Microsoft's Edge browser to be replaced with one one based on Chromium?...

Microsoft's Edge web browser has seen little success since its debut on Windows 10 back in 2015. Built from the ground up with a new rendering engine known as EdgeHTML, Microsoft Edge was designed to be fast, lightweight, and secure, but launched with a plethora of issues which resulted in users rejecting it early on. Edge has since struggled to gain any traction, thanks to its continued instability and lack of mindshare, from users and web developers.

Because of this, I'm told that Microsoft is throwing in the towel with EdgeHTML and is instead building a new web browser powered by Chromium, a rendering engine first popularized by Google's Chrome browser. Codenamed Anaheim, this new web browser for Windows 10 will replace Edge as the default browser on the platform, according to my sources who wish to remain anonymous. It's unknown at this time if Anaheim will use the Edge brand or a new brand, or if the user interface between Edge and Anaheim is different. One thing is for sure, however; EdgeHTML in Windows 10's default browser is dead.

www.windowscentral.com

Windows Defender Browser Protection browser extension for Google Chrome

Protect yourself against online threats, like phishing and malicious websites, with real-time protection from Microsoft.

The Windows Defender Browser Protection extension helps protect you against online threats, such as links in phishing emails and websites designed to trick you into downloading and installing malicious software that can harm your computer. 

If you click a malicious link in an email or navigate to a site designed to trick you into disclosing financial, personal or other sensitive information, or a website that hosts malware, Windows Defender Browser Protection will check it against a constantly updated list of malicious URLs known to Microsoft. 

If the malicious link matches one on the list, Windows Defender Browser Protection will show a red warning screen letting you know that the web page you are about to visit is known to be harmful, giving you a clear path back to safety with one click.

Continuously updated list of reported harmful sites.

Protects against phishing sites and socially engineered malware sites.

Real-time indicator of harmful sites and website status.

www.browserprotection.microsoft.com

Google Chrome to warn when installed extensions are malware

Google is testing a new feature in the Chrome browser that will warn users when an installed extension has been removed from the Chrome Web Store, usually indicative of it being malware. An unending supply of unwanted browser extensions is published on the Chrome Web Store and promoted through popup and redirect ads.

These extensions are made by scam companies and threat actors who use them to inject advertisements, track your search history, redirect you to affiliate pages, or in more severe cases, steal your Gmail emails and Facebook accounts.

The problem is that these extensions are churned out quickly, with the developers releasing new ones just as Google removes old ones from the Chrome Web Store.

Unfortunately, if you installed one of these extensions, they will still be installed in your browser, even after Google detects them as malware and removes them from the store.

Due to this, Google is now bringing its Safety Check feature to browser extensions, warning Chrome users when an extension has been detected as malware or removed from the store and that they should be uninstalled from the browser. This feature will go live in Chrome 117.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Web push notification scams and how to block them

 

Seeing pop ups similar to the above in the bottom right corner -or- filling up the right hand side of your screen? You are almost certainly seeing what is known as a Web Browser Notification Scam.

What is a Browser Notification Scam? A browser notification scam consists of fake messages that look like real notifications from websites. These scams deceive users into clicking on links that could direct them to harmful websites, phishing schemes, or malware downloads. The notifications often imitate real alerts, such as system updates, subscription confirmations, or attractive offers, making them hard to spot initially.

What is a Browser Notification? Browser notifications are messages that websites send to your device, typically showing up as pop-ups or alerts in the corner of your screen. These notifications can offer helpful information, like social media updates, reminders, or news alerts. When you visit a site that requests permission to send notifications, you’ll usually see a prompt asking if you want to allow or block these messages. While legitimate notifications can enhance your online experience, scammers have found ways to exploit this feature for malicious purposes.

Need a hand resolving this? Contact Donline.

www.trendmicro.com

Slashdot poll: what web browser do techies use?

A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is a software application for accessing information on the World Wide Web. Each individual web page, image, and video is identified by a distinct Uniform Resource Locator (URL), enabling browsers to retrieve these resources from a web server and display them on a user's device.

As of March 2019, more than 4.3 billion people use a browser, which is about 55% of the world’s population. The most popular browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Edge.

Slashdot is one of the most popular sites for techies. This poll gives some indication of what web browser us techies use. BTW - I use Chrome most of the time, then Edge & Firefox for testing. 

www.slashdot.org

What info do you reveal when web browsing?

Everyone that is browsing the web right now has a user agent. It's the software that acts as the bridge between you, the user, and the internet. It's easiest to understand user agents if we backtrack and look at the evolution of the web, so we can understand the benefits of user agents.

When the internet was a text-based system, right back at the beginning of its use, users had to type commands to navigate and send messages. Now, we have browsers to do that for us. We simply point and click, and the browser is acting as our "agent," turning our actions into commands.

When your browser (or similar device) loads a website, it identifies itself as an agent when it retrieves the content you've requested. Along with that user agent identification, the browser sends a host of information about the device and network that it's on. This is a really set of data for web developers, since it allows them to customise the experience depending on the user agent that's loaded the page.

Click HERE to see what information is sent via your Web Browser: www.whoishostingthis.com

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

 

Mozilla has released Firefox 89, proclaiming it a "fresh new Firefox," though it comes amid a relentless decline in market share.

Firefox matters more than most web browsers, because it uses its own browser engine, called Quantum, and its own JavaScript engine, called SpiderMonkey. By contrast, most other browsers, including Chrome and Chromium, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi use the Google-sponsored Blink engine, while Apple's Safari uses WebKit (from which Blink was forked). The existence of multiple independent implementations is important for web standards, helping to prevent a single vendor from pushing through changes without consensus, and ensuring that the standards are coherent.

A glance at a statistics site like W3Counter is telling. In April 2008, Microsoft enjoyed a 63 per cent market share with Internet Explorer, and with Firefox performing strongly behind it at 29.3 per cent. By April 2010, IE was down to 48.6 per cent, Firefox up to 32.7 per cent, and Google's newer Chrome was starting to make an impact, at 8.3 per cent.

In April 2012, the three were almost on a par, though Chrome (26.8 per cent) had overtaken Firefox (25 per cent). Today, Chrome is at 65.3 per cent, Safari second at 16.7 per cent, IE and Edge has 5.7 per cent, and Firefox has just 4.1 per cent share. 

Despite numerous updates, Mozilla's browser has declined from 6.1 per cent share a year ago. Statcounter tells a similar story, reporting a 3.59 per cent share for Firefox, down from 4.21 per cent a year ago.

www.theregister.com

The true cost of cheap phones: Xiaomi harvesting user data - transmitting it to remote servers!

Security researcher Gabi Cirlig has discovered that his Redmi Note 8 usage habits were being tracked and sent to servers hosted by Alibaba in Singapore and Russia that have been rented by Xiaomi. This included the folders he opened on his phone, the screens he swiped to including the status bar and the settings menu. As if that was not enough, Xiaomi was even tracking what music Cirlig was listening to using the default music player on his Redmi phone.

The security researcher also found that whenever he browsed the web using Xiaomi's default browser app, it kept a record of all the websites he visited, search engine queries, and the items viewed on the browser's newsfeed. More worryingly, the behavior continued even when using the incognito mode in the browser. The security researcher found the same tracking code in other Xiaomi phones as well including premium models like the Redmi K20, Mi 10, and Mi Mix 3.

www.neowin.net

Which is the most secure Web Browser? Spoiler: it's Chrome!

The Pwn2Own 2017 hacking contest, which celebrated its 10th anniversary, concluded after three days in which security teams hacked away at browsers and operating systems. Microsoft’s Edge seems to have been hit the hardest, while Chrome remained unhackable during the contest.

Microsoft created the Edge browser by rewriting most of it from scratch (some parts were forked from Internet Explorer). The company’s goal was to have a browser that’s much more secure and that can keep up with Chrome and Firefox when it comes to supporting the latest web standards. Edge even implemented sandboxing technologies that were similar to what Chrome was using, which put it ahead of Firefox, which is still trying to play catch-up in this regard.

www.tomshardware.com

Google fixes Chrome 'evil cursor' bug abused by tech support scam sites

Google has patched a Chrome bug that was currently being abused in the wild by tech support scammers to create artificial mouse cursors and lock users inside browser pages by preventing them from closing and leaving browser tabs.

The trick was first document back in 2010, but only recently entered the arsenal of tech support scammers --in September 2018, when it was spotted by Malwarebytes analyst Jerome Segura. Called an "evil cursor," it relied on using a custom image to replace the operating system's standard mouse cursor graphic.

A criminal group that Malwarebytes called Partnerstroka operated by switching the standard OS 32-by-32 pixels mouse cursor with one of 128 or 256 pixels in size.

A normal cursor would still appear on screen, but in the corner of a bigger transparent bounding box.

The trick was that users would think they'd be clicking where the cursor would appear, but they would actually click in another area of the screen, preventing them from closing popups and browser tabs due to inaccurate clicks.

The "evil cursor" fix is currently live for Google Canary users, and is scheduled to land in the Chrome 75 stable branch, to be released later this spring. FYI: Chrome is currently at v73.

www.zdnet.com

Still using Internet Explorer? It's time to move to a modern Web Browser!

Old habits die hard, but they do eventually have to die. Microsoft knows there are still plenty of businesses and organisations out there using Internet Explorer because the outdated browser supports legacy web apps, but the company is asking people to finally let go of their old ways and to embrace a modern browser.

In a blog post, Microsoft senior cybersecurity architect Chris Jackson said continuing to use Internet Explorer is racking up companies a ton of "technical debt." Essentially, by continuing to use IE, organizations are creating additional costs down the line by selecting the easiest, most convenient solution now rather than the approach that is best for the long term. Jackson laid out a scenario in which a company, choosing the easiest possible route since Internet Explorer 6, goes to make a webpage today and ends up using a 1999 implementation of web standards by default.

www.engadget.com

Web browser plugins - how do they get there?

Malicious quiz apps were used to harvest thousands of users' profile data, according to Facebook - who are suing their authors.

The firm says anyone who wanted to take the quizzes (by Andrey Gorbachov and Gleb Sluchevsky, of Ukrainian company Web Sun Group) was asked to install browser extensions, which then lifted data ranging from names and profile pictures to private lists of friends.

These were installed about 63,000 times between 2016 and October 2018, it says. In total, defendants compromised approximately 63,000 browsers used by Facebook users...

Rogue Web Browser extensions are frequently used to compromise PCs. Donline has had to rescue many clients from systems infected in this manner. Be careful what websites you visit, what software that you install. If in doubt - contact Donline.

www.bbc.co.uk

Introducing the new Microsoft Edge and Bing

In our mission to empower people with knowledge with Microsoft 365, one critical opportunity is the internet. We know that 60% of the time people spend on the PC is within the web browser, and it has become the primary way we work, learn and play. The internet has become an everyday utility, that we reach for automatically without thinking, yet two decades after its introduction, we are bumping into challenges and obstacles that raise questions for us.

• Is our data safe and our privacy protected as we surf the web?
• At work, why can’t we find our internal company information, like our pay stub or co-worker’s office location, right from within our browser or search engine like we do with web search?
• Why can’t the web work more seamlessly with the productivity tools we know like Office 365 so that we can be more productive with our research and collaborate with others?

At Microsoft, we believe it is time to expect more from your web experience whether you are using it for personal or business use, an IT manager in a company, or a web developer. Today we begin with a focus on people in businesses and introduce the new Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Bing – the browser and search engine for business.

Microsoft today announced that the new Microsoft Edge is expected to be generally available starting January 15, 2020. We are also excited to introduce our new look! To learn more about these announcements, click below:

www.windows.com

Microsoft Edge Overtakes Mozilla Firefox

It was probably just a matter of time, but the thing so many people, including everyone at Microsoft, expected finally happened: Microsoft Edge surpassed Mozilla Firefox to become the world’s second most-used desktop browser.

Data provided by market analysis firm NetMarketShare reveals that the whole thing happened in March, when the adoption of the Chromium-powered Microsoft Edge improved to a level that allowed it to overtake Mozilla’s own browser.

So right now, Microsoft Edge is the second most-used desktop browser on the planet with a share of 7.59%, while Mozilla Firefox is now third with 7.19%.

As for who’s leading the pack, Google Chrome continues to be number one with a share of 68.50%.

www.softpedia.com

The Daily Mail online gets a browser warning: "generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability"

The Daily Mail is calling for a web browser alert that criticises its journalism to be changed.

The NewsGuard plug-in currently brings up a warning that says the newspaper's website "generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability". It has given this advice since August.

But the matter came to prominence last week, after Microsoft updated its Edge browser app for Android and iOS devices and built in NewsGuard.

At present, NewsGuard must be switched on by users of Microsoft's Edge app, but the BBC understands there are plans for it to become the default option in the future.

www.bbc.co.uk

Chrome 66 arrives with autoplaying content blocked by default

Google today launched Chrome 66 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The desktop release includes autoplaying content muted by default, security improvements, and new developer features. You can update to the latest version now using the browser’s built-in updater or download it directly from HERE.

With over 1 billion users, Chrome is both a browser and a major platform that web developers have to consider. In fact, with Chrome’s regular additions and changes, developers have to keep up to ensure they are taking advantage of everything available.

The biggest improvement in this release is that autoplaying content with sound is now blocked by default. This functionality was delayed - it was originally slated for January with the release of Chrome 64 - but now it’s finally here. Horrah - not a minute too soon!

www.venturebeat.com

Avast and AVG extensions pulled from Chrome - criticised for excessive data collection

Google Chrome is the latest browser to drop AVG and Avast extensions after reports of excessive data snooping.

Back in October, a blog post from Wladimir Palant, founder and CTO at AdBlock Plus, highlighted that browser extensions created by the two security firms were hoovering up more data than necessary to function, especially versus rivals such as Google Safe Browsing. That data, according to the post, included user ID, where you're located, and how you got to a specific page.

After that report, Mozilla and Opera both pulled the AVG and Avast extensions, though the former reinstated one set of add-ons after changes to data collection were made. Google has now reportedly also followed that lead, removing the questionable extensions.

"I didn't expect to publish this update any more, but Avast extensions are now gone from Chrome Web Store as well," Palant tweeted. "Only AVG Online Security remains for some reason. Way to go Google!" The latter has 3,582 users, according to the Google Web Store.

Avast, which bought AVG in 2016, had not replied to a request for comment at the time of publishing.

www.itpro.co.uk

Microsoft puts PCs in the cloud with Windows 365

Microsoft is putting Windows in the cloud. Windows 365 is a new service that will let businesses access Cloud PCs from anywhere, streaming a version of Windows 10 or Windows 11 in a web browser. While virtualization and remote access to PCs has existed for more than a decade, Microsoft is betting on Windows 365 to offer Cloud PCs to businesses just as they shift toward a mix of office and remote work.

Windows 365 will work on any modern web browser or through Microsoft’s Remote Desktop app, allowing users to access their Cloud PC from a variety of devices. “Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience,” according to Wangui McKelvey, a general manager for Microsoft 365. This instant access lets workers stream their Windows session with all of their same apps, tools, data, and settings across Macs, iPads, Linux machines, and Android devices. “You can pick up right where you left off, because the state of your Cloud PC remains the same, even when you switch devices,” explains McKelvey.

www.theverge.com

Microsoft Ports Anti-Phishing Technology to Google Chrome Extension

Microsoft has released a Chrome extension named "Windows Defender Browser Protection" that ports Windows Defender's —and inherently Edge's— anti-phishing technology to Google Chrome.

The extension works by showing bright red-colored pages whenever users are tricked into accessing malicious links.

The warnings are similar to the ones that Chrome natively shows via the Safe Browsing API, but are powered by Microsoft's database of malicious links —also known as the SmartScreen API.

An NSS Labs benchmark revealed that Edge (with its SmartScreen API) caught 99 percent of all phishing URLs thrown at it during a test last year, while Chrome only detected 87 percent of the malicious links users accessed.

To download the Chrome extension (browser plugin), click here.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

It's not just Windows 11 that can't get the numbers, Edge sucks too!

Statcounter's latest findings for May 2024 revealed an increase in Windows 11 users after a couple of months of steady decline. The report also contains information about desktop and mobile browsers, showing what apps customers prefer to browse the internet. According to the May 2024 report, Microsoft Edge managed to reach a new all-time high of 13.14%, beating the previous month's result by 0.32 points.

Although there is no reason to believe we will have a new most popular browser in the world any time soon, Chrome lost quite a chunk of users in May 2024. Statcounter says its market share went down from 65.65% to 64.87%.

Apple's Safari browser is third, with a respectable 8.79% market share. Firefox is fourth with 6.64%, and Opera closes the list of top 5 desktop browsers with a 3.23% share.

Meanwhile in other news: Microsoft plans to lay off about 1,000 people across the tech giant, despite what CEO Satya Nadella (so OK for some then, eh Satya) described during the corporation's April earnings call as "a record third quarter." 

While reports have suggested Microsoft would cut as many 1,500 people just from its Azure for Operators group, The Register has been told that number is not accurate and is inflated.

www.neowin.net