Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
These days most people are aware that viruses, spyware, adware and other types of malware are lurking in the shadows of the Internet, just waiting for an opportunity to sneak onto their computers’ hard drives and perform all kinds of mischief.
What many folks don’t know however is just how easy it is for a computer or mobile device (and the sensitive data stored on it) to become compromised simply by using an out-of-date web browser that doesn’t have the latest security updates installed.
A new report from the security firm Otto details a very serious data breach situation that’s playing out daily with millions of unsuspecting computer users, and it’s quite possible that you are affected by it.
Otto’s research discovered that both Chrome’s “Enhanced Spellcheck” feature and Microsoft’s popular “Microsoft Editor: Spelling & Grammar Checker” browser extension for Edge capture every bit of data you enter into any web form and transmit it back to Google and Microsoft’s servers. [Read more…]
Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
A while back I wrote this blog post explaining how to use Chrome’s native Task Manager to find out which Chrome processes could be causing the browser to operate slower than it should.
That post received a lot of engagement, and several readers contacted me to ask if there is a native Task Manager built in to other browsers as well.
I answered those folks directly, but since I keep getting this same question I thought it might be a good idea to write a similar post to answer it on the blog. [Read more…]
Question from Judy: When I purchased my PC with windows 10, it came with Microsoft Edge as the web browser.
I preferred using Google Chrome so I installed it and set it as my default browser.
The other day Windows updated and automatically installed a new version of Microsoft Edge.
Now I’m not sure if I should keep Chrome as my default browser or use Edge. What do you recommend?
Also, should I delete whichever one I decide not to use?
I would appreciate your thoughts on which is the best way to go. Thank you.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Several people have messaged me this morning asking if the viral notice to update their Chrome browser to the latest version is real or a hoax.
Well, as you know, hoaxes abound on Facebook, but this isn’t one of them.
If you haven’t done so already, you really do need to install the latest update for Chrome in order to prevent hackers from exploiting a very dangerous security flaw.
And you need to install this update right now because the flaw is actively being exploited as we speak!