Items tagged with Email
Are you concerned about who might be reading your emails? You should be, especially if you allow third-party app developers to access your Gmail account, as many of them request. A recent report highlighted the extent of which third-party app developers can access private information, prompting Google to respond with what amounts to a soothing message saying, 'There, there, everything will be okay'. Google is not necessarily wrong, either, provided you are tech savvy enough to understand the risks associated with giving a third-party app certain permissions, and know how to take control of your...
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Google is continually making improvements to its Gmail service, and more recently it introduced a couple of new features that many people will find handy. One of those is native offline mail support so that users don't have to rely on third-party software or any special extensions, and the other is Smart Compose, a predicative text feature that Google unveiled at its recent Google I/O event. Predicative text is not a new technology, it's just new to Gmail as a native feature. What it does is suggest words, phrases, and even entire sentences that fit within the context of what you're typing. "Smart...
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Security researchers are warning anyone who uses PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) or S/MIME for email encryption to disable the scheme in their email clients right away, and to uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email, due to a security flaw. They've discovered a critical vulnerability dubbed EFAIL that could allow an attacker to view the contents of encrypted messages in plaintext, including emails that have been sent in the past. "There are currently no reliable fixes for the vulnerability. If you use PGP/GPG or S/MIME for very sensitive communication, you should disable it in...
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Microsoft has added new features to Outlook on Windows, Mac, web, and mobile devices. The software giant says that the changes are meant to help users manage their time and keep important stuff up front where it is easy to find. There are new features coming to Outlook for iOS and Android devices soon to help connect users to people, apps, and tech that improve productivity in the business environment. Among the changes are bill pay reminders in Outlook Calendar with the addition of bill payments to events that the calendar already tracks for users like travel reservations and package deliveries....
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Google has rolled out the long-awaited update for Gmail that users will find quite interesting. One of the main goals in the redesign was to allow users to do more without leaving their inbox. This means you can now do open photos and other attachments without having to open the email or scroll through long conversations. A new snooze button also allows you to put off emails you don’t have time for and you can access other Google apps like Calendar, Tasks, and Keep more easily. For those times when you are busy and forgot to reply to something important, Gmail will now "nudge" you with reminders...
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Several years ago, spammers figured out they could fill up a user's Google Calendar with advertisements and other unwanted messages by sending them out as event invites. The issue has largely flown under the radar, but unfortunately for some Google Home owners, the exploit (if you want to call it that) is preventing them from receiving legitimate notifications over their smart speaker, turning what was a nuisance into a major problem. We were alerted about the issue from Micah Stroud, a former NVIDIA employee who sent us an email detailing his frustration with the situation. "For the past three...
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Most of you reading this have probably at some point been contacted by someone claiming you are the beneficiary in a will of a Nigerian prince. As the scam goes, all you have to do is submit your personal information and Western Union some funds to process the necessary paperwork, and in return you will receive hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. One of the people behind the popular scam, Michael Neu, has been arrested by police in Slidell, Louisiana. This may come as a shocker, but Neu is not a prince, nor is he Nigerian. He is a 67-year-old male possibly of German descent (based...
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As part of a recent case study, Google teamed up with the University of California, Berkeley, to better understand how hijackers attempt to take over email and social networking accounts. As any thirty-something who grew up watching G.I. Joe cartoons can attest, knowing is half the battle. So, after learning the most common methods for hijacking, Google has some tips on how Gmail users can protect their accounts from outside threats. Hijacking is a common problem, with more 15 percent of Internet users having reported experiencing the takeover of an email or social networking account. From March...
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Here is some good news for Gmail users—living up to its promise earlier this year, Google today expanded the potential capabilities of Gmail by launching native support for third-party add-ons. Now users can tap into services such as Asana, Dialpad, Hire, Intuit QuickBooks Invoicing, and others right from within their inbox, negating the need to toggle between the inbox and other apps. "With Gmail Add-ons, your inbox can contextually surface your go-to app based on messages you receive to help you get things done faster. And because add-ons work the same across web and Android, you only need to...
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Have you ever noticed that if you mention a product in email, it has a way of translating over to ads? In some cases, it might be a coincidence. But if you use Gmail, there is a much higher chance that Google scanned the contents of your email, picked up on a keyword, and delivered a targeted ad based on what you wrote. Oh, you didn't know? Google does in fact sift through the contents of your Gmail, though starting soon, it will stop doing that. Google is looking to bring its consumer-based Gmail service in line with its G Suite for businesses, the latter of which includes a version of Gmail that...
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Most of us could probably stand to be a little bit more organized, whether it's remembering to pick up milk on the way home or making sure not to miss little Katie's recital right after turning in those blueprints to the boss at noon. That is where digital assistants can be useful. Cortana is one of them and Microsoft is making its smarty pants AI even more helpful by having her hold you accountable to what you say in emails. "Cortana already gives you reminders for people, places and times, and helps you make and manage to-do lists so you don’t forget a thing. Now, Cortana can help you remember...
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The growing consensus is that the U.S. government is overstepping its bounds and trampling on people's right to privacy. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the government's vast spying program, and while that was an eye opener for the country (and world) at large, the full extent of its efforts are still coming to light. The most recent example is the email scanner Yahoo built under the direction of the NSA and FBI.Developed in secret, the email scanner was found to be a sophisticated hacking tool, or rootkit, as some experts have classified it. The email scanner gave the...
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We've no doubt all been there: we click the "Send" button on an email, and before we realize what just happened, it's too late. That email and its potential embarrassment is out of your hands. While it's one thing to accidentally send an email too early, or reply all when you shouldn't have, it's an entirely different story when you accidentally email up to 1.2 million people at once. Oh - and if that's not bad enough, imagine taking down an entire email system as a result! That's just what happened to the National Health Service in the UK, as an IT contractor sent a test email to the agency's...
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Ahmed Mehtab, a student from Pakistan and the CEO of Security Fuse, is in the running to score a $20,000 payday from Google's bug bounty program. While there remains some red tape to clear, Mehtab is likely to receive the bounty for discovering a rather crafty flaw in Gmail relating to its authentication and verification system, one that could make it possible for a remote hacker to hijack a Gmail account. The vulnerability lies in how Google handles multiple Gmail accounts. A user who has more than one Gmail address can link them and have the primary Gmail account forward email to secondary accounts....
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