Stories by Keir Thomas

Verizon to warn cellphone buyers on tracking data

Verizon will put a peel-off sticker on the screen of cellphones it sells, warning that the user's location may be tracked. The sticker also advises users to be careful which apps they install if they wish to avoid location information being shared wi...

PlayStation Network users reporting credit card fraud

Sony PlayStation Network users are reporting fraud on their credit cards -- everything from a flight booked in Germany to purchases in Japanese grocery stores.

VMware buys another slice of the Cloud with SlideRocket

In a surprise move, virtualization and cloud infrastructure specialist VMware has purchased online presentations tool SlideRocket. VMware purchased e-mail collaboration suite Zimbra earlier this year and this latest acquisition indicates VMware is st...

Dropbox: A file sharer's dream tool?

The folks behind Dropbox have not been having an easy time recently. First it was suggested their PC client might be insecure, then changes in their terms and conditions raised security concerns.

Thanks, Amazon: The Cloud crash reveals your importance

The outage of Amazon's Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) service has shone a light on the number of Websites that use the service, which allows companies to hire computing power inexpensively on Amazon's systems.

Is Smartphone Security Good Enough?

Would you object if a police officer stopped you for speeding, then took your phone and cloned all its data--including photos, videos, e-mails, and recent GPS locations?

Office 365: Not for smaller businesses

Now that the public beta has begun, I've had a little time to evaluate Office 365, and it's been an interesting experience. I run a small business and am already a Google Apps for Business user, so am I tempted to make the switch?

5 tablet computer myths, busted open

Google offshoot AdMob has been busy looking into what people use tablets for. It questioned around 1500 people, with the majority likely to be iPad users, bearing in mind Apple's current dominant position. The results make interesting reading and cha...

Microsoft demos IE10 on ARM, and it looks good

Blink and you'll miss it. Microsoft has demonstrated Internet Explorer 10 at the MIX11 show in Las Vegas. For around 30 seconds of the 90-minute talk, they mentioned that some of the demos were running on an ARM computer.

Dot-com domains still lack DNSSEC security

It's been over two weeks since the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) system was turned on for .com domain names. This is an end stage for a process that will one day let surfers be 100 percent confident they're accessing the site they think they are, ...

Facebook shares green data center designs but keeps x86

Facebook is a wonder of our age. With more than half a billion users, the fact it serves detailed and personalized pages to every user--within a second or two of them asking for it--is mind-blowing.

Dropbox: Insecure by design?

The fundamental security of the Dropbox cloud storage service has been called into question by a researcher.

HTTPS is under attack again

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published research showing that the SSL certificate system that underpins Web security is far from trustworthy.

Google Chrome browser will block dangerous downloads

Forthcoming versions of Google Chrome will block downloads that Google considers dangerous. Upon clicking a questionable file, users will see a pop-up window saying the "file appears to be malicious," and asking if they want to cancel.

Google fights to make HTTPS safe

A number of hack attacks recently have made many question the fundamental security of the Internet -- hack attacks that have brought into question a system that until now was considered be bullet-proof. However, with appropriate good timing, two new ...