Mozilla is scheduled to add a new user anti-fingerprinting technique to Firefox with the release of version 67, scheduled for mid-May this year. Advertising networks often sniff certain browser features, such as the window size to create user profiles and track users as they resize their browser and move across new URLs and browser tabs. Called “letterboxing,” this new technique adds “gray spaces” to...
Windows 10’s next update is the April 2019 Update, which is version 1903 and was codenamed 19H1 during development. It features a light theme, speed improvements, and lots of polish. There are no crazy new features like My People or Timeline. This article includes everything new as of Insider Preview build 18323, released on January 24, 2019. Speed Improvements (Thanks to Better Spectre Fixes)...
Fulfilling its 2017 promise to make Thunderbolt 3 royalty-free, Intel has given the specification for its high-speed interconnect to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the industry group that develops the USB specification. The USB-IF has taken the spec and will use it to form the basis of USB4, the next iteration of USB following USB 3.2. Thunderbolt 3 not only doubles the bandwidth of...
Google security officials are advising Windows users to ensure they’re using the latest version 10 of the Microsoft operating system to protect themselves against a “serious” unpatched vulnerability that attackers have been actively exploiting in the wild. Unidentified attackers have been combining an exploit for the unpatched local privilege escalation in Windows with one for a separate security flaw in the Chrome browser that...
Google is urging users to update Chrome across all platforms after a critical vulnerability was discovered and patched. The vulnerability exploits a security flaw known as CVE-2019-5786. The security flaw is a memory management issue in Chrome’s FileReader which gives hackers the opportunity to inject and execute malicious code. Security researchers at Google and Microsoft have observed attackers using a combination of a patched...
Apple has reportedly updated the rules of its strict repair program to be a bit more lenient toward iPhones with aftermarket batteries. Internal company documents reportedly instruct its Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers to repair iPhones with third-party batteries, something that the iPhone maker has never allowed before. The change was first spotted by iGeneration, and MacRumors reportedly obtained the documents from...
When Facebook users learned last March about Facebook trackers and that the social media giant had given their sensitive information to political-data firm Cambridge Analytica, Mozilla (parent company of the security-focused browser Firefox) reacted fast: Within eight hours, the product team had built a browser extension called the Facebook Container. The plug-in, now the most popular browser extension Mozilla has ever built (1.5 million...
In numerous Mozilla bug tickets that were recently updated, Mozilla is getting closer to adding cryptomining and fingerprinting blocking to their Firefox browser. In May 2018 it was revealed that Mozilla was planning on blocking cryptominers and fingerprinters starting in Firefox 63. Firefox 63 has come and gone and now Firefox 65 is here, but unfortunately those features were never fully added to the browser. A series...
The beta for iOS 12.2 contains a change to mobile Safari that could have implications for the advertising and marketing worlds, as well as for Web-based augmented or virtual reality more generally. In the beta, a toggle labeled “Motion & Orientation Access” exists in the Safari privacy settings panel. This toggle determines whether sites visited in the mobile Safari browser will be able to...
Google engineers have proposed changes to the open-source Chromium browser that will break content-blocking extensions, including various ad blockers. Adblock Plus will most likely not be affected, though similar third-party plugins will, for reasons we will explain. The drafted changes will also limit the capabilities available to extension developers, ostensibly for the sake of speed and safety. Chromium forms the central core of Google...
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