Latest News - Page 2714

The US federal government is worried about a growing number of cases related to Stolen Identity Refund Fraud (SIRF), with criminals filing state and federal taxes - and making off with the tax refunds. Tax-related identity theft was the most reported type of fraud submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2014, with the agency receiving 109,063 complaints.

Recently, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued another public advisory to remind people that any telephone calls or emails claiming to be the IRS are fraudulent. In these scams, criminals ask victims to provide personal information or transfer money to them.

"It is a massive problem," said Brian Krebs, independent cybersecurity investigative reporter, in a statement published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "It's probably going to emerge as the biggest identity theft problem this year."

MWC 2015 - Shock horror! Samsung has just unveiled the new Galaxy S6 at Mobile World Congress 2015 at its Samsung Unpacked event.

Samsung's CEO, J.K. Shin, took the stage to unveil the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge official. The new Galaxy handsets have an all-new design, with wireless charging built into the smartphones finally. We have a 5.1-inch QHD display (2560x1440) with pixel density hitting a huge 576PPI. Samsung has continued the use of its great Super AMOLED display technology on both the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge.

Inside, we have Samsung's incredible 14nm, 64-bit, 8-core Exynos processor with 3GB of LPDDR4 RAM making it one of the fastest, if not the fastest handsets on the market. On the back, we have a 16-megapixel camera. The Galaxy S6 edge has the dual edge display, which will show users details like the time, weather and notifications on its side. One of the downsides of the two new handsets, is that Samsung has removed the microSD slot, which means we do not have expandable storage now. A move toward the way Apple does things with its iPhone. The company has also cut out the removable battery, which is another downer.

MWC 2015 - Acer just unveiled its new Liquid Leap+ smartband, but the company has also unveiled its new Windows 8.1-powered smartphone, the Liquid M220.

The new Liquid M220 is powered by Windows 8.1, but it will be upgradeable to Windows 10 when it's released later this year. Acer has a 4-inch display with 233 pixels per inch (PPI), the full suite of Microsoft applications like OneDrive, Skype, Office and more. We have a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera backed up by a 2-megapixel front-facing camera.

The Liquid M220 is a cheap handset coming in at under $90, and will be made available through select EMEA retailers in April.

MWC 2015 - The wearables game is heating up with Mobile World Congress now kicking off, with Acer announcing its next-gen Smart activeband products, starting with the new Liquid Leap+.

Acer's new Liquid Leap+ supports multiple operating systems, with Android, iOS and Windows being supported. We have a 1-inch OLED touchscreen that gets slapped onto your wrist, with the wristband coming in many different colors giving you some personalization. The Liquid Leap+ tracks users' steps, running distance, and calories burned.

The Liquid Leap+ is a wearable that can be worn day and night thanks to its waterproof certification (rated IPX7). Music controls are also provided, where you can play, pause, previous, and next song through your favorite tunes. The Acer Liquid Leap+ is powered by Bluetooth 4.0 LE, and uses Acer Leap Manager to communicate between your Liquid Leap+ and iOS, Android and Windows.

MWC 2015 - Acer has just announced its new Liquid Jade Z smartphone, with the company teasing its Zero Air Gap technology that will get rid of those annoying reflections, all while it's protected by Gorilla Glass 3 from Corning.

The Liquid Jade Z also features 4G LTE (Cat 4), a 64-bit quad-core MediaTek processor, 13-megapixel rear-facing camera which is backed up by a 5-megapixel selfie snapper. Acer calls the new Liquid Jade Z "wallet-friendly" as it is just 7.9mm slim and weighs only 110g. The Liquid Jade Z can also be easily connected to Windows PCs thanks to AcerEXTEND.

Acer will have the Liquid Jade Z available through EMEA retailers later this month.

MWC 2015 - HTC has surprised the world, giving me goosebumps in the meantime, by announcing at Mobile World Congress that they've partnered up with Valve on a VR headset.

HTC's new Vive headset will feature a room-scale experience, features 70 sensors, full 360-degree tracking where you can walk around your environment, 90Hz refresh rate, and it will come with two wireless controllers. HTC's Vive headset will be compatible with Valve's SteamVR service, too.

We don't know the resolution of the display yet, but I could guarantee we're looking at a minimum of 1920x1080 (or 1080p). Now, HTC has three letters in its name - 3 letters - Half-Life 3 confirmed?!?!

MWC 2015 - After being splashed around in countless rumors before Mobile World Congress, HTC has made its new One M9 smartphone official. Robert Downey Jr was used in a voice over during the presentation in Barcelona, Spain - something we knew Iron Man would be doing as he has been involved with the Taiwanese company for a while now.

HTC had the slogan of 'Utopia in Process' where the company unveiled the new One M9 smartphone. HTC has a dual tone, dual finish body on the phone. The HTC One M9 features a 5-inch 1080p display, but inside we have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor (an 8-core CPU), with LTE Cat 9 (450Mbps), Android 5.0 Lollipop with Sense 7 on top. HTC is popular for its rear-facing cameras, with the new One M9 featuring a 20-megapixel rear-facing camera. Up front, we have a new front-facing camera with great low-light image quality.

The new One M9 has 5.1-channel sound from its from speakers, which will provide an even more immersive audio thanks to HTC's BoomSound technology. We have 3GB of RAM, 32GB of on-board storage which is expandable by microSD, and a nano SIM.

It's almost completed and it sure does look amazing. Math Military Modding has put a few more touches on this real carbon fiber build, using R/C plane carbon fiber rods in place of your general rigid tubing options.

Sponsored by ASUS France, Seasonic, EK Water Blocks and Kingston Technology HyperX, we've covered this build in detail previously, highlighting exactly how special it is.

Well here's another quick update, as you can see the custom-build chassis is all ready to go and almost all of the components have been put into place. The carbon fiber rigid tubing being laid out neatly and professionally and all that's left is to add the video cards, fill up the watercooling and put a few minor touches on the build as a whole.

In more extremely ironic news and fresh off their $533 million lawsuit win against the tech giant, Texas-based company Smartflash is taking Apple into round two of hearings with attorney Bradley W. Caldwell stating "Apple has released new products that came out too late for inclusion in Smartflash's previous action against Apple."

This new case is based around allegations that Apple has infringed on seven of Smartflash's patents through their release of the "iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad mini 3, and iPad Air 2 devices containing any version of iTunes that can access the iTunes Store or any version of the App Store app," as reported by PC World.

Smartflash also alleges that Apple has infringed on their patents titled "Data Storage and Access Systems." We haven't been told exactly how much Smartflash are chasing with this lawsuit, but expect it to be in the hundreds of millions yet again.

Ben Lawsky, a New York financial regulator and head of the New York Department of Financial Services, is reportedly considering new regulation to help prevent against "an Armageddon-type" cyberattack. There is concern that a coordinated cyberattack would be able to hit the "broader economy" of the United States.

"We are concerned that within the next decade, or perhaps sooner, we will experience an Armageddon-type cyber event that causes a significant disruption in the financial system for a period of time," Lawsky said while speaking at Columbia Law School.

To help prevent against a "cyber 9/11," Lawsky wants financial institutions and insurance companies be graded by the DFS. The legislation may also require multifactor authentication and other requirements to keep data secure. Banks also must be proactive in their effort to keep data secure, as foreign-based hackers continue their attempts to disrupt Wall Street.

We all know there's a new Nexus smartphone coming, but with Google already using up the Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and Nexus 6 product names, we can't have a Nexus 7 come out for two reasons. First, we already have two Nexus 7 tablets, and second, the new Nexus won't be anywhere near 7 inches.

Rumor has it Google is now working with both LG and Huawei, with the latter being the interesting choice for Google to partner with. Huawei is the leading smartphone manufacturer in China, and is quickly becoming a favorite around the world. Weibo is reporting that we will see Google using two manufacturers work on the Nexus smartphone that will be announced later this year, most likely at Google I/O 2015.

There's a few things to be excited about here: Google working with Huawei on its flagship handset which should rock Android 6.0, Huawei getting a very big stage to showcase its manufacturing talents to the world alongside LG, and the fact that we might receive not one but two Nexus handsets. Google could very well finally step up its game, showing the competition how to do the best Android smartphone, it just needs the right mojo to make it happen. You can do it, Google.

Lenovo likely only collected $200,000 up to $250,000 for its Superfish adware installations on consumer PCs, according to a report from Forbes. Previous estimates predicted higher figures - but considering the company's major earnings - the low sum likely won't be worth the legal and public relations headaches.

It is alarming Lenovo, which finalized a deal in summer 2014 to pre-install Superfish, received such a small amount for jeopardizing so much. In addition to promising no more Superfish installations, the company's website was reportedly compromised by the Lizard Squad hacker group last week.

It looks like Lenovo is learning from its mistakes, promising to be more transparent about pre-installed software in the future. For new machines running Microsoft Windows 10, the Lenovo standard image will only include the OS, security software, Lenovo applications, and software/drivers required to make hardware work well.

As told to us by RagnarRox, Valve has set a press release aside for GDC at 3pm on the 3rd of march. Let me run that by you again - 3pm on 3/3.

What's even funnier? With GDC being held in San Francisco, San means three in Japanese - further adding to the madness of 3's. There has been numerous funny attempts to prove HL3's existence by the gaming public, becoming a meme-like process as seen with the popular Illuminati proof videos and articles you often see.

However this time the 3's have lined up in ridiculous fashion - could it be that Half-Life 3 is on the way?

Rise of the Tomb Raider will be a timed exclusive on the Xbox One, but what use is that tight relationship with Microsoft if you're not going to make the Xbox One version of the game stand out from the crowd?

Crystal Dynamics, the developer who rebooted the series with Tomb Raider a couple of years ago now, has said that they pushed the Xbox 360 development over to Nixxes Software, so that they could focus on "pushing the boundaries" on the Xbox One version of Rise of the Tomb Raider. During a recent interview with Game Informer, Rise of the Tomb Raider's Game Director, Brian Horton, said they outsourced the development of Rise of the Tomb Raider to Nixxes Software so that the studio could "concentrate 100% on the Xbox One version".

Horton said that the two versions of the game won't be all that different, but the Xbox 360 version of the game will obviously need to be modified as it doesn't have the graphical prowess that the Xbox One has access to. He said: "For us, of course, we are not limited at all, we are pushing the boundaries when it comes to what the Xbox One can do, and we are excited that we have such a talented group in Nixxes to bring the best 360 version to the market".

Virtual reality still has numerous problems to overcome before it goes fully mainstream among gamers, but already has greatly influenced the video game market. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week, game studios, developers and influencers are expected to discuss VR-focused hardware and software.

At GDC, Oculus will show off Rift, Razer is expected to promote its OSVR headset, while Steam is going to unveil the SteamVR headset.

"Nobody buys a piece of gaming hardware because they think it looks cool," said Lewis Ward, analyst at IDC, in a statement published by CNET. "Until there's a great experience to go along with it, the hardware simply opens the door."

More than five billion downloaded Google Android apps could be targeted by hackers, according to cybersecurity experts. Most forms of malware (96 percent) are focused on compromising Android, according to data from the FireEye cybersecurity firm.

Android is open source and allows more developers to contribute to the OS, but that also gives hackers a great opportunity to create sophisticated malware. Malware targeting Android drastically increased from 240,000 samples in 2013 up to 390,000 unique samples last year - and the problem seems to be accelerating.

"You can get all the code and then you can insert additional instructions and make it look and feel like the original app and no way for a consumer to tell the difference when they download it," said Jason Steer, director of technology strategy at FireEye, in a statement given to CNBC.

Phablet sales are outperforming sales of smaller smartphones, as phablets with a screen size of 5.5 inches captured 12.8 percent of mobile electronics sales during Q4 2014, according to GfK. Phablet sales are booming in Europe, the Middle East and in Asia, with modest sales growth in Latin America and Africa.

Consumers are embracing phablets so they are able to more comfortably watch online videos, movies, and play mobile games. In the emerging market, dropping phablet prices have helped consumers change their mobile preference, so they won't need to have a smartphone and tablet.

"This means emerging markets will have a crucial role to play in their rise, and we expect to see sales increase in Africa and Latin American in 2015 and beyond," said Arndt Polifke, global director of telecoms at GFK, in a statement published by ZDNet.

Earlier in the week, the US Secret Service said it will conduct drone exercises near the White House and throughout the Washington, D.C. area. The tests are expected over the next few weeks, but times, dates and locations for the exercises weren't made available.

Ironically, it's a decision that comes weeks after a drunk federal employee crashed his drone on White House property. Although it was ultimately a harmless incident, it revealed a potential threat with more drones taking to the skies.

The Secret Service didn't offer very many details and only offered this statement:

Apple CEO Tim Cook hopes to see the Apple Watch become integrated into the daily lifestyles of iPhone owners, including even replacing car keys and large fobs. Cook didn't offer additional details while speaking with The Telegraph in a recent interview.

Apple Pay, the leading mobile payments service, will also be utilized to support the Apple Watch - and Cook promised that Apple won't track consumer payments, product purchases, or where they are shopping.

The wearables market was already growing, but the expected April launch of the Apple Watch will help accelerate interest. Cook said the Apple Watch's battery life will last an entire day, and will charge faster than an iPhone - still a shorter time than other smartwatches, though Apple believes consumers will recharge in a similar fashion as daily smartphone recharging.

Cyberattacks from foreign states and rogue hacker groups have become the top threat to the United States, according to US intelligence experts. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, is especially concerned of potential attacks from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea - saying low-to-moderate level cyberattacks pose a long-term threat against critical infrastructure.

In addition to cyberespionage from foreign governments, there is rising concern of hacker groups able to infiltrate government agencies and companies - sometimes with support from foreign governments - with the goal of interrupting business operations, stealing money, and compromising employee and customer personal data.

Unfortunately, the US government has focused more on its cyber surveillance programs while largely neglecting cybersecurity. Even though it's effective to have offensive weapons, the United States has a lot more to lose than other countries if a major data breach occurs - and there is growing focus on being able to identify and defend against attacks.