Microsoft said on Wednesday that it is investigating another flaw in Internet Explorer, this time a vulnerability that could result in an unauthorized disclosure of information for users running its browser on older operating systems.
The software maker said in a security advisory that, although it knows of no attacks based on the flaw, the vulnerability could lead to a Web-based attack from either a Web site designed to take advantage of the flaw or from a site that becomes compromised via user-generated text or a malicious ad. Either way, a user would have to actively go to the compromised Web site.
Read more…
2009 was, in many ways, a good year for the Web and the technologies that help us access it. Companies big and small had to re-evaluate what was important: an ethos that channeled into more focused product launches and notable improvements to existing software and services.
Read more…
This past year felt like a rebuilding year for Firefox add-ons, with two new frameworks implemented to help guide the future of extensions. Personas gave Firefox on-the-fly theme-switching, and users can expect it to be part of the stable version of Firefox 3.6 when that gets released. Jetpack takes a similarly-minded approach to feature add-ons, allowing programmers to create feature-rich add-ons from little more than HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Expect JetPack to eventually be part of Firefox by default.
Read more…
Sex, porn, and Michael Jackson were among the most popular items kids searched for online in 2009, as tracked by Symantec’s OnlineFamily.Norton.
Symantec on Thursday revealed the top 100 favorite search terms among children 18 and under found by its free OnlineFamily.Norton service, which helps parents monitor their kids’ online searches. Though innocuous terms like Sesame Street and “New Moon”–a popular movie in the Twilight vampire series–made the cut, sex showed up fourth on the list for boys and fifth for girls, following YouTube, Google, and Facebook as the three top terms.
Read more…
Which perhaps doesn’t engage the emotions of spectators quite as much as, say, when rich people are caught with their plus fours around their ankles.
Still, the current lawsuit between eBay and Craigslist does offer a small window into our own daily lives. You know, the one through which we decide whether we believe what someone is telling us.
Read more…
Sites owned by Yahoo, AOL, and Google have joined Facebook and MySpace in expelling New York sex offenders from their rolls.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that Google’s Orkut.com, AOL’s Bebo.com, and Yahoo’s Flickr.com are among 13 additional social-networking sites to use sex offender data available through New York’s Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (E-Stop) to find and disable accounts associated with registered sex offenders.
Read more…
Those who say that Twitter is nothing more than a place where people share inconsequential experiences in their lives might want to listen up. Dell told Bloomberg on Tuesday that it has earned an estimated $6.5 million in sales of PCs, accessories, and software, thanks to promotions on Twitter.
Read more…
Microsoft released fixes on Tuesday for a critical vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, including one for which exploit code has been released.
Adobe, meanwhile, was scheduled to release a critical update affecting Flash Player and Adobe AIR, following news of exploit code being released for a vulnerability in Illustrator CS3 and CS4 on Windows and Mac last week.
Microsoft’s regular Patch Tuesday release includes six security bulletins addressing 12 vulnerabilities in IE, Windows, Windows Server, and Office.
Read more…
Facebook has formed a safety advisory board comprised of five Internet safety organizations that will
consult with the social-networking site, the company said Sunday.
Facebook said it plans to meet regularly with the advisory board to review the existing safety resources it provides its users, develop new materials, and seek advice on best practices for safety in general.
“We believe that the only way to keep kids safe online is for everyone who wants to protect them to work together,” Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of global communications and public policy, said in a statement. “The formation of a board to advise specifically on safety issues is a positive, innovative and collaborative step towards creating a more robust safety environment, and we are thrilled that such a well-respected, trusted group of organizations has joined us in this endeavor.”
Read more…
There’s a wonderful Borders bookstore in the middle of London’s Oxford Street. Or at least there was. I went there in September and suddenly it was no more. Indeed, the U.K. arm of Borders recently reached for a form of bankruptcy protection.
Read more…
