Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Security-minded internet users looking for another layer of obscurity when traveling in cyberspace can have it with some new tech announced Monday by Atlas VPN The paid VPN service has introduced a new way to route internet traffic, called MultiHop+, that's more secure and private than conventional methods. It does that by allowing users to connect...

Automation will claim more than 11 million U.S. jobs over the next decade, according to a report released Tuesday by Forrester That's the bad news. The good news is that at the same time automation will create 9.63 million new jobs, for a net job loss for the period of 1.42 million jobs....

A move by Equifax to enable buy now, pay later (BNPL) vendors to report their customers' "pay-in-four" loans to the credit rating agency could dampen consumer enthusiasm for the popular payment method "Any added friction during checkout will impact the popularity of a payment option among consumers, and this is a pretty big one," observed Donny Ouy...

During the first two years of the global pandemic, U.S. consumers spent US$1.7 trillion online, $609 billion more than the previous two years, according to an economic report released Tuesday by Adobe More spending is to come in 2022, with Adobe forecasting shoppers will spend more than $1 trillion online for the first time....

A password manager maker is trying to encourage software developers to adopt more secure secrets management with some new features added to its flagship product Launched under the name Developer Tools, 1Password declared the new features will help developers easily and securely generate, manage, and access secrets in their normal workflows....

Apple refreshed its iPhone SE and iPad Air models and introduced a new desktop at an online event Tuesday The new iPhone SE, which will sell for US$429, sports a new processor, the A15 chip, and supports 5G....

A trio of major cybersecurity companies on Monday announced that they're offering free cybersecurity services and support to vulnerable industries for four months Under the new Critical Infrastructure Defense Project, companies in particularly vulnerable industries -- such as hospitals and water and power utilities -- will have access to the full s...

Technology to reduce road deaths to zero is at hand, according to research results released Tuesday by a developer of autonomous sensing platforms The research report by Neural Propulsion Systems, of Pleasanton, Calif., found that sensors needed to eliminate roadway deaths need to process data at a peak rate of 100 terabits per second, or 10 times ...

Facebook, Twitter, and Google have made moves to prevent their platforms from being weaponized by purveyors of misinformation about the crisis in Ukraine Meta, Facebook's parent company, has announced a new special operations center staffed by experts, including native Russian and Ukrainian speakers, to monitor the social network 24/7 to respond to...

Apple's Safari browser may want to heed this bit of wisdom from Satchel Paige: "Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you." That something is Microsoft Edge According to the latest numbers from browser market watcher Statcounter, Edge, with a 9.54 percent global desktop market share, is breathing down the neck of Safari, which owns 9.84 perc...

Despite the best efforts by law enforcement, data leaks related to ransomware climbed 82 percent in 2021 over the previous year, according to the 2022 CrowdStrike Global Threat report released Tuesday In 2021, the report identified 2,686 attacks, compared to 1,474 in the previous year....

While their downstate rivals the Los Angeles Rams were busy winning Super Bowl LVI, the San Francisco 49ers were being clipped in a ransomware attack News of the attack was reported by the Associated Press after cybercriminals posted documents to the dark web that they claimed were stolen from the NFL franchise....

Remote workers have higher anxiety levels about security and privacy than other types of employees, according to an international study released Tuesday by a cybersecurity software maker In a survey by F-Secure of 7,200 people from nine countries, more than two-thirds (67 percent) of remote workers acknowledged they worried about security and pri...

Google has launched a new Chromebook repair program designed to help students and school systems get their broken laptops up and running again On the website supporting the program, schools can find which Chromebooks have commonly repaired components, like the keyboard, display and palm rest....

During the holiday season, an estimated US$120 billion in merchandise is expected to be returned to retailers, a jump of seven percent over 2020, driven by supply chain concerns, inflation, and robust online sales Returns during a typical holiday season are around 13.3 percent of total sales, with returns from online sales some three to five times ...

Nearly half a million Covid-related domains have been created over the last two years, many of them being used by online fraudsters and hucksters The pandemic has created an environment in which bad actors make use of a range of Covid-related "hooks" to commit cybercrime and fraud, impacting consumers and brands, explained CSC, a domain registrar ...

The average salary for a tech worker reached US$104,566 in 2021, yet nearly half still feel they're underpaid Forced to digitize operations and move to virtual work because of a worldwide pandemic, as well as address increased security concerns raised by those developments, organizations were hungry for tech talent in 2021 and willing to pay for it...

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian raised some eyebrows in the gaming world recently when he predicted on the "Where It Happens" podcast that play-to-earn gaming would take over 90 percent of the gaming market in five years "Ninety percent of people will not play a game unless they are being properly valued for that time," Ohanian declared in the pod...

Data breaches in 2021 set a new record with 5.9 billion accounts affected by digital thieves, according to a new report by a VPN provider The biggest breach of the period was actually a combination of several cyber smash-and-grab operations during a five-year span that contained 3.2 billion unique email and password combinations from Netflix, Linke...

Bias in AI systems can result in significant losses to companies, according to a new survey by an enterprise AI company More than one in three companies (36 percent) revealed they had suffered losses due to AI bias in one or several algorithms, noted the DataRobot survey of over 350 U.S. and U.K. technologists, including CIOs, IT directors, IT ma...