Facebook and Instagram will allow you to disable ad tracking, but only in the EU and there is a catch

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Facebook and Instagram will allow you to disable ad tracking, but only in the EU and there is a catch
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The Meta-fueled controversy train takes breaks here and there, but doesn’t really stop. A while back, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram was fined about $423 million dollars by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which is the primary privacy regulator of the European Union (EU).

As you may have guessed, this was related to the way Meta was utilizing user-collected data. When the fine was officialized, the company pretty much threatened to have Facebook and Instagram removed from app stores in Europe.

I guess you’ve noticed how that never happened, so after that attempt failed, Meta had no other choice but to make some changes. And as reported by the Wall Street Journal, it looks like denizens of the EU will probably, maybe be allowed to disable ad tracking for their accounts.

And in typical Meta fashion, there is a catch. If you are interested in getting rid of those pesky ad trackers that are gulping up all of your preference statistics, then you’d have to submit a form, which basically acts like a plea to have you opt out of tracking.

Meta, however, reserves to the final call, as it will quote “evaluate the submission and decide whether to implement the change“. This is bound to get privacy activists roaring, not only because this leaves out the user’s choice in the hands of a corporation, but also because it means that users will still be opted in by default when making an account.

An important note to make here is that currently, you’ve got an option to disable a form of tracking on these social platforms, but that is entirely different. If you’ve got that toggled off, it basically limits Facebook — for example — from using data on you, gathered from your activity outside of the platform, for targeted advertising.

In contrast, this new opt-out form, if accepted after being submitted, will severely limit the data that the social platforms can use. As in, they’ll still use general, public info about you such as your age group and general location, but won’t track what is the last video you’ve liked on Facebook, YouTube or any other websites or apps.

This is a mixed bag of a solution if there ever was one, but it is still an attempt for Meta to stay relevant, despite all of the limitations being put down by regulators worldwide. Europeans should start seeing notifications for the ability to opt out starting next Wednesday, so if you are interested, keep your eyes peeled. 

Otherwise, you might just miss it.

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3CX desktop app used in a supply chain attack

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3CX desktop app used in a supply chain attack
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Researchers have found that the 3CX desktop app may be compromised and used in supply chain attacks.

Researchers have found that the 3CX desktop app may be compromised and used in supply chain attacks.

The 3CX Desktop App is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) type of application which is available for Windows, macOS, Linux and mobile. Many large corporations use it internally to make calls, view the status of colleagues, chat, host web conferences, and for voicemail. 3CX is a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system, which is basically a private telephone network used within a company or organization.

The 3CX website boasts 600,000 customer companies with 12 million daily users, which might give you an idea of the possible impact a supply chain attack could have.

The discovered attack is very complex and probably has been going on for months. While attribution in these cases is always difficult, some fingers are pointing to North Korea. It is likely the attacks have been ongoing since one of the shared samples was digitally signed on March 3, 2023, with a legitimate 3CX Ltd certificate issued by DigiCert.

While it is almost certain that Windows Electron clients are affected, there is no evidence so far that any other platforms are. On the 3CX forums, users are being told that only the new version (3CX Desktop App) leads to the malware infection, because the 3CX Phone for Windows (the legacy version) is not based on the Electron Framework. Electron is an open source project that enables web developers to create desktop applications.

Update March 31, 2023: an independent researcher and 3CX have confirmed that the Mac version of the desktop client is compromised as well.

According to a 3CX spokesperson, this happened because of an upstream library it uses became infected.

The main executable is not malicious itself and can be downloaded from 3CX’s website as part of an installation procedure or an update. The 3CXDesktopApp.exe executable, however, sideloads a malicious dynamic link library (DLL) called ffmpeg.dll.

The ffmpeg.dll in turn is used to extract an encrypted payload from d3dcompiler_47.dll and execute it. The malware then downloads icon files hosted on GitHub that contain Base64 encoded strings appended to the end of the images, as shown below.

hex view of ico fileBase64 strings embedded in ICO files (image courtesy of BleepingComputer)

The d3dcompiler_47.dll file has all the functionality of the legitimate version, with the payload appended. This warrants that it would alert users to the fact that something is wrong with their software.

While research is ongoing into the full payload, it is clear that a backdoor is created on affected systems.

What needs to be done?

After initially playing down the alerts on its user forums as a possible false positive, 3CX has now posted that it is working on an update.

The advice on the 3CX forums is to uninstall the app and then reinstall it, accompanied by a strong advice to install the PWA client instead.

Malwarebytes detects the malicious DDLs as Trojan.Agent (ffmpeg.dll) and Trojan.Compromised3CX (%LOCALAPPDATA%\PROGRAMS\3CXDesktopApp\*\d3dcompiler_47.dll).

Malwarebytes blocks Trojan.Agent

We will keep you updated here, but as a user you might want to keep an eye on 3CX’s blog and forums to learn about new developments, and when an update is available.

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Galaxy Tab S8 series receives One UI 5.1 in the US

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Galaxy Tab S8 series receives One UI 5.1 in the US
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Samsung‘s Galaxy Tab S8 series flagship Android tablets are receiving the One UI 5.1 update in the US. The rollout began a few days back and had reached users on T-Mobile, MetroPCS, Xfinity Mobile, and Dish networks at the time of this writing. The company will gradually push the update to units on more networks in the coming days.

One UI 5.1 is the latest version of Samsung’s custom Android skin. Debuting with the Galaxy S23 series in February, the company has already seeded this update to dozens of other Galaxy smartphones and tablets. The Galaxy Tab S8 series started picking it up in late February. Following the release in international markets, the Korean firm is now pushing One UI 5.1 to the Galaxy Tab S8 lineup in the US as well.

This update for the latest flagship Samsung tablets in the US comes with the firmware build number ending with BWC1. As detailed by the company in its official changelog, One UI 5.1 brings plenty of goodies to the Galaxy Tab S8 devices. For starters, new selfie effects in the camera app let you quickly change the tone of your selfies. The Gallery app alo gains a Shared Family Album and revamped info display.

The Galaxy Tab S8 lineup is also getting enhanced image remastering with One UI 5.1. The feature has been a subject of controversy recently due to it adding a row of fully-grown teeth to an infant’s photo. But it has its positives as well. Image remastering lets you remove shadows and reflections from photos. You can even remaster downloaded GIFs to improve their resolution and clarity.

One UI 5.1 also brings improvements to multitasking, Modes and Routines, Samsung DeX, Samsung Internet, widgets, Settings, and more. The Galaxy Tab S8 series is picking up the February 2023 Android security patch as well. If you’re using this tablet in the US, you should receive all of these goodies and security enhancements over the next few days. You can manually check for updates from the Settings app.

Samsung is readying the Galaxy Tab S9 series

The Galaxy Tab S8 series debuted in February last year. Samsung didn’t launch a successor this February but the Galaxy Tab S9 series is expected to arrive in the second half of 2023.

Like last year, we will reportedly get three models this year too. The Galaxy Tab S9, Galaxy Tab S9+, and Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra should be accompanied by the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 foldables. New smartwatches and tablets should also debut at the same event sometime in August or September. We will keep you posted with all the latest information about these devices.


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Google Search will now give you extreme heat alerts

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Google Search will now give you extreme heat alerts
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Climate change is one of humanity’s most pressing issues, causing extreme weather events like flooding and heat waves that claim thousands of lives every year. However, heat waves have also become an increasingly prevalent issue in recent years, impacting over half a billion children, according to a report from UNICEF. In response to this threat, Google is launching a new “extreme heat alerts” feature on its search engine that aims to provide users with accurate and timely information on how to stay safe during intense heat waves.

Google’s extreme heat alerts will warn people when the local temperature reaches a certain threshold and will appear at the top of the search results page for relevant queries. Additionally, the feature will provide helpful tips on how to stay cool during extreme heat, including information on medical issues to be aware of and how to mitigate their effects. Google has also partnered with the Global Heat Health Information Network to ensure that the information it provides in its heat wave alerts is accurate and up-to-date.

“We’ll be launching a new feature to raise awareness about extreme heat to keep people safe, cool and healthy. Soon, you will see dedicated features highlighting relevant news, recommended actions and local information during a severe heat wave. The new heat alert is one of the many ways we’re continuing to update search to help people find timely, authoritative and actionable information when they need it the most,” said Hema Budaraju, Google’s senior director of product for health and search.

Google’s Expansion of Tree Canopy

Besides the extreme heat alerts, Google has also announced the expansion of its Tree Canopy tool to over 350 cities worldwide. Available in the Environmental Insights Explorer app, the tool uses AI and aerial imagery to enable cities to understand their current tree coverage and plan for urban forestry initiatives. Furthermore, Google has created a new tool that leverages AI to plan the installation of “cool roofs.” These roofs reflect heat from the sun, reducing temperatures in urban areas and mitigating the urban heat island effect during heatwaves.

For several years, Google has played a crucial role in providing timely alerts for natural disasters such as wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and now heatwaves. Google’s innovative online tools are essential to creating more sustainable and resilient communities worldwide.


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The Ring Video Doorbell 4’s price just crashed

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The Ring Video Doorbell 4’s price just crashed
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Amazon does typically discount its Ring Video Doorbells quite often. But this time, it’s different. The Ring Video Doorbell 4 is now down to just $159. Marking its lowest price ever. That is also good for a $60 discount on this video doorbell. Definitely worth picking up from Amazon today.

Ring Video Doorbell 4 – Amazon

Why should I buy the Ring Video Doorbell 4?

If you have the Ring Video Doorbell 3 or older, this is the doorbell to buy. Ring did improve a few things here, compared to the 3. Which includes video quality and video features. Now, the Ring Video Doorbell 4 uses 1080p resolution, giving you a nice crisp image. It also includes night vision with sharp contrast. Now night vision isn’t new, but adding in the sharp contrast is new. Making it easier to see people and things outside.

The Ring Video Doorbell 4 does make it easy for you to keep an eye on your home, when you’re home and when you aren’t. It’s compatible with Alexa, and you’ll get notifications from Alexa here. So that you’ll be aware when packages are delivered, when someone comes to your door – whether they ring the doorbell or not – and much more.

Perhaps the best feature of the Ring Video Doorbell 4 is indeed the removable battery. This is a wireless doorbell, though you can also opt to use your existing wiring for it. Which means the battery needs to be charged every so often. Thankfully, Ring makes this really easy. Just pop off the front panel, and then hit the quick release button to release the battery and pop in a new one. It takes just seconds to do. Instead of having to pop off the entire doorbell and plugging it in to charge.

It’s a great video doorbell, and today it’s at a great price. You can purchase it from Amazon today by clicking the link below.

Ring Video Doorbell 4 – Amazon


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Amazon just knocked $400 off this Samsung QLED 4K TV

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Amazon just knocked $400 off this Samsung QLED 4K TV
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One of the best QLED TVs from Samsung in 2022, is currently sitting at 30% off of its regular price. Today, you can buy the Samsung Q80B 65-inch TV for just $997. Normally priced at $1,397, this is a pretty good price. And one of the best smart TV deals you’ll find today, QLED or not.

Samsung Q80B 65-inch QLED 4K TV – Amazon

Why should you buy the Samsung Q80B 65″ QLED 4K TV?

The price is good and all, but why should you buy this TV? Well there are a number of reasons. First of all, it’s a QLED TV. QLED which is a quantum dot technology, offers a lot of the same advantages as OLED, but without the major disadvantage of screen burn-in. QLED gives you deep blacks, and more true-to-life colors. It also gets brighter than traditional LCD or LED TVs.

Samsung has included the Quantum Processor 4K which allows this TV to upscale non-4K content into 4K content. Allowing you to take full advantage of this TV’s excellent picture quality.

This is a great gaming TV, as it does have [email protected] for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. It also has the Gaming Hub so you can enjoy cloud gaming without a console. Like with Amazon Luna and NVIDIA GeForce Now.

When it comes to sound, the Q80B also comes with Dolby Atmos. Giving you a pretty incredible sound experience here. It also uses SpaceFit Sound, which is designed for your space, big or small. Samsung makes it super easy to calibrate your TV in just minutes to get the best sound experience possible from your brand new TV.

Let’s not forget about SmartThings either. Samsung SmartThings is available here, along with Tizen. This will allow you to turn off your lights, adjust your thermostat and much more, from the comfort of your couch. This can be done with your voice or the remote.

As you can tell, this is quite the TV, and at this price, it’s definitely worth buying.


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Update now! Apple fixes actively exploited vulnerability and introduces new features

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Update now! Apple fixes actively exploited vulnerability and introduces new features
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Apple has released security updates and new features for several of its products, including a fix for an actively exploited vulnerability.

Apple has released security updates for several products. Most notably one of the updates fixes an actively exploited vulnerability in the WebKit component of iOS 15.7.4 and iPadOS 15.7.4 that was fixed earlier in macOS Ventura 13.2.1, iOS 16.3.1, iPadOS 16.3.1, and Safari 16.3.

You can find the specific security content for the devices you’re interested in by following the links below:

The updates may already have reached you in your regular update routines, but it doesn’t hurt to check if your device is at the latest update level. If a Safari update is available for your device, you can get it by updating or upgrading macOS, iOS, or iPadOS.

How to update your iPhone or iPad.

How to update macOS on Mac.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database lists publicly disclosed computer security flaws. The actively exploited vulnerability is listed as CVE-2023-23529: a type confusion issue that Apple says has been addressed with improved checks.

Type confusion vulnerabilities are programming flaws that happen when a piece of code doesn’t verify the type of object that is passed to it before using it. So let’s say you have a program that expects a number as input, but instead it receives a string (i.e. a sequence of characters), if the program doesn’t properly check that the input is actually a number and tries to perform arithmetic operations on it as if it were a number, it may produce unexpected results which could be abused by an attacker.

Type confusion can allow an attacker to feed function pointers or data into the wrong piece of code. In some cases, this could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable device. So, an attacker would have to trick a victim into visiting a malicious website or open such a page in one of the apps that use WebKit to render their pages.

WebKit is the browser engine that powers Safari on Macs as well as all browsers on iOS and iPadOS (browsers on iOS and iPadOS are obliged to use it). It is also the web browser engine used by Mail, App Store, and many other apps on macOS, iOS, and Linux.

There are some other vulnerabilities that make it worth checking if you need to update. The latest iPhone update alone fixes 33 vulnerabilities, some of them could lead to arbitrary code execution. But none of the other fixed vulnerabilities were flagged as having been used in real life attacks.

For iOS 16.4 users that don’t consider security their first priority, you may be convinced to update by looking at all the new features that were introduced in iOS 16.4. Apparently Apple also found it more important to notify me on my iPad about the number of new emojis (21) first.

screenshot of available update for iPadOS 16.4

“This update introduces 21 new emoji and includes other enhancements, bug fixes, and security updates for your iPad.”

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Android 14 share sheet to get a notable and functional upgrade

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Android 14 share sheet to get a notable and functional upgrade
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Netizens should expect an upgrade to the share sheet on Android 14 bringing new features and design layout. The Android community is just months away from the release of a new operating system. With each new release comes new features that change how users interact with the system daily.

As the community draws closer to this launch, there are a few new features that are coming to the limelight. One such feature has to do with the share sheet and its new interactive tools. Information about this coming upgrade to the share sheet was made available by Mishaal Rahman in a recent blog post.

According to Rahman, five major tweaks are coming to the share sheet. These features will change the way you interact with this tool on your Android devices. As you await the release of Android 14 along with these new share sheet features, here are all the changes you should expect.

All changes coming to the share sheet on Android 14

With the launch of Android 14, the share sheet will get some new features. Some of these features will be directly noticeable by users, while others will not be so noticeable. The changes that most people overlook will take place behind the scenes.

The major change that most users will notice will be the new row for app action. With this feature, users can get app-specific controls at the top of the share sheet menu. This is an improvement from what is currently available, as with Android 13 users need to scroll to the bottom of the list to access this feature.

Another feature coming to the share sheet on Android 14 is the fact that it will become an app of its own. Currently, this share sheet is baked into the Android 13 system, hence rely on it for upgrades and improvements. But with the release of Android 14, the share sheet feature will become an app of its own.

This will enable it to receive updates independent of the operating system. It is safe to say that this is one of those features that as a user you might not notice. Other features of the share sheet include reselection, image preview, and the ability to share text with images.

These are improvements that you will notice and make use of daily. The reselection feature will enable you to remove or add more items to share even after hitting the share button. As for the image preview, this helps you scroll through your image selection while preparing to share. Last is the share text with image feature, and this brings an ‘include or exclude text’ checkbox that when ticked displays the text found on the image.

All five features coming to the share sheet with Android 14 will change how we interact with the app. At the moment, these features are available for testing to developers via the latest preview. In a few months, the Android community will welcome these features with the Android 14 release.


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Microsoft will place ads in the Bing AI chatbot

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Microsoft will place ads in the Bing AI chatbot
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With over 100 million daily active users, Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot has single-handedly brought Microsoft back into the browser wars. However, running an AI chatbot is still significantly more expensive than traditional searches. Therefore, to offset these costs, Microsoft has started incorporating ads within the Bing AI chatbot’s responses, linking to relevant products and services. Although the ads are currently appearing for a limited number of users, they may become common in the near future.

In a blog post announcing this decision, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Search and Devices, acknowledged that they are exploring additional capabilities for publishers, including over 7,500 Microsoft Start partner brands. These capabilities involve placing ads in the chat experience and sharing the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response. The company is also considering displaying additional links from an advertiser’s website when a user hovers over a link.

Besides ads, Microsoft is also considering adding rich captions from its Start personalized news feed publishers next to the Bing AI chatbot’s responses. This would provide users with additional context and potentially increase engagement with the chatbot.

“For our Microsoft Start partners, placing a rich caption of Microsoft Start licensed content besides the chat answer helps to drive more user engagement with the content on Microsoft Start, where we share the ad revenue with the partner. We’re also exploring placing ads in the chat experience to share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response,” reads Microsoft’s blog post.

Balancing monetization and the user experience

Microsoft’s decision to monetize its chatbot is not unexpected. As Mehdi notes, the chatbot has attracted a significant number of new users to Bing, presenting a valuable opportunity for advertisers. However, the company’s current implementation looks half-baked, as it’s not always clear what the chatbot is advertising.

In one example, it is unclear whether TrueCar is selling the car and paying for placement on searches for new Hondas or if it is just a reference or price-checking site that pays to be the preferred provider of car prices to Bing. We’ll have to see how this advances over time.


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