 Google has decided to shut down its social media website Google+ after a massive data breach which potentially exposed data of over 500,000 users. Google has since decided to shut down the network for consumers. The company said it didn’t report the breach partly due to fears of regulatory scrutiny. This comes from the Wall Street Journal who cited unnamed sources and internal documents. Google said the bug hasn’t affected the personal data but is investigating the issue. Google found the issue with their API back in March but chose to ignore it and not report it to the regulatory bodies. This is in direct violation of GDPR which says that any data breach should be reported within 72 hours. Google said a glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between a major redesign in 2015 and March 2018, when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue. Wall Street Journal also reported that Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai was briefed on the plan not to notify users as it would result in an immediate regulatory interest. Since the breach has been reported, it would be interesting to see how the regulatory bodies respond to this. Find out what Google had to say about this breach on OUR FORUM.  At Microsoft’s Surface event the company announced a brand-new accessory, the Surface Headphones, and the company has slowly been trickling out details regarding its pricing and availability. The headphones, which are appealing especially to developers and other office workers who want to maintain their productivity in distraction-prone environments, utilize 4 beam-forming microphones, 4 active noise-canceling microphones, and 13 levels of noise reduction for up to 30 dB for active noise cancellation to keep users focused. They also feature 40 mm free drivers delivering up to115 dB, automatic pause and play, support phone calls, USB-C charging, 3.5mm connectivity, Microsoft’s own Bluetooth fast pair technology and 15 hours of battery life. At the time of their announcement, Microsoft did not reveal the pricing and availability of the Cortana-powered headphones, but we have recently heard they will be retailing for $350, in line with similar offerings by Bose and Sony. Microsoft has been working on the headphones for the last three years and Panos Panay called them “One of my dream products right now.” Visit OUR FORUM for more information and links.  Microsoft unveiled Windows 10 version 1809, the October 2018 Update for Windows 10 on October 2, 2018, officially. The company published updated tools to upgrade to a new version of Windows 10 and enabled the update on Windows Update as well but only for users and administrators who clicked on the "check for updates" button manually in the Windows Update interface. Reports started to emerge soon thereafter that, once again, updates were not processing as smoothly as possible for some users. User reports suggested that personal files were deleted on some machines and that there were a number of issues next to that. Microsoft itself blocked updates for devices with certain hardware or software configurations outright as these configurations were known to have issues with the new version of Windows 10. The company posted an update on the official Windows 10 version 1809 support page on the Microsoft website on October 5, 2018. There it revealed that it decided to pause the rollout of the update because of data loss reports by users who performed the upgrade on PCs. Microsoft urges customers to wait with the installation of the Windows 10 feature update; users who downloaded the ISO files manually or created installation media are urged not to install it until new media is available. Further explanation is posted on Our Forum. |
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