News Archives - IT & Security News

‘Vishing’, or ‘phishing over the phone’ is on the rise and in this article, we look at vishing techniques and examples, and how to prevent them. Vishing The word Vishing is a combination of ‘voice’ and ‘phishing’ and describes the criminal process of using internet telephone service (VoIP) calls to deceive victims into divulging personal…

Andrew Bud, chief executive of iProov, the company behind the NHS app, has floated the idea of using facial recognition for Covid-19 “immunity passports”. App The iProov-made NHS app system, for Android and iOS, not to be confused with the in-development COVID-19 app, is a system for use in England that allows users to access…

Reports that eBay has been running port scans against the computers of visitors to the platform have caused alarm over potential security issues. Port Scans Port scanning is something that many people associate with cyber-attacks and penetration (‘pen’) testing. Port scanning scripts are used to determine which ports a system may be listening via, by sending…

Researchers from Australia’s Monash, Swinburne, and RMIT universities claim to have set a new Internet speed record of 44.2 Tbps. Fibre Connection The claim, which is featured in the ‘Nature Communications’ journal (https://www.nature.com/) refers to setting the bandwidth world record for ultra-dense optical data transmission over 75 km of standard optical fibre, with a single…

If you or anyone you know has used Zoom recently, perhaps to communicate during the lockdown, here is a way to change the background view to something a little more interesting than an overcrowded bookshelf: – In the Zoom app, click your profile (top right), and click Settings. – On the left-hand menu, click Virtual…

Phones are essentially powerful mobile computers that contain vast amounts of valuable personal information. This article looks at how to tell if your phone has a virus, what to do if you think it has, and how to protect your phone. Virus or Malware Both a virus and malware are malicious programs, but in security…

A Bloomberg NEF (BNEF) report forecasts that sales of combustion engine cars will drop 23 per cent in 2020, whereas worldwide electric car registrations are set to fall by only 18 per cent. Pandemic Causing Huge Car Sales Downturn With lockdown measures, a mass loss of income and jobs, the closure of car plants and…

The housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, has said in a speech about safely restarting the housing market that technology such as virtual viewings looks set to play an important part. Hard Hit Housing The housing market has been hit extremely hard by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and by the measures taken to curb the…

In addition to questions about the continued use of potentially unreliable and unregulated live facial recognition (LFR) technology, masks to protect against the spread of coronavirus may be presenting a further challenge to the technology. Questions From London Assembly Members A recently published letter by London Assembly members Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM and Sian Berry…

Here are 3 tips to help speed up a Windows 10 PC: 1. Change Power Settings If you are using a power saver plan, you can change your power settings to “Higher Performance” or “Balanced” to speed things up. This can be done via the Control Panel app, then select Hardware and Sound > Power…