Yahoo ordered to show how it recovered ‘deleted’ emails in drug case – Naked Security

Interesting reading about Yahoo recovering supposedly deleted files from their servers for a U.K. drug case. It makes you wonder what else is available that can be handed over to the government to prosecute you. I am not totally unhappy that these drug dealers information was made available for prosecution, however, this may be a real issue for the general private market out there. Just something to think about!

If this is peak your interest you can read more here.

Researcher and Editor Intro Video

Office 365 Other New Features

Microsoft is getting some new online app additions to help you do your research and to clean up your grammar. Microsoft is adding Researcher which is touted to give you easier access to credible sources and and cited content.

Researcher helps you find and insert reliable sources and content for your paper in fewer steps. Within your Word document you can explore material related to your topic and add it, including his properly formatted citation, with just a single click. Researcher uses the bing knowledge graph to pull the appropriate content from the web and provide a safe structured and credible information.

Microsoft plans on expanding Researcher’s source of reference materials to also include places like national science and health centers, well-known encyclopedias, history databases and much more. Microsoft plants also bring this program to your mobile devices so that no matter what you are using you will have this resource available to you. Researcher is available today for Office 365 subscribers using Word 2016 on Windows desktops.

Another new Office 365 app called Editor, will assist you with advanced proofing and editing of your documents. Microsoft is leveraging machine learning and natural language processing-mixed with input from their own team of linguists-to make suggestions to help you improve your writing. Initially it will help you simplify and streamline written communications by flagging unclear phrases or complex words. As an example:  recommending “most” in place of “the majority of”.

Since editor is a cloud-based service, it should get better in time. This fall, it will expand upon words current spelling and grammar tools to help you with understanding why words or phrases may not be accurate. By doing this it is teaching you at the same time it is correcting.

Microsoft shortens recovery rollback period to 10 days in Windows 10 anniversary update

When one did an upgrade ever since Windows 10 began Microsoft offered the opportunity to recover their system by rolling back in upgrade. They now have shortened it to just 10 days instead of the 30 that they had done for previous versions.

They must figure that if you like Windows 10 you're going to really like the new anniversary update. You probably already know what Windows 10 is all about so you shouldn't need to have the longer period to check things out. If you are unhappy with the new version you should probably be able to figure that out within the 10 day timeframe.

According to winsupersite.com, a Microsoft spokesperson it was a data-driven decision to change rollback timeframe from 30 to just 10 days:

"Based on our user research, we noticed most users who choose to go back to a previous version of Windows do it within the first several days. As such, we changed the setting to 10 days to free storage space used by previous copies."

According to Microsoft they were seeing that people were rolling back in less than a week if they were going to do so and so in their mind, they were helping the end-user to recover somewhere between three and 5 GB of storage space on the device that was being used by the rollback recovery. This could be very significant for  low storage space devices so probably is a good thing that this has been shortened to help you out. I'm sure a lot of you will be able to come up with a case for why this would not be a good thing. .

Microsoft Outlook’s Focused Inbox

Here’s a quick video from Microsoft showing this feature.

Microsoft Replacing Clutter in Upcoming Office 365 Update

Internally and almost everybody here has been turning off the clutter function in Microsoft Outlook. It is been a feature that none of us have really liked very much because of its inconsistencies in the way that it operates. It is planning on replacing it with a feature called “Focused Inbox” which is all ready running in the iOS and android Outlook apps.

Focused Inbox uses a ta andb system separating "information between "focused" and "other" tabs. So now you have a program that is determining what is low or high priority and separating them into these two containers. I have not thought much of the algorithm that that phone apps is using two separate these messages so hopefully it'll start to get better as time goes on.

Clutter did not work particularly well for people who had complex inbox rules already in place to manage their email, or who did not receive enough email for the Clutter algorithms to learn what to do with it. For businesses, the sudden disappearance of email into a separate folder caused some support issues, with administrators having to seek out the administrative controls for Clutter after the CEO's important company-wide email didn't get read by half the employees.

Microsoft promises that when this new feature rolls out in Outlook that the messages and color will automatically be moved over to the other tab. When your outlook is updated Microsoft says that it will give you an opt in option that will appear in Outlook and he will give you the option to start using focused inbox. There will also be an option for you to turn off Focused Inbox at any time as well.

There's going to be another feature that is being added called the Outlook @Mentions Feature. It is a quick tagging function that will allow you to add users to email discussion. All you will need to do is to add the @ symbol in a message and you'll get a list of names with the next letter typed. Recipients of your email that have been tagged in this manner will see their email name in a blue highlight color, so they'll know that they had been added to the thread.

Microsoft states that this feature in Outlook will work with any email service you're using in Outlook. However the blue highlight feature will just be available for Outlook.com and office 365 accounts. This function should be added later in the year for other services like Gmail and Yahoo.

Do you want to leap ahead in queue to begin your W10 Anniversary Update!

So you are telling me that you are a bit impatient and want to jump the line ahead of some of the other 350 million people waiting to upgrade to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. If this is what you want you can manually perform the update by going to the Windows 10 update history page.

This page will allow you to access the Get the Anniversary Update now button and will grab a small executable that you can run to pull in the update. It will go through a device check and then begin the download process. It will then begin the process of performing your upgrade.

If you find you don’t like the update it is easy to reverse the installation. But if you are already into using Window 10 I’m sure this upgrade will tickle you pink as well!

I just completed the Windows 10 Anniversary Update

It took a little while for it to download and update, be patient you are competing with a bunch of other users wanting to do the same thing on their workstation as well. The Windows 10 update assistance provided at a nice screen to give me an idea of what is going on during the entire process. It doesn't take any amount of expertise to perform this software update so don't be afraid to try it out. Remember all you do is go to the Windows 10 update history to be able to do perform this update.

After the update is complete your system will have to reboot to finish the installation updates. Be careful that you don't turn off your's system during this last bit because it will potentially corrupt the installation if you do. It will probably go through several reboots during this process so be patient and let it do its thing.

When it finally completes it will go through a series of screens to ensure thatyour system is set upthe way that youneeded to with the features that you want to be turned on.See you have a choice of either taking the suggested set up or going in and customizing the settings the way you would like to see them. It will then go through a another quick processing period to finish setting up those changes. And then everything will be complete. On my system it took about an hour and 15 minutes to complete the whole process.

Have you ever had a cell phone stolen?

CTIA members of the Smartphone Anti-Theft Voluntary Committee have met their voluntary commitment to make antitheft tools available for free on all new mobile phones manufactured after July 2016 for sale in the US. This covers most of the phones that are manufactured for sale in the US.

The first phase of this commitm you ent plan called for the antitheft tools to be installed on all handsets offered for sale after July 2015 in the US. The second phase called for new handset models sold after July 2016 in the US to give authorized users the ability to disable the antitheft tools anytime they want to, as long as the device is still connected and still in the authorized user's possession.

So if you don't like being tracked by your cell phone the ability to turn off this feature is a big boon.

For more information from naked security on the subject click here.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Walk Through

Richard Hay from Supersite for Windows has posted a nice Windows 10 Anniversary Update Video showing a lot of the new features of this release. The release began yesterday so keep your eyes open for your copy of the update. If you are interested in what to expect you will probably want to take a quick look at this posting/video.

Are your looking forward to the Window 10 Anniversary Update?

It looks like Microsoft is making Cortana a central focus to many of its search functions including showing up on the lock screen. It will not only be more prominent but will also be much harder to get rid of “her”.

With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, the search box is now Cortana. Customers can expect the same great search experience powered by Bing and Microsoft Edge with the added benefit of Cortana’s personality.

If your system is on a Windows Domain Network your IT Department can control this through group policies but we don’t have a simple and quick method of shutting “her’' down.

Another “feature” that is baked in is the inability for consumers to control Windows 10 updates. Your going to have to suffer through them.

The spokesperson suggested that there are some Cortana tweaks that Windows 10 consumer users could do, if wanted:

We know consumers want choice and we make it easy to customize Cortana’s personalization or opt-out of Cortana’s suite of personalized services. Cortana works best when you sign in, but if you choose not to, you can still use her to chat, search the web and your Windows device. If you like, you can also easily hide Cortana and the search box in the taskbar altogether.

Cortana is also going to hold a prominent role in educational environments as well.

For our education editions, Microsoft is committed to an experience free from sponsored content by default. Within Cortana, Microsoft could not guarantee that sponsored content would not appear as part of the online search experience.

Microsoft is working on creating a future Cortana service that has an "education-appropriate experience."

Secure messaging app Telegram leaks anything pasted in to it – Naked Security

While this more of an old story than a new one since a patch for the issue has already been issued, the information that Naked Security discussed was interesting an if you are a Mac user and you are worried about security issues this would be something to consider. Read More Here.

Another posting for Sysadmin’s Day from Naked Security

Feeling under appreciated, needing a little help? Want to get a little something for talking about your favorite issue?

Here is good way to compensate. Find a little humor with the Sysadmin foolproof flowchart guide on fixing any computer problem. After you stop laughing send in one of your many experiences and get a free IT Survival Kit.

In case you missed the Windows 10 Free Upgrade

There is a little loophole that I am sure that Microsoft will close up quickly that still allows users that need to use assistive technologies to still receive the Windows Upgrade for free.

According to a tucked-away page on Microsoft’s site, users who need accessibility features can still choose to upgrade for free for an undetermined amount of time. To sign up for the free upgrade, you simply have to check a box that says you use assistive technologies, and Microsoft doesn’t seem to be verifying the claim at all so it may work even for typical users who missed the deadline.

Microsoft may rescind or modify the offer at any time, so if you want to upgrade to Windows 10 and don’t want to pay, you should probably check this out as soon as possible. To get started, head to the source link below and click Upgrade Now.

Windows 10 free upgrade for customers who use assistive technologies

Thanks Matt for this little insight.

Sophos SafeGuard – encryption that won’t slow you down

Sophos SafeGuard – encryption that won’t slow you down

Looking for the answer to your encryption needs? Sophos SafeGuard provides the most complete data protection solution on the market today.

It keeps your data secure as it moves from laptop, to mobile, to cloud, to Mac; as well as making it easy to manage native encryption such as BitLocker and FileVault 2.

But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what the experts are saying:

• ‘The Breakout Star’ in Forrester Encryption Wave 2015
• Winner of TechTarget’s Readers’ Choice Award for Best Encryption
• Recognized as a Leader by Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for Mobile Data Protection

LEARN MORE

Learn more and get a no-obligation quote.

© 2015 Sophos Inc. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy
3 Van de Graaff Drive, Burlington, MA 01803.