Was Your Data Stolen In Huge AT&T Breach; Brower Wars -Which Browser is Fastest; The RiteAid Data Breach; New Start Menu for Windows 11… and more
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
Here’s how to find out if your data was stolen in AT&T’s massive hack
If you’re one of AT&T’s cellular customers, you can check your account to see if your data was compromised as part of the massive breach the telecom giant announced on Friday.
If you were an AT&T customer between May 1, 2022 to Oct. 31, 2022, it’s likely your data was involved, given that the company said “nearly all” its cellular customers’ records were gathered by hackers during that time. The breach also includes records from Jan. 2, 2023 for a “very small number of customers,” AT&T said.
But customers can check if their data was compromised by logging into their accounts, according to AT&T.
“When customers log in, they can see if their data was affected. They can also request a report that provides a more user-friendly version of technical information that was compromised,” an AT&T spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.
The company also said it will alert customers who were impacted via text, email or U.S. mail.
The company isn’t providing identity theft protection to customers at this time, the company spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch. AT&T said customers can visit att.com/DataIncident for more information…
Browser speed showdown: Chrome vs. Edge vs. Firefox and more
The most popular browsers in a speed duel: Who will win the race?
Waiting — nobody likes it. Especially not on the web: With slow page loading and long loading times, you quickly lose interest in any content. To avoid such tests of patience, however, it’s not just a matter of having a good broadband connection — your surfing speed also depends on the browser you use.
When interpreting HTML, executing scripts, or loading graphics and videos, browsers like Chrome, Edge, or Firefox often perform differently. We want to get to the bottom of these differences in performance: We let the most popular browsers battle it out for the winner’s podium in a benchmark duel.
The browsers we’re testing for speed:
Google Chrome: The most widely used browser in the world since 2012. Google makes most of the source code publicly available…
Mozilla Firefox: Firefox has been available since 2002, but has since lost its former dominance of over 70 percent — to a market share of around 4 percent. The open-source browser can be flexibly configured with numerous add-ons.
Opera: This proprietary browser is also available free of charge and now relies on the HTML renderer of the latest Chromium…
Microsoft Edge: Microsoft’s new browser was first released in 2015 and is usually an integral part of Windows…
Brave Browser: This open-source browser is available for many operating systems from Windows to Android to macOS. The developers attach particular importance to security and privacy…
Vivaldi: Originates from Norway and is developed by one of the founders of Opera Software. The browser scores with good ideas and flexibility…
Rite Aid says June data breach impacts 2.2 million people
Rite Aid, the third-largest drugstore chain in the United States, says that 2.2 million customers’ personal information was stolen last month in what it described as a “data security incident.”
The pharmacy giant employs over 6,000 pharmacists (out of a total workforce of more than 45,000) in 1,700 retail stores across 16 states.
In data breach notification letters filed with the Office of Maine’s Attorney General, Rite Aid said it detected the incident on June 6, 12 hours after the attackers breached its network using an employee’s credentials.
“We determined by June 17, 2024, that certain data associated with the purchase or attempted purchase of specific retail products was acquired by the unknown third party,” the company said.
“This data included purchaser name, address, date of birth and driver’s license number or other form of government-issued ID presented at the time of a purchase between June 6, 2017, and July 30, 2018.”
Just as it told BleepingComputer when it first confirmed the data breach on Friday…
Read more at Bleeping Computer.
Microsoft is working on a feature that may make Windows 11’s Start menu actually good
Windows 11’s Start menu isn’t the best, and it has its fair share of detractors. It’s at the point where there are plenty of third-party Start menu replacement apps that add the features that Microsoft never got around to making. Fortunately, it seems that Microsoft isn’t done with the Windows 11 Start menu yet, as it’s adding a new feature that may actually make it useful.
Windows 11 is getting a category view in the Start Menu
There’s evidence that Microsoft is working on a category view for the Start menu, which sorts all of your apps under specific umbrellas. It was spotted as part of the latest Windows 11 Beta build, but you won’t find this feature as part of the patch notes. This is because Microsoft is still working on the feature, so it’s not officially released. Regardless, you can still force the feature to appear by tweaking your system using ViveTool.
The new feature was spotted by PhantomOfEarth, who has done an excellent job sleuthing out these hidden treasures. This time, they spotted the categories view in the Start menu and provided instructions on how to enable it, albeit in a half-finished form…
Copilot+ PCs explained: AI Windows meets Arm laptops
Exciting times! Microsoft recently announced at its developer conference about artificial intelligence, a new laptop class with significantly more powerful Snapdragon X CPUs, and its new operating system for the Arm architecture all sounds really promising.
This is also true in view of the fact that Apple took this step very successfully and consistently years ago. In the meantime, the entire Mac model range has been converted to Arm CPUs from its own production; models with Intel x86 processors are no longer offered.
The fact that Microsoft is now announcing a similar step together with the important computer manufacturers Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung is therefore definitely a sign of things to come…
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
