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I recently did a review on an air quality sensing device for my home. Here it is.

The last free Windows 10 upgrade path for consumers will shut down by December 31 here's still one way consumers can upgrade to Windows 10 for freeand Microsoft will shut it down on December 31, even though a majority of the world's PC users still use older versions of Windows. Microsoft gave Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users an entire year after the launch of Windows 10 (until July 31, 2016) to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. But there was one exception: those who used assist...ive technology, such as screen readers, got an indefinite extension. According to a Microsoft support page, the deadline for those users to upgrade to Windows 10 for free expires by the end of the year, as noted by Slashgear. After that, consumers will have to pay the full price for a Windows license, which costs about $75 from Amazon for a "system builder" license for Windows 10 Home, and more for retail Home or Professional versions. You might think that users who don't use assistive technologies would be excluded from this loophole. But Microsoft is making its upgrade path extremely generous: "We are not restricting the upgrade offer to specific assistive technologies," the company says. "If you use assistive technology on Windows, you are eligible for the upgrade offer." All you need to do is visit the assistive support page in question, assert that you use assistive technologies, and then download the upgrade tool to Windows 10. Granted, the assistive loophole represents a morally gray area, especially for those who normally wouldn't need to use assistive technology. But you might argue that if you've ever tried out the Windows Narrator tool, you've used an assistive technology. And with the improved assistive technologies that are already built into the Windows 10 OS, those who truly need assistance will benefit from the free upgrade. Why this matters: Cynics will see Microsoft's "wink, wink" approach to the assistive loophole as one that benefits the company: Windows 10 users only represent about 30 percent of all PCs, according to NetMarketShare, compared to a Windows 7 share of about 49 percent. Of course, Microsoft's using the stick, too: AMD's latest Ryzen chips won't deliver official drivers for Windows 7, part of Microsoft's plan to restrict modern hardware to Windows 10. Unless Microsoft extends the program in some other form, a great freebie is going away. To comment on this article and other PC World content, visit our Facebook page or our Twitter feed.

Hackers hid malware in CCleaner software Hackers have successfully breached CCleaner’s security to inject malware into the app and distribute it to millions of users. Security researchers at Cisco Talos discovered that download servers used by Avast (the company that owns CCleaner) were compromised to distribute malware inside CCleaner. For a period of time, the legitimate signed version of CCleaner 5.33 being distributed by Avast also contained a multi-stage malware payload... that rode on top of the installation of CCleaner, says the Talos team. CCleaner has been downloaded more than 2 billion times according to Avast, making it a popular target for hackers. Dubbed crap cleaner, it’s designed to wipe out cookies and offer some web privacy protections. 2.27 million users have been affected by the attack, and Avast Piriform believes it was able to prevent the breach harming customers. Piriform believes that these users are safe now as its investigation indicates it was able to disarm the threat before it was able to do any harm, says an Avast spokesperson. AN UNUSUAL ATTACK ON SOFTWARE UPDATE MECHANISMS This is an unusual attack as software similar to CCleaner is trusted by consumers and meant to remove crapware from a system. By exploiting the trust relationship between software vendors and the users of their software, attackers can benefit from users' inherent trust in the files and web servers used to distribute updates, says Talos. The malware itself appears to have been designed to use infected PCs as part of a botnet. Earlier this year, Ukrainian company MeDoc was breached and its update servers used to distribute the Petya ransomware. Hackers appear to be targeting these types of distribution points to more easily spread malware, instead of the traditional way of attacking individual machines themselves. It’s a trend that many security researches will be monitoring closely, to catch the latest innovative ways that hackers are breaching multiple systems.

How to avoid being caught out by Ransomware Last week the U of C paid hackers $20,000.00 to release their computers that were infected by Ransomeware. I recently had someone contact me about fixing their computer as it was infected by Ransomeware and in most cases there is nothing you can do except to reformat your hard drive and lose all you data on your computer or mobile phone. Here is an interesting article about what you can do you help protect yourself:...Continue reading