Tag Archives: Recent News

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

DuckDuckGo Email Privacy Service Beta Released

DuckDuckGo has a reputation for protecting the privacy of its users far more than most other companies.  Last year, the tiny search engine announced that they were experimenting with a free service designed to dodge email trackers as a means of further protecting the privacy of its users.

The company’s Email Protection service works by stripping email trackers from messages.

Initially, DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection service was available via a waitlist only.  You had to sign up.  If/when a spot opened for you, you could test it out.  During this waitlist testing period, the company reports that it found trackers in some 85 percent of incoming messages.

Now, DuckDuckGo’s Email Protection service has moved to Open Beta, so literally anyone can get a @duck.com email address. Per the company, you can create as many private email addresses as you like and they will be accessible from your desktop, iOS or Android devices.

Not only does the service promise to strip out unwanted email trackers, but it will also give you a report detailing exactly what trackers it found in your messages. It includes a new Link Tracking feature that helps prevent tracking across email links.

If that wasn’t enough, the service also includes Smart Encryption, which upgrades unencrypted HTTP links in emails to their secure HTTPS counterparts whenever possible. You can reply to messages with a @duck.com email address in lieu of whatever address you normally use.

To make use of the service, you’ll need to install the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser for iOS or Android.  Once installed, simply go to the Email Protection section of the Settings menu to try it out.

If you’re planning to use it on your desktop PC, you’ll need the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extensions depending on the browser you use. It is available for Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox or the DuckDuckGo Mac browser.  Once you’ve got the extension installed, just pay a visit to the email section of the company’s website.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Apple Products Released at Far Out Event

On September 7, 2022, Apple hosted its annual product release event at one pm Eastern Time (ET). Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, took the stage at the Far Out event held at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, to unveil a slew of brand-new and significantly enhanced devices. The iPhone 14 and several new smartwatches and AirPods are among the latest products.

The company released three new smartwatches to add to its expanding collection.

The new Apple watch series 8 was released at the event. Apple’s newest smartwatch has a
redesigned watch face, a large display, and several safety features, including collision detection.

The standard model begins at $399, but enthusiasts may upgrade to the deluxe model for
cellular data connectivity. The Apple Watch SE’s new design is identical to its predecessor’s. The only physical difference is that the base casing is composed of a nylon composite material, making it somewhat lighter. Beginning at $249, the SE is less expensive than previous models.

The Apple Watch Ultra has a case built from a titanium composition, making it more robust than other Apple Watch models. In addition, the display brightness of the smartwatch is 2000 nits, making it the brightest among all Apple watches. Along with sophisticated algorithms for reducing wind noise, the three built-in microphones considerably enhance the overall sound quality of the device. Another notable feature of the Apple Watch Ultra is the dual-frequency GPS, which provides more precise GPS data. The Apple Watch Ultra is priced at $799.

The H2 audio chip, swipe-based volume controls, improved noise cancellation, and extended battery life are just a few of the improvements included in Apple’s AirPods Pro 2.
Despite the new features, Apple decided not to change the price from $249.

The most interesting new product unveiled by Apple is the iPhone 14, which will be available in four distinct models: iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Apple made several hardware and software improvements to the iPhone 14 and iPhone14 Plus, including enhanced thermal performance, a new photogenic engine to boost the camera performance, and satellite communication in the event of an emergency.

The “dynamic island” feature can only be found on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. According to Apple, “the dynamic island enables new ways to interact with iPhone, featuring a design that blends the line between hardware and software, adapting in real-time to show important alerts, notifications, and activities.”

With the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, consumers will have access to updated
features, including improved cameras, adaptive flash, enhanced safety features, and the new A16 chip to improve efficiency.

Customers may place orders for any of Apple’s newly released items; however, the iPhone 14 Plus is not scheduled to ship until October 7, 2022.

The “Far Out” event Apple hosted was undoubtedly exciting for those passionate about the company’s products. It will be intriguing to watch how Apple continues to develop innovative approaches to continue servicing its customers.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Microsoft Teams Vulnerability Discovered

Microsoft Teams is a part of the 365 product family and is used by more than 270 million people for exchanging text messages, videoconferencing, and file storage.

In August of 2022, the team at Vectra Protect discovered a post-exploitation vulnerability in the plaintext storage disk used by Microsoft Teams while conducting research for a client. This vulnerability gives malicious actors, with either the local or remote systems access, the ability to obtain valid user credentials. Vectra discovered that the unencrypted credential management weakness affected all commercial and GCC Desktop Teams clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

In a blog post dated September 13, 2022, Vectra informed the public about the vulnerability and provided an example of how the hackers may exploit it.

Vectra explained that malicious actors could impersonate the user through Teams-related applications such as Skype and Outlook while bypassing multifactor authentication (MFA). With access to team-related applications, the hackers could target other employees or impersonate senior executives inside the corporation.

Connor Peoples, a security architect at Vectra, wrote, “Attackers can tamper with legitimate communications within an organization by selectively destroying, exfiltrating, or engaging in targeted phishing attacks.”

The desktop application is especially susceptible to attack since it does not have “additional security safeguards to protect cookie data.”

While Microsoft acknowledges the concern raised by Vectra, the corporation states, “The technique described does not meet our bar for immediate servicing as it requires an attacker to first gain access to a target network.”

Given the uncertain availability of a solution in the immediate future, Vectra advises users to utilize the browser-based version of Microsoft Teams. The additional safeguards in a browser helps user avoid security vulnerabilities that could be readily exploited.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Google Leaving IoT Services

Tech giant Google recently announced that it’s closing the doors on its IoT Core service.  Their stated reason for doing so was that their strategic partners can better manage customers’ IoT services and devices. Time will tell if the company’s decision was a good one.

Another tech giant, Microsoft, is wasting no time and is moving heavily in the opposite direction, adding to their suite of IoT services and offering increasingly tight integration with Azure. In recent years, Microsoft has bet big on IoT, and now has an impressive stable of offerings.

Microsoft’s offerings include but are not limited to:

  • The Azure IoT Hub, which serves as a central point of connection for IoT assets, allowing them to be more easily managed and monitored
  • Azure IoT Central, which gives users the capability of building edge solutions via Microsoft Tools
  • Azure Digital Twins, which models physical environments via “spatial intelligence”
  • Azure IoT Edge, which is a platform that brings analytics to edge-computing devices
  • Azure RTOS, which is a real time IoT platform
  • Windows 11 IoT and Windows 10 IoT core
  • And Azure Sphere, which is a Linux-based microcontroller OS platform

Microsoft is not alone in investing heavily in IoT services, however.  Amazon currently has a full suite comparable to what Microsoft is offering integrated with their highly popular and widely used AWS service. So even with Google pulling out of the space, consumers still have two strong and viable options to choose from.

The months ahead will be interesting indeed as the strategies these tech giants are pursuing begin to mature, creating ripple effects across the markets they serve.

For Microsoft’s part, it appears that CEO Satya Nadella’s recent statement that the company was interested in building an intelligent cloud/intelligent edge solution has changed somewhat. It is becoming an intelligent end-to-end distributed computing solution.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Windows 11 Gets New Taskbar Overflow Option

Are you the type of person who is in the habit of keeping all their apps open?  If so, you’re going to love a recent addition to Windows 11.

In a bid to make finding your open apps easier, once you’ve run out of room on the Windows Taskbar, they’ve introduced a new “taskbar overflow” feature.  It’s a three-dot menu that appears when there’s no more space on the taskbar that hides all the other apps you are running that don’t have room to be displayed there.

This is a vast improvement over the Windows 10 overflow, which only shows the most recent app that has been used or has been opened.

If you’re not a power user, you probably won’t even notice the change. If you are, once you give the new feature a try you’ll probably wonder how you ever got along without it.  In our view, it’s right up there with tabbed browsing.  It’s something that doesn’t seem at first glance like it would make much of a difference, but its impact is profound.

There has been quite a lot of that kind of thinking going into the design of Windows 11, and we have to say we’re impressed by the way the new OS is shaping up so far.  If this and other small but important innovations are any indication (and we absolutely believe that they are) then Windows 11 is going to be an absolute game changer when it’s released.

Kudos to Microsoft for really going the extra mile both in terms of updating and modernizing the overall Windows aesthetic and also for putting their collective thinking caps on and coming up with solutions to problems that really detract from the overall user experience.  Keep up the good work, and Windows 11 is going to be amazing.

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