Michelle Maisto

The revenue model for much of the internet has turned the obligation of news reporting into a competition for readers’ attention—and clicks. The competition has made headlines ever more incendiary, shocking and cliff hanging. In internet parlance: clickbaiting. And now Facebook is doing something about it. “Our goal with News Feed is to show people […]

Microsoft has updated its privacy statement and included, for the first time, a section called “Enterprise Products.” Microsoft explained that the latter refers to all Microsoft products and related offerings designed for or offered to organizations and developers; “subscription cloud services, such as Office 365, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft Intune, and Yammer”; […]

Instagram, borrowing from the Snapchat playbook, will soon introduce Instagram Stories, it announced in an Aug. 1 update. Stories will feature an unlimited number of photos, videos and drawn doodles to tell a story, and then will disappear after 24 hours. The Stories won’t appear in a user’s grid or feed. Snapchat has attracted users […]

Back in February, as Apple and the FBI legally and politically wrangled over the locked iPhone of San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist Syed Farook, more than one online commenter suggested using the finger of the deceased Farook to unlock the phone. That wouldn’t have worked because the skin of living people is conductive, and that’s part […]

Microsoft plans to eliminate 2,850 global jobs in its smartphone hardware and global sales divisions, it shared in an Aug. 1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The move will effectively wipe out the last traces of the Nokia smartphone team. Microsoft said it periodically evaluates “how to best deploy the company’s resources.” […]

The Information Security Forum, a not-for-profit association that offers research-based security guidance to a global membership of enterprises, on July 27 issued a major update to its Standard of Good Practice, a guide for meeting the objectives set out by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. The updated guide has been restructured into […]

Normally, talent goes to Apple. But as Apple puts its automotive plans—code-named Project Titan—into gear, it’s apparently willing to do what it takes to get the necessary talent on board. The Ottawa Citizen reported in January that Apple had leased office space in Ottawa across the street from QNX Software Systems, maker of operating system […]

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in its updated Digital Authentication Guidelines, claims SMS-based two-factor authentication isn’t secure and should be banned. And at least one security expert is taking exception to that stance. “For everyday users, two-factor authentication is a phenomenal thing,” said Shaun Murphy, a security expert, inventor and most […]

While Google has encouraged users to enable two-step authentication within Google Apps, to add “an extra layer of security,” the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology updated it Digital Authentication Guidelines (DAG) July 27 and now reports that two-factor verification over SMS isn’t secure and should be banned. The relevant paragraph, first spotted by […]

AT&T will lead an “industry strike force” to address the problem of robocalling, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced in a July 25 statement. In a July 22 blog post, Wheeler shared that he’d written to the CEOs of the major wireless and wireline phone companies and called on them to offer call-blocking services […]