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Tech NewsApple’s Biggest Privacy Flexes of WWDC 2021
It wouldn’t be an Apple event without a nod to the company’s pro-privacy stance. As part of its annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) keynote this year, the company announced somemajor privacy upgrades that will come with iOS 15 and iCloud—here are some of the biggest. A More Private Inbox First up is Mail Privacy Protection, … Continued
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Tech NewsmacOS Monterey Will Make All of Your Apple Devices Play Nice With Each Other
Apple’s new macOS got a new California-inspired name at WWDC on Monday. That was to be expected. But it still had some surprises in store for us with a lot of quality of life improvements and at least one big new feature. Shiny New Name Say hello to Monterey, everyone. Or, at least wait a … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityUpdate to iOS 14.5.1 Right Now or Your iPhone Is a Sitting Duck for Hackers
Apple has rushed out fixes to two major vulnerabilities in iOS and iPadOS 14.5, last month’s update that implemented its App Tracking Transparency feature. Both bugs could have allowed malicious parties to remotely execute code, possibly leading to the takeover of an affected device. That means you need to update your devices as soon as … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsA Cloud-Based Google Chrome Sounds Neat, but Consider Upgrading Your Hardware Instead
As I sit at my desk typing this blog, I have 15 Chrome tabs eating up 790MB of memory. I also have 17 Microsoft Edge tabs open, which take up 535MB of memory. Aside from those two extra tabs on Edge, I have the same webpages open, yet Chrome is hogging more memory. Complaints about … Continued
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Tech NewsApple Security Fixes Mean It’s Time to Update Your iPhones, iPads, Macs and Watches
A newly released set of security fixes from Apple is “recommended for all users,” meaning that for anyone with an iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch, it’s probably time for an update. According to Apple, the patch will correct a security bug that left WebKit — the engine that powers Apple’s Safari browser — vulnerable … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsHow to Sync All of Your iCloud Passwords and Data to Windows
Syncing all of your Apple data and files to devices that aren’t made by Apple isn’t the exercise in futility that it once was. There are now several signs that Apple is ready to cautiously welcome users of other hardware to its services, including tools for Chrome, Windows, and Android. Here’s how to get your … Continued
By David Nield -
Tech NewsApple’s Keeping Google’s Prying Eyes Out Of iOS 14
If you regularly use Apple’s Safari browser, you’re probably familiar with its “Fraudulent Website Warning,” which gives you a heads up if the site you’re about to visit might be, say, an elaborate phishing scam. What you probably didn’t know is that until now, this safety feature relied on an obscure Google database to operate. … Continued
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Tech NewsHere’s How to Unlock Your iPhone While You’re Wearing a Mask With the iOS 14.5 Beta
So, you’ve heard about a new feature that will allow you to unlock your iPhone while you’re wearing a mask, and you want it. (Who could blame you?!) The good news is, you can access it with a public beta that’s now available. The bad news is that you’ll have to jump through a few … Continued
By Catie Keck -
Tech NewsFirefox 85 Ditches Flash and Boosts Privacy Protections
Do you hear that? It’s the last dying breaths of Adobe Flash, which might finally be rendered obsolete by Mozilla’s release of Firefox 85 on Tuesday. Up until now, Firefox had been the last of the old guard to support Flash. Apple first dissed the software in 2010 by banning it from iPhones and then … Continued
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Tech NewsPlease Refresh Your Browser So Websites Actually Work
Spring is traditionally the time to purge your life of unwanted and unused junk. But 2020 has been a spectacularly disastrous year, so better to start 2021 off with a clean slate rather than wait until the seasons change. There’s a lot of bad-vibes and general nastiness from 2020 that we can do without, and … Continued
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ReviewsThe Best Browser for Most People
Reader, I have a confession to make: Despite being a reporter who writes about all the ways our privacy regularly gets exploited by the feds and major tech players alike, I don’t exactly practice what I preach. I’ll download any free app regardless of whether or not it’s sending my data to dubious data brokers … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsHow to Reset Your Web Browser and Start Again From Scratch
Resetting something—your router, your phone, your bad morning habits—is often an effective and relatively painless way of fixing a problem. The same trick works on web browsers, too. The apps we spend most of our computing time in tend to accumulate all kinds of cruft over time, and clearing that away can solve all manner … Continued
By David Nield -
Tech NewsApple’s Fancy Browser Privacy Tech May Do More Harm Than Good
Of all the tech giants, Apple has repeatedly reminded us that it’s the one that cares most about privacy. One of its many privacy-minded innovations is its Safari “Intelligent Tracking Prevention” feature—a machine-learning algorithm introduced back in 2017 that aims to stop annoying ads from tracking you from one site to the next. However, a … Continued
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Tech NewsSafari in iOS 13 Sends Chinese Users’ Browsing Data to Censorship-Friendly Tencent
It seems like Apple’s China-related controversies aren’t over just yet. It appears that Safari in iOS 13 now sends browsing data to Tencent, a giant Chinese conglomerate that owns the country’s biggest digital platforms, including QQ, WeChat, and Qzone. It’s also known for helping the Chinese government keep its iron grip over what citizens can … Continued
