access

The Indian government has banned Facebook from offering free Internet access in the country. Officials said the program breached net neutrality principles by favoring some sites over others. Since 2013, Facebook has offered a service called Free ... Basics in some nations where Internet access is unaffordable to large parts of the population. Most of these countries are in Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The service, offered in partnership with cellphone operators, gives users free access to data usage on a smart phone, which for many users will be their primary or only way of getting online ... (view more)

A newly-published study shows that the average person could manage without a smartphone for many common tasks. However, for a select group, smartphones are the only realistic option for accessing online services. The report comes from the Pew ... Research Center, which brought together several surveys, each of around 2,000 smartphone users. The results provide very differing meanings, depending on how they are viewed. (Source: pewinternet.org ) Most Tasks Achievable Without Phones On one hand, the study suggests smartphones are by no means vital for many everyday tasks. Participants were asked if ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Dean S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I've read that most WiFi routers use weak passwords (example: admin / admin), or none by default. I understand that for security reasons, the router administrator user and password should be set to ... prevent outsiders / hackers from logging into the router and changing the WiFi settings. On my own router I am connected to it via cable, and can connect by WiFi if I login with the password set for WPA2 security. What I have not been able to understand is how does the hacker connect to the router, and how can they adjust my WiFi settings ... (view more)

Microsoft has signed up to an international standard for protecting customer privacy with online data. Among other measures, Microsoft promises to tell customers when the government demands access to their data. The company has followed ISO standard ... number 27018, which are guidelines set forth by the International Organization for Standardization. It's an attempt to set internationally recognized rules and regulations for the way "personally identifiable information" is handled in cloud services, and where data is stored or processed online rather than on the user's own computer ... (view more)

The US government has been accused of embedding spyware directly onto hard drives using secret manufacturer information. Russian security software manufacturer Kaspersky Lab made the claims, and stem from its efforts to find and eliminate malicious ... software. Kaspersky says officials appear to have only used the spyware to target specific, foreign-based individuals. Kaspersky says that the spyware is part of an operation controlled by the National Security Agency (NSA) , under the name Equation Group. It claims the NSA figured out how to put spying software in the firmware of hard drives made ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Michael C. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a USB drive attached to my router. This drive is shared by several computers through the router on my home private network. My question is: if one of my computers became infected by a file ... locking virus such as CryptoLocker , would the network drive or the connected computers become infected or encrypted? If so, is there a way to prevent this? " My Response: It is possible for a virus to self replicate and infect other computers on the network, but that depends on the type of virus. At the time of writing, CryptoLocker is not a self ... (view more)

To many, the use of fingerprint readers as a way of password protection may represent the future of high-tech security. But a hacker has recently demonstrated that it's really not that difficult to bypass the security system -- all it takes, in ... fact, is a high-quality digital image. There's no denying that fingerprint passwords are becoming more and more common. They can be used to access PCs and thumb drives, but are becoming most prevalent in the smartphone world, where a quick dab of the finger gives one access to their mobile device. It seems like the perfect security system; ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Lagrangestacy' writes: " Dear Dennis, How can I recover a video from today that was deleted from my phone? " My response: You didn't mention which phone you have, so I will provide general information on file recovery for mobile ... phones using a PC. First and foremost: mobile phones use either micro SD memory card to store data, or internal phone memory, or both. Depending on where the deleted video is stored, you can try to use your Windows PC to recover the files. You can either: a) Take out your micro SD card in your mobile phone and attach it to the ... (view more)

A company that helps protect websites against a popular form of cyber attacks says it's solved a major security concern. The change could mean high-profile websites can be much more resilient and secure. The company in question is CloudFlare, which ... offers services to defend against denial of service attacks (DoS) , including distributed denial of services attacks (DDoS) . That's where cyber attackers flood a website with bogus data requests, until the site (or server) is no longer able to deal with legitimate requests. Oftentimes such an attack will bring a web server to a grinding ... (view more)

Facebook says there's no truth to claims that its Messaging app is spying on smartphone users. It says the confusion over wiretapping stems from security measures on iPhones and Android handsets. The issue involves the tool for Facebook users to ... exchange messages with one another. Whereas computer users are able to message other members through the Facebook website, this same feature is no longer supported in the official Facebook app that runs on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Instead, these users must install and run a separate app called Messenger. The Messenger app ... (view more)