December 2016

Adblock Pro is very popular ad-blocking extension for the Google Chrome browser with over 2.7 million users and 12500 mostly positive ratings on the Google Chrome Web Store.

The public folder was one of those features that set the file sync and management service Dropbox apart from other services of its kind.

The company stopped the creation of public folders for new users in 2012, and converted the public folder for new users to a private one in March 2016 for all free Dropbox users.

Dropbox disabled the option to share links to render HTML content in a web browser furthermore for free users on October 3, 2016.

AOMEI Backupper 4.0 is the latest version of the popular free backup program for devices running the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The new version of the backup program is still offered as a free version -- called standard -- and two commercial versions called professional and server.

Main limitations of the free version are that it cannot be used in business environments, that it lacks the OS migration feature, event triggered backups, real-time network path syncing, and command line support.

Avira Password Manager is a new security product by German company Avira which is probably best known for its antivirus offerings.

The password manager niche is crowded, and if you want to conquer it with a new product, you better make sure it is offering something unique.

Avira's reputation may certainly help the company acquire customers for its password manager.

If you happen to have a bank account at the German bank Sparkasse Soest, you may be paying for any click you make on the bank's online banking site.

What would you say if your bank asked you to pay 1 cent -- that is 0,01 Euro -- for any click you make on its online banking site regardless of what you do there actually?

This is what is happening in the German town of Soest, and for customers of the local Sparkasse. Not all customers are asked to pay, but those with an online account are.

Microsoft plans to improve the built-in system reset options of the Windows 10 operating system with the release of the Creators Update.

System reset is a feature of Windows 10 that users may invoke from Settings > Update & Security > Recovery > Reset this PC, during Advanced Startup, and by running the command systemreset -cleanpc directly.

Vivaldi Technologies has released Vivaldi 1.6, a new stable version of the up and coming web browser to the public earlier today.

The new browser ships with a bunch of tabbed browsing improvements, fixes, and core updates.

I'm keeping a close eye on Vivaldi as I like where this browser is headed. New stable versions are released regularly by the small team, and development progresses in a good pace all in all.

Microsoft announced some hours ago that upcoming versions of the company's Windows 10 web browser Edge will block Flash content by default.

Flash is on its way out, and the next step in the process is the automatic blocking of Flash elements on websites.

Whenever you sign up for a service or site on the Internet, there is a chance that your data will be used by the company operating the service, or sold.

Most companies ask permissions before they add you to their newsletter. Some sneaky ones add you without option to remove yourself during signup in hope that you will forget to cancel the subscription afterwards.

It gets worse when your data is sold. Once in the system, it is there for all time and there is a chance that your email account will receive regular spam emails until it is closed.

The latest version of the popular Windows 10 privacy program O&O ShutUp10 shipped with a new feature to disable experimentation on Windows 10 devices.

You can run the application right after downloading it; an installation is not required. It suggests to create a system restore point before making changes.