In spite of a recent effort to improve the performance and detection rates in Windows Defender, Microsoft’s anti-malware tool is still not very good at its job. According to the latest tests, it’s downright lousy.
The latest round of tests performed by German institute AV-TEST, one of the most respected and regarded malware testing shops, show that Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool fared the poorest in removing an existing infection.
Adobe Systems has fixed more than 30 vulnerabilities in its Flash Player and Digital Editions products, most of which could be exploited to remotely install malware on computers.
The bulk of the flaws, 26, were patched in Flash Player on all supported platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux.
After spending the better part of a year aggressively pushing consumers to upgrade to Windows 10, Microsoft is finally taking a step back with the acknowledgment it went too far.
Customers have endured unwanted downloading of the software onto their PC without being told, then unwanted upgrades. And finally, the Get Windows 10 (GWX) application was changed so if you clicked the red “X” at the corner of the window thinking it would opt out, Microsoft treated this click as a confirmation of a scheduled update.
Companies are finding some of the oddest locations for data centers these days.
Facebook, for example, built a data center in Lulea in Sweden because the icy cold temperatures there would help cut the energy required for cooling. A proposed Facebook data center in Clonee, Ireland, will rely heavily on wind energy locally available. Google’s data center in Hamina in Finland uses sea water from the Bay of Finland for cooling.
Now, Microsoft is looking at locating data centers under the sea.
Microsoft is ending its unlimited OneDrive cloud storage plan and will put a cap of 1TB on storage for Office 365 consumers.
The company said its earlier unlimited storage offer had been misused by a few users of its Office 365 Home, Personal or University application, who backed up “numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings,” amounting at times to 75TB per user or 14,000 times the average, the OneDrive Team said in a blog post late Monday.
For the longest time, Microsoft’s antivirus programs have brought up the rear in tests, usually ranking near or in dead last. But recent tests from two respected antivirus testers show Microsoft has greatly improved its antivirus product and in a very short time.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer replacement packs two big new features
With Windows 10, Microsoft is finally moving toward putting Internet Explorer out of its misery. But can Microsoft’s new web browser finally knock rivals Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox off their stride?
Edge, the default browser in Microsoft’s Windows 10, certainly delivers on the basics. Early speed tests suggest it can render graphics at top speed, for instance. Throw in a clean layout and the belated addition of a “reading” mode, and Microsoft Edge is at least on an equal footing with Chrome, Firefox and Apple’s Safari — and certainly a vast improvement over its wheezy predecessor.
Ask security experts what to do when hit with ransomware – the sophisticated malware that infects a device or network, uses military-grade encryption to restrict access, and demands payment for the decryption key – and you’ll typically get the same answer: “never pay the ransom.”
An Internet Explorer vulnerability lets attackers bypass the Same-Origin Policy, a fundamental browser security mechanism, to launch highly credible phishing attacks or hijack users’ accounts on any website.
Why did Microsoft skip directly from Windows 8 (or more precisely, Windows 8.1) directly to Windows 10 instead of going to Windows 9? Mostly we think it’s that the company wanted to take a big symbolic step away from Windows 8, which has acquired a Vista-like taint since its release two years ago. And now a new report from Business Insider seemingly confirms our suspicions as it quotes Microsoft’s Windows marketing boss Tony Prophet discussing exactly why Microsoft decided to leap ahead numerically.
