John Lister

Hackers have forced a hotel to ditch its electronic room key system and return to physical keys. But reports that guests were locked in and out of their room turned out to be overblown. The Seehotel Jaegewirt in Austria has been targeted by at least ... four different attacks on its computer system. The most recent involved the system data being encrypted and the hackers demanding a payment in the virtual currency Bitcoin equivalent to around $1,600. The hotel mentioned the attack in a press release designed to raise awareness and warn other hotels of the need to maintain security. A news agency ... (view more)

A controversial program of warning letters for suspected copyright infringers has been dropped. The organization behind it says it was a successful education program but critics say it failed to have much impact. The "Copyright Alert System" was set ... up by the Center for Copyright Information, made up of the main producers of TV shows, movies and music in the US. It struck a deal in 2013 with the five largest Internet providers to send up to six warnings to customers after the copyright holders made a complaint of alleged infringement. The precise format was up to the Internet firm, ... (view more)

Facebook is making several changes to its Trending Topics section that, in effect, serves as its news headlines. The changes are designed to make it harder for people to game the system with bogus or intentionally provocative stories. Trending ... Topics is not about the stories that appear in the main news feed. They will continue to be decided by how many of the user's friends post, share or comment on links to the relevant web pages. Instead, Trending Topics is a separate list that appears on the right hand side of the page when users are logged in to the Facebook website. Clicking on the ... (view more)

Microsoft is to launch a simplified all-in-one tool for keeping track of security in Windows 10. It's based around what Microsoft is calling the "five pillars of protection." The new tool will be called the Windows Defender Security Center. As the ... name suggests, it's a mixture of Security Centre (a longstanding menu in Windows) and Windows Defender, Windows 10's built-in security software which replaces the old Microsoft Security Essentials. It's currently in testing among users who have signed up for 'fast ring updates', but will be introduced to the general public via ... (view more)

An independent study found 91 percent of Google searches for physical products brought up a Google product as the top ad result. Google says it plays fair and the practice doesn't mean other companies have to spend more on advertising. The Wall ... Street Journal study wasn't about the search results themselves, but rather the ads that appear on the results page. It took 25 tech hardware products from carbon monoxide detectors to WiFi routers and carried out 1,000 searches for each on a computer, having first blocked its past search history to avoid distortion. On all but two of the ... (view more)

Verizon has picked a creative way of making owners of the Galaxy Note 7 return the potentially dangerous handset. It's going to reroute outgoing voice calls and make users speak to its staff instead. It's the latest in a series of attempts to make ... sure all of the handsets are returned to Samsung. The company formally recalled the phone after multiple reports of overheating and even catching fire, something that's widely thought to be related to the battery design. Users Holding Out on Returns An original program asking owners to return the handset and offering a full refund had ... (view more)

Squirrels pose more of a threat to infrastructure than cyber terrorists - or, at least that's what one researcher's project implies. Cris Thomas says he found nearly five million people have been affected by power cuts caused by animals since 2013. ... According to Thomas, that's vastly more damaging than deliberate human actions to disrupt power and communications networks. The surprising claim came at a security conference in Washington and attracted attention given many speeches at such events concentrate on the actions of human hackers, terrorists and state governments in ... (view more)

Facebook is testing tools to make it easier to combat "fake news" posted to the site. It's using Germany as a test bed for the tools, which will include making it harder for scammers to make money from false stories. The term "fake news" came to ... prominence last year and has been applied to all sorts of types of writing, including opinionated pieces and legitimate articles with unintended factual errors. However, what Facebook is targeting is material that has the appearance of legitimate news reporting but is largely completely fictional and designed either to spread ... (view more)

Major changes to privacy laws in Europe could affect the way websites deliver advertising. The move is meant to protect user privacy, but critics claim it could make ads more annoying and intrusive. The proposed changes would affect websites used by ... people in European Union countries, but the regulatory impact could be so severe that sites find it easier to change their policies worldwide. According to European officials, the changes are designed to take existing rules that affect telecommunications companies and apply them equally to Internet companies. The main principle of the change is ... (view more)

Mobile users on "unlimited" data plans got a double dose of bad news this week. Verizon will be kicking the heaviest data users off the plan, while AT&T's remaining unlimited users face a price hike. Cellphone service providers have largely ... moved away from offering truly unlimited data plans over the past few years. That's partly because of a big increase in how much data mobile customers use, particularly as faster speeds made streaming video more practical. While new unlimited deals are almost non-existent, most providers have continued to allow people to keep existing ... (view more)