Microsoft Announces New, Integrated ‘Office’ Suite App For Mobile Devices

Microsoft has announced that it is working towards the launch of its ‘Office’ mobile app (currently only available in public preview) which integrates Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps into a single app. The ‘Office’ Vision Microsoft says that the mobile app, called simply ‘Office’, represents their vision for what a productivity solution would look like if first built for mobile devices. The idea is that users have all their Office documents together in one place, can reduce the need to switch between many different apps, and can reduce the amount of space that they use on their phone compared [...]

2019-11-07T06:14:00+00:00By |

Office 365 Voicemail Phishing Scam Warning

Security company McAfee has reported observing a phishing scam which uses a fake voicemail message to lure victims into entering their Office 365 email credentials into a phishing page. How The Attack Works According to McAfee’s blog, the first step in the phishing scam is the victim being sent an email informing them that they have missed a phone call.  The email includes a request to login to their account to access their voicemail. The email message actually contains an HTML attachment which, when loaded, re-directs the victim to a phishing website. Although there are slightly different versions of the [...]

2019-11-07T06:12:35+00:00By |

BBC Puts News On ‘Dark Web Browser’ To Avoid Censorship

The BBC has announced that it is making its International news website available via the ‘Tor’ browser (usually associated with the ‘dark web’), in order to get around censorship in other countries. Blocking by Some Countries The BBC is concerned that countries including China, Iran and Vietnam have tried to block access to its website or programmes in the past. With this in mind, and with the BBC wanting to compete in the world broadcasting market and widen its audience, as well as wanting to maintain and extend the perception of its World Service as a trusted news source, the [...]

2019-11-07T06:14:54+00:00By |

Businesses Not Prepared For IR35 Tax Reforms

A poll by recruitment firm Hays appears to show a lack of awareness about preparedness for next year’s new IR35 tax reforms for medium-to-larger private sector organisations. What Is IR35? The IR35 tax reform legislation, set to be introduced in April 2020 is designed to stop tax avoidance from 'disguised employment', which occurs when self-employed contractors set up their own limited company to pay themselves through dividends (which are not subject to National Insurance).  IR35 will essentially mean that, from April 2020, medium-to-larger private sector organisations could become responsible for determining the tax status of any non-permanent contractors and freelancers [...]

2019-11-07T06:10:45+00:00By |

ICO Warns Police on Facial Recognition

In a recent blog post, Elizabeth Denham, the UK’s Information Commissioner, has said that the police need to slow down and justify their use of live facial recognition technology (LFR) in order to maintain the right balance in reducing our privacy in order to keep us safe. Serious Concerns Raised The ICO cited how the results of an investigation into trials of live facial recognition (LFR) by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and South Wales Police (SWP) led to the raising of serious concerns about the use of a technology that relies on a large amount of sensitive personal information. [...]

2019-11-07T06:09:46+00:00By |

Tech Tip – See Your Top Sites

If you need to be able to quickly see and access any of your top 25 most visited websites, there’s an easy way to display this list in Windows 10 on the taskbar or Start menu. - Right-click the Microsoft Edge icon to display the Jump List of your top 25 websites. - Click on any website on that list to load the website in a browser. - Right-click on any entry to remove it from the list.

2019-11-07T06:08:44+00:00By |

“Stalkerware” Partner-Spying Software Use Rises By 35% In One Year

Kaspersky researchers have reported a 35 per cent rise in the number of people who have encountered the use of so-called ‘stalkerware’ or ‘spouseware’ software in the first 8 months of this year. What is Stalkerware? Stalkerware (or ‘spouseware’) is surveillance software that can be purchased online and loaded onto a person’s mobile device. From there, the software can record all of a person’s activity on that device, thereby allowing another person to read their messages, see screen activity, track the person through GPS location, access their social media, and even spy on the mobile user through the cameras on [...]

2019-10-29T23:26:19+00:00By |

Google Leadership Accused Of Developing Internal Surveillance Tool

Some Google employees have accused the company’s leadership of developing a browser-based file extension for all of Google’s in-house computers that could flag-up signs of workers trying to organise meetings and protests. Google Employees The story came to light in a memo written by a Google employee that is reported to have been seen and verified by 3 other anonymous Google employees and Bloomberg News.  In the memo it was alleged that a team within the company had developed a surveillance tool, disguised as a calendar, that could be added to the custom Chrome browser used on Google’s computers. How? [...]

2019-10-29T23:25:10+00:00By |

Microsoft Beats Amazon to $10 Billion AI Defence Contract for ‘Jedi’

After a long and difficult bidding process, Amazon has lost out to Microsoft in the battle to win a $10bn (£8bn) US Defence Department AI and Cloud computing contract. For ‘Jedi’ The contract was for the Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure (Jedi).  This infrastructure will be designed to enable US forces to get fast access to important Cloud-held data from whichever battlefield they are on. The project will also see AI being used to enhance and speed up the delivery of data to US forces, thereby potentially giving them an advantage. Amazon Was Thought To Be In Front...Before Trump Comments Amazon, [...]

2019-10-29T23:24:14+00:00By |

Tough Questions About Libra Cryptocurrency

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg faced a grilling from the US Congress last week over his company’s ‘Libra’ cryptocurrency plans. Libra ‘Libra’ is Facebook’s new cryptocurrency and global payment system that’s due to be launched in 2020.  Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Libra is backed by a reserve of cash and other liquid assets.  The idea of Libra is that spending the new currency could be as easy and fast as texting as payments can be made by a special phone app and by messaging services such as WhatsApp.  Also, Libra is intended to be of particular value to the one billion+ people [...]

2019-10-29T23:23:12+00:00By |
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