. Advertisers will have access to the 70 million people that use Spotify's free, ad-supported streaming across 59 countries. By viewing your song picks, these buyers will be able to look for specific users who might be the best matches for the products they'r…

Windows 10 breaches French law by collecting too much personal information from users and failing to secure it adequately, according to the French National Data Protection Commission (CNIL). Some of the privacy failings identified can be remedied by users willing to delve deep into the Windows 10 settings, but one of the commission's gripes is that better privacy should be the default setting, not one users must fight for. CNIL served Microsoft with a formal notice on June 30, giving it three months to comply with the law, but only made it public on Wednesday. The commission conducted seven tests of the data sent back to Microsoft by Windows 10 in April …

If you’ve ever pixelated an email address or blurred a phone number before putting an image onto the internet in order to protect someone’s privacy, I’ve got bad news for you: Researchers at the University of California-San Diego have found that the popular Photoshop redaction techniques are decodable such that the underlying text can be read. The researchers were able to recover text from a variety of redacted screenshots that they found online, said computer science professor Hovav Shacham by email. They were, for example, able to figure out the blurred email address in this screenshot of a conversation between a corrupt DEA agent and the then-CEO of Bitcoin exchan…

Browser plugins, especially Flash, have enabled some of our favorite experiences on the Web, including videos and interactive content. But plugins often introduce stability, performance, and security issues for browsers. This is not a trade-off users should have to accept. Mozilla and the Web as a whole have been taking steps to reduce the need for Flash content in everyday browsing. Starting in August, Firefox will block certain Flash content that is not essential to the user experience, while continuing to support legacy Flash content. These and future changes will bring Firefox users enhanced security, improved battery life, faster page load, and better browser re…

Seagate today announced a new line of hard drives with up to 10TB of capacity for desktops computers, network-attached storage (NAS) and surveillance systems. The high-capacity drives, dubbed the Guardian Series, represent a 2TB increase... Read more about Seagate unveils 10TB BarraCuda on Lunarsoft. View the full article

Poodlecorp (yes, you read that right) has threatened to take the über popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go offline August 1 through a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the game’s already fragile servers. The group plans to take the servers down for 20-plus hours — “basically an entire day” — using the same method they’ve used on other attacks Poodlecorp has laid claim to — a massive botnet consisting of 600,000 devices ranging from DVRs to dedicated servers. View the full article

Yahoo is writing down the value of its Tumblr acquisition by $482 million, citing lower projections for the social network's future performance, the company announced Monday. This comes after Yahoo took a $230 million similar writedown last quarter on its Tumblr buy. In total, Yahoo has now written down more than half of Tumblr's value since acquiring it for $1.1 billion in 2013 -- rendering Mayer's biggest acquisition to date effectively worthless. Part of that writedown stems from Yahoo's struggle to meet an ambitious $100 million sales goal for Tumblr -- and part can be traced to the falling value of similar publicly traded social media companies like Tw…

Seagate today announced a new line of hard drives with up to 10TB of capacity for desktops computers, network-attached storage (NAS) and surveillance systems. The high-capacity drives, dubbed the Guardian Series, represent a 2TB increase over the capacity of previous Seagate hard drives in the consumer and small business category. The Guardian series consists of the BarraCuda Pro desktop drive, the Seagate IronWolf for NAS applications and the Seagate SkyHawk for video surveillance systems. Seagate also said it has resurrected the Barracuda brand for its line of consumer desktop and laptop hard drives, a name it did away with in favor of the "Desktop Hard D…

A newly disclosed vulnerability could allow attackers to seize control of mobile phones and key parts of the world's telecommunications infrastructure and make it possible to eavesdrop or disrupt entire networks, security experts warned Tuesday. The bug resides in a code library used in a wide range of telecommunication products, including radios in cell towers, routers, and switches, as well as the baseband chips in individual phones. Although exploiting the heap overflow vulnerability would require great skill and resources, attackers who managed to succeed would have the ability to execute malicious code on virtually all of those devices. The code library was deve…

There have been several updates all throughout Lunarsoft over the past month. From the Frontpage, to the Forums, the Wiki, and even the server itself. This resolves several issues and helps ensure we can... Read more about Lunarsoft Updates so far in 2016 on Lunarsoft. View the full article

Yes, we know. Our smartphone batteries are bad because they barely last a day. But it’s partially our fault because we’ve been charging them wrong this whole time. Many of us have an ingrained... Read more about You’ve been charging your smartphone wrong on Lunarsoft. View the full article

Yes, we know. Our smartphone batteries are bad because they barely last a day. But it’s partially our fault because we’ve been charging them wrong this whole time. Many of us have an ingrained notion that charging our smartphones in small bursts will cause long-term damage to their batteries, and that it’s better to charge them when they’re close to dead. But we couldn’t be more wrong. If fact, a site from battery company Cadex called Battery University details how the lithium-ion batteries in our smartphones are sensitive to their own versions of “stress.” And, like for humans, extended stress could be damaging your smartphone battery’s long-term lif…

Snapchat has proven to be a great resource for people to connect all over the world through the power of their smartphone. However, a sizeable user base also brings with it a sizeable opportunity for advertising revenue, and that's exactly what the company appears to be promoting - just maybe not in the way you'd expect. The company has filed a patent for a system using object recognition to serve users sponsored filters. The technology outlined by the company would identify items in pictures, then offer users image overlays from related brands. It's essentially tailored advertising on a pretty unnecessary in-depth scale. Despite the application including d…

Netflix released its earnings report for the second quarter today. The company was one of 2015's best performing stocks, but has seen its share price stumble in recent months on projections of slower growth. Today it reported $1.97 billion in revenue and net income of $41 million. Adding to worries about its growth, the company added just 1.54 million subscribers, well below its own projections of 2.5 million new customers. The stock is down around 14 percent in after-hours trading. In its letter to investors, Netflix blamed the weak subscriber growth on churn, meaning older customers exiting. "Our global member forecast for Q2 was 2.5m and we came in at 1.7m. Gross …

After a $1.2 billion deal fell through, Opera has sold most of itself to a Chinese consortium for $600 million. The buyers, led by search and security firm Qihoo 360, are purchasing Opera's browser business, its privacy and performance apps, its tech licensing and, most importantly, its name. The Norwegian company will keep its consumer division, including Opera Apps & Games and Opera TV. The consumer arm has 560 workers, but the company hasn't said what will happen to its other 1,109 employees. The original deal, announced in February, reportedly failed to gain regulatory approval. While expressing disappointment that it was scrapped, Opera CEO Lars Boilesen say…

Web browser Maxthon has been caught sending detailed information from it users, such as their browsing history and other installed applications to the China based company that develops the software. Maxthon is a freeware web browser for Windows, OS X and Linux, developed by Chinese company Maxthon Ltd based in Beijing. It is also available on Windows Phone 8, iOS and Android platforms as Maxthon Mobile. It has an estimated worldwide market share of 1% and about 2-3% of all Chinese internet users browses using Maxthon. Polish security researchers from the company Exatel that the browser regularly sends a ZIP files to server in China. The ZIP file contains all kin…

Symantec has warned customers that security flaws in the firm's systems outed by Google's Project Zero last month won't be fixed until mid-July. Patches were rushed out to cover some of the "as bad as it gets" flaws identified by Project Zero, but patches to secure the fundamental architectural flaws are still some weeks away. The cloud-based versions of Symantec's Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition will finally be updated this week, but users of the workstation versions will have to wait weeks. Symantec has promised updates "by mid-July" and recommended that customers apply them as a matter of urgency, but in the meantime Symantec's systems remain …

Is your antivirus protecting your computer or making it more hackable? Internet security experts are warning that anti-malware technology is becoming less and less effective at protecting your data and devices, and there's evidence that security software can sometimes even make your computer more vulnerable to security breaches. This week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) issued a warning about popular antivirus software made by Symantec, some of it under the Norton brand, after security researchers with Google's Project Zero found critical vulnerabilities. "These vulnerabilities are as bad as it gets. They…