Technology

A man was kicked out of his Google account and received a visit from the police for sending a photo of his child's genitals to his doctor. The story sounds like a privacy nightmare. The toddler in question had swelling around his crotch. In preparation for a video consultation, he sent pictures of the condition to the doctor at the request of medical personnel. The facts date from February 2021, when many doctors' practices in the US were not easily accessible due to corona. The condition was treated with antibiotics. However, two days later, the man notified Google that his accounts were being blocked for harmful content, violating Google's policy, and may have committed illegal acts. As a result, the man no longer had access to emails, contacts, or online photos, and even hi...

Apple wants its employees to be back in the office at least three days a week from September 5. It's not the first time Apple has tried to get people back to the office. However, several lockdowns over the past two years have slowed down previous efforts. In practice, Apple will require employees to work from the office on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and a third day determined by individual teams. That's an adjustment to the original plan, which required office work on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Apple first announced its three-day office work policy in June 2021. Since then, however, there have been several new Covid peaks worldwide, with the result that Apple limited its policy to two office working days per week. The new policy will go into effect for Apple locations in Silicon...

After criticism from users, the privacy-friendly search engine will also stop tracking by Microsoft.   DuckDuckGo is a search engine that does not track you online and thereby omits trackers or other techniques to identify you online. In addition, it also has extensions for Firefox and a mobile browser. In May, the organization was criticized for this. Despite its promise, DuckDuckGo's browser still contained Microsoft tracking scripts. That is why it is now announcing that that too will be discontinued. CEO Gabriel Weinberg also explains why: "We were restricted from applying 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection to Microsoft tracking scripts by a policy requirement linked to our use of Bing as the source of our search results." Now that requirement is no longer there, and Weinbe...

A new social platform within the Teams application should encourage employees to share news and interests.   Microsoft has launched Viva Engage in the United States, an app within Teams that is very similar to Facebook, to strengthen social networks within the company. The app draws a lot from software from Yammer, a community-building software company that was acquired by Microsoft about a decade ago. The Viva Engage app stands out mainly because it resembles a clean Facebook version. There's a news feed for your stories, conversations, videos, images, and more. It, therefore, seems mainly made to become a social network for work.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics expects its operating profit to rise 11.4 percent in the second quarter of 2022, despite ongoing global supply problems. The company said this in a statement on Thursday.   Operating profit for the period is expected to be 14 trillion won, compared to 12.6 trillion won in the same period a year earlier. In addition, the world's largest smartphone maker expects its sales to rise 21 percent between April and June to 77 trillion won. That would be less than in the first quarter of this year when the group posted sales of 77.8 trillion won. Analysts say the company benefited from strong memory chip performance, which offset a decline in smartphone sales in the second quarter.

Consumers should be extra vigilant during their holidays due to the heightened cybersecurity risks. That warning comes from Check Point, a leading provider of security solutions.   The company sees, among other things, a phishing trend in which hackers pose as well-known travel companies because holidaymakers are looking for last minutes. Despite increased costs and problems at airports, international travel is expected to increase by 11 percent this summer. As a result, according to Check Point Research, hackers widely impersonate well-known travel industry companies for phishing attacks. 'Holiday travellers looking for last-minute available trips, hotels and attraction offers are sensitive to emails about those topics. For example, there is a fraudulent e-mail from Delta Airline...

As support for Windows 8.1 ends on Earth, a device further out in the solar system will receive a major update to its current system based on Windows 98 for the first time in 19 years.   The Mars Express, a probe that departed for the red planet on June 2, 2003, and is still circulating there, is getting its first major update. Currently, the probe runs on MARSIS software, an operating system based on Windows 98. It is now being modernized with an upgrade. Many details about the hardware the system runs on, and whether much of the original Windows 98 remains, are unknown. The ESA does say that the update gives the Mars Express more options. This makes it possible to use radio waves to look much deeper under the surface of Mars, or the surface of its moon, Phobos. For example, the ...