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Please Microsoft, give us better known issues information

If you have installed the October 2018 Update for Windows 10 already on your own machine or PCs that you administrate, you may have encountered a number of bugs in that particular version.

Microsoft had to pull the update shortly after release in early October 2018; it took the company six weeks to re-release the update. The new version fixed some of the issues but not all of them.

Microsoft promised to do better in terms of update transparency and quality, but did release a statement that update quality was better than ever.

How do you spot a phishing site on today's Internet?

Phishing has been around for a very long time on the Internet; it refers to certain techniques that criminals use to steal passwords, credit card information, Social Security Numbers, and other valuable information.

One common technique lures unsuspecting users to a domain that looks like the destination they want to visit; Facebook's login page, a bank's website, PayPal, eBay, Amazon, or any other eCommerce site or high profile target.

The links are distributed via email campaigns, on websites, or in chat rooms.

Can you use the Tor Browser without Tor connection?

Tor Browser is a web browser specifically designed for privacy and anonymity. The web browser is a modified version of Firefox ESR that includes privacy tweaks and even some extensions to improve privacy and security on the Internet.

What makes it special is that all connections go through several severs of the Tor network before they connect to the destination.

ImBatch Image Batch Processor: Convert Images In Bulk

ImBatch is a versatile bulk image converter for Microsoft Windows devices that is free for non-commercial use.

Image batch processors can be useful tools to automate repetitive processes like converting image file types or changing other parameters like image resolutions or optimizing images for web publishing.

While most image viewers and editors support the processing of images, many do lack batch optimizing options or the versatility that ImBatch offers.

UUP Dump Downloader: download Windows 10 ISO images

UUP Dump Downloader is an open source program for Microsoft's Windows operating system to download Windows 10 ISO images that include the latest updates for the operating system.

Windows Defender does not like the program and blocked the download claiming that it included a Trojan. The security application is not the only one that flags the executable as malicious; the security engines of BitDefender, GData, F-Secure, Symtance or Sophos flagged it as well while Avast, Avira, ESET, Kaspersky, or Malwarebytes returned a clean rating.

Firefox CookieMan: manage Firefox cookies with this external program

Firefox CookieMan is a third-party program for Microsoft's Windows operating system to manage cookies.

Firefox includes a good set of tools to control and manage cookies and site data. Users of the browser may load about:preferences#privacy in the browser and activate "manage data" on the page to get the list of set cookies.

The menu lists each site that set a cookie in Firefox, the number of cookies that it set, the storage requirement, and the last use date.

Save Firefox tabs with Set Aside

How do you use your web browser? Do you keep tabs open when you close it and reload the session to continue where you left off? Start with a blank page and nothing else? Use bookmarks to save important sites for safekeeping?

Depending on how you use the browser, you may be interested in a new extension called Set Aside. Set Aside is a Firefox add-on that saves any tab that is open so that you have a record of all the sites of a saved group. You may then re-open the entire group of tabs or individual sites at a later point in time.

How to change network names on Windows 10

When you connect to a network for the first time in Windows, Windows saves the network profile and assigns a name to it.

Connections using Ethernet (wired) use a generic name such as Network 7 usually while wireless networks the SSID of the Wi-Fi network the device connected to.

Some users and administrators may dislike the non-descriptive nature of wired network connections on Windows.

Good news is that it is possible to rename network profile names to make them more descriptive on the operating system.

New Windows 10 version 1809 woes: no audio, bluescreens

It seems that the twice per year feature update release schedule for Windows 10 is taking its toll when it comes to release quality.

Microsoft had to stop the distribution of the latest feature update for Windows 10 that it released on October 2, 2018 officially only days later after some customers reported that personal data was deleted during the course of the upgrade.

Microsoft confirmed that the issue and has fixed it already; the changes are currently being tested on the Windows Insider channel before the roll-out of the update continues.

Check the state of Spectre and Meltdown mitigations on Windows

SpecuCheck is an open source program for Microsoft Windows devices that reveals the state of Spectre and Meltdown mitigations on the system it is run on.

In particular, it returns the state of software and hardware mitigations against CVE-2017-5754 (Meltdown), CVE-2017-5715 (Spectre v2), CVE-2018-3260 (Foreshadow), and CVE-2018-3639 (Spectre v4).