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Ubuntu 11.10, the latest stable release of the popular Linux distribution, has just been released. Some screenshots have already been posted here. If you are new to Linux and need some hand-holding creating custom partitions for your new installation (of Ubuntu 11.10), the first thing you should know is that the installer in this new [...]

A new Android phishing scheme posing as an unofficial Netflix app has been discovered outside of the official Android Market. The app asks for users’ Netflix usernames and passwords and sends them to a phishing server. The app was not posted to the Android Market, so the risk for most users is quite low. The [...]

When you download an app on your phone, do you read the permissions? Do you know what permissions are? We recently asked our Facebook fans (a pretty security savvy group of people) this question and 46% of the 838 survey respondents said “no.” When downloading apps, users are often in a hurry to install and [...]

If you have a smartphone, which should be almost everybody reading this, and you have not set a password or pin to protect the data stored on it, the folks from Lookout, a security outfit based in San Francisco, California USA, have published the steps that you may take to guard access to the data [...]

Within the past four months, a couple of very close friends lost their smartphones. The phones were not stolen, just misplaced – in a public space my friends could not recall where. Worst part is, neither phone was backed up, which meant that my friends had to start their mobile life from scratch. Considering the [...]

HP has announced that it is considering the spin-off or sale of its PC business unit. The announcement was made yesterday, part of the company’s Q3 2011 Earnings results. HP’s PC unit includes the WebOS-based smartphone and tablet computer business. If you recall, HP inherited WebOS, a Linux distribution originally designed for smartphones, but that [...]

Spotify is a streaming music service spawned in Sweden, but headquartered in London, with offices in a few choice countries. But is the music service defective by design? The folks at DefectiveByDesign.org think so. Here’s their take on Spotify’s music service: The music streaming service Spotify uses Digital Restrictions Management (DRM); … to prevent things [...]

Linux Mint 11 LXDE, a recently released edition of Linux Mint, is one of a handful of distributions that does not come with a screen resolution switcher installed. Several are in the repository, but they are not installed. This short tutorial will show you how to install and use them. You do not have to [...]

Linux Mint 11 LXDE has been released. This is the first release, other the main edition, which uses the GNOME 2 desktop environment, of Linux Mint 11, the edition of Linux Mint based on Ubuntu. While a full review on the main website is still in the works, here are a few screenshots from a [...]

Mozilla Foundation has released an experimental BrowserID add-on for Firefox. BrowserID is a component of a Mozilla project designed to make signing into websites easier, safer and faster. The add-on “allows users to sign into supported websites with one click of a button in Firefox.” See a video demo below and learn how it works [...]

Kaptan is the “welcome” application of Pardus, a Linux desktop distribution developed and maintained by the Turkish National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), an arm of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). It is a user-friendly, point-and-click application designed to help you configure some basic settings of the Pardus desktop, [...]

Autologin, auto-login or automatic login is one of those features of an operating system that I normally do not recommend. And the reason is obvious: If you can autologin, so can anyone with physical access to your computer. Another reason is, with time, there is a tendency that you will forget your password, assuming you [...]

Sure you must have read about the British mobile phone hacking scandal. That’s the one where News of the World journalists reportedly hacked into the voicemail of about 40,000 mobile phone accounts. How do you think they managed to pull that of? I have no idea, but the folks at Lookout, a mobile security outfit, [...]

The latest social networking craze, Google Plus (Google+), is still in beta status, but I just managed to get an invite today. It looks and feels really cool. As a tester and registered user, I can invite others to join. Cool! Here are a few screenshots from my profile’s page. This is my Google Plus [...]