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May 2018

Windows 10 version 1803 updates enforced on some PCs

Forced upgrades to new versions of Windows 10 are not a new phenomenon; users and administrators reported forced upgrades to new versions of Windows 10 or forced upgrades to Windows 10 from previous versions of Windows in the past.

Microsoft pushed Windows 10 in the first year after release using the Get Windows 10 campaign which, at one point in time at least, used malware-like methods to get users to upgrade to the new version of Windows.

Find out if your email address has been sold

Have I Been Sold is a new free and open source web service that helps you find out if your email address has been sold by companies in the past.

If you received spam in the past you probably wondered how the sender of the spam message got hold of your email address. There are plenty possibilities; you may have published your email address publicly, replied to emails, signed up for web services or an account may have been hacked that you communicated with.

Firefox 62 with clear local sync data prompt on disconnect

Mozilla plans to roll out an improvement to the Firefox browser's Sync functionality; Firefox users will receive a prompt when they disconnect the browser profile from Firefox Sync that provides them with options to delete local sync data.

Firefox Sync is the built-in data synchronization feature of the Firefox web browser. Firefox users may use it to sync some browsing data such as passwords, bookmarks, or the browsing history to access the data on all instances of Firefox connected to the same sync account.

Netflix for Android update brings fast forward button

If you happen to watch Netflix on your Android devices using the company's official application, you may have noticed already that the application's interface changed after the most recent update the company released to Google Play.

The changelog lists a number of new features, the two big ones are the redesigned interface and the addition of a fast forward button to skip ahead when you activate it.

How to disable automatic drive optimization in Windows 10

Microsoft Windows 10 runs scheduled maintenance tasks on a regular basis; one of the tasks optimizes any hard drive connected to the system at the time.

The operating system checks platter-based drives for fragmentation and will run defrag operations on the drives if fragmentation levels cross a certain threshold. Solid State Drives are treated with the TRIM command instead.

And yes, defragmenting is still useful.

Rufus 3.0 released - ISO to bootable USB for Windows

Rufus 3.0 is out; the new version of the popular utility for Windows is one of the easiest options on PCs running Windows to create bootable USB devices using ISO images.

I used Rufus for a long time to create USB installation media for Linux or Windows, but did not review the software before 2017 here on this site. You can check out the Rufus review here for a general overview of the program's functionality.

Pretend you are from the EU to benefit from GDPR

Trans Europa Express is a brand new extension for the Firefox web browser that pretends that Internet users are from the European Union to give them some of the privacy protections that websites give users from the EU.

The General Data Protection Regulation attempts to improve privacy of users from the European Union and European Economic Area. Sites, for example, are required to get consent from users for various data collection practices.