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I prepared for reading this issue’s Cover Feature by turning off all my ad blockers for two days, and using Chrome rather than Brave to browse the web. I wanted to see how bad online tracking had become. And I wasn’t disappointed. Almost everything I searched for reappeared a few clicks later as a hideous advert, like overcooked brussels sprouts repeating on you. I suspect they’re going to get much worse in 2023 (online adverts, not brussels sprouts – they’re bad enough already). With a global recession looming, tech companies are responding in two ways: cutting thousands of jobs, and tracking you more aggressively. Thankfully, Robert Irvine knows exactly what they’ve got planned, and recommends ways to block their methods – which include such mysterious-sounding tricks as browser fingerprinting, spell-jacking…

Microsoft is promoting its services in Windows 11’s ‘Sign out’ menu, which is where you can lock or sign out of the operating system, or change your account settings. You can see these options by clicking the Windows icon, then the Accounts icon or photo next to your name. The messages, which many users regard as intrusive adverts, were first spotted by Twitter user Albacore – who criticised them when posting screenshots online (www.snipca.com/44189). One advert (see screenshot 1) promotes Microsoft’s OneDrive online storage service by urging you to ‘Back up your files’, while another advises you to ‘Sign up for Microsoft Account’ 2. A third advert prompts you to ‘Complete your profile’ 3. The adverts appear only in certain Preview builds of the operating system, available to Windows 11…

Ofcom has told phone providers to introduce tougher checks on calls they allow through in a bid to crack down on scammers using fake numbers. The regulator said that international fraudsters commonly mimic the numbers of legitimate UK organisations like banks and Government departments. When people see these incoming numbers on their phones, they’re more likely to answer the call and fall victim to scams. It cited research showing that more than nine in 10 people who can see incoming numbers use this information to decide whether to answer a call. Nearly 41 million people received a suspicious call or text in the past three months, Ofcom said, while 700,000 people answered scam calls in the three months to August 2022. To help minimise the threat, phone providers will have…

SCREEN-CAPTURE TOOL PicPick 7.0 www.snipca.com/44168 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1. 10 or 11 The developer of this brilliant tool for capturing and editing screenshots has been very busy this year. PicPick 6, released in March (see Issue 628, page 18), completely redesigned the program’s interface and added a dark mode, while version 6.2 in June introduced a feature called Screen Recorder that lets you capture videos and animated GIFs of your screen, including audio (see our Workshop in Issue 636, page 38). To round off 2022, PicPick has been updated again with even more great features, to strengthen its status as the best free (for personal use) software of its kind. The most notable addition in PicPick 7.0 is the ability to delay capturing screenshots by three, five or…

SOFTWARE WARNING! Santa Tracker Live Call’s dodgy adverts If you want to delight your little darlings with a call from Father Christmas, don’t put them anywhere near this advert-stuffed Android app (www.snipca.com/43995). Santa Tracker Live Call – and many, many apps like it – is designed to hoodwink kids into thinking they’re on a call with Santa. However, merely getting to the part where you make a ‘call’ might mean you miss the big day altogether. I had to wade through no fewer than six adverts before it even allowed me to make the call with The Big Man, and most of those were not what you’d want young kids to be wading through. Betting sites, online poker (1 in our screenshot), dating sites and Facebook 2 were among the…

SSDs represented a revolution when they first arrived, replacing mechanical hard drives with flash memory that’s many times faster. They reduced the time it took to boot Windows from a few minutes to just a few seconds. That technology has moved on even further now, with the latest PCs coming with M.2 slots, built directly into the motherboard. Whereas the first SSDs looked like hard drives and connected to the same interfaces as their mechanical counterparts, M.2 SSDs are more akin to RAM, with no need for cables or separate power. They use a much faster interface (PCIe) that can operate at speeds that leave older SSDs lagging well behind. To find out whether you’e able to install an M.2 drive, you need to know the make and model of…

One to watch When it comes to home security, your best bet is to have eyes absolutely everywhere. The pan-and-tilt camera on the Ezviz C6 does makes a good fist of this, with motion-detection technology that tells the camera where to look. The device is spherical and small enough to fit nicely on a sideboard or shelf. However, the way it pans means that its ability to look straight down at its base is limited, so it’s more effective if attached to a wall using the mounting plate that comes with it. The 2K video resolution provides a clear view of your chosen area, with just a slight reduction in quality when darkness falls. In our tests it proved effective at recognising people and recording their movements as they pass…

CHROME Remove promotional messages from new tabs When you open a new tab in Chrome, you sometimes see a promotional message either below the search box and website shortcuts, or at the bottom of the page. This may be an ad for a new Google product or feature, something news-related or potentially useful content (during the pandemic, it linked to Coronavirus information and resources). Although these messages are relatively small, it’s hard to miss them on the minimalist white background of the New Tab page, so you may find them annoying. The good news is that you can now remove promos from your new tabs with a single click, and prevent Chrome from showing the same ones again. Simply click the ‘X’ to the right of a promotion (1 in…

MICROSOFT WORD Show and update your word count You can add your word count to a document, and quickly update it when you write more. To do this, click in your document where you’d like the word count to appear, then click the Insert tab at the top. Now click the Quick Parts dropdown menu followed by Field. Next, select Document Information in the Categories dropdown menu, and NumWords in the Field Names menu. Leave the Format as the default ‘none’, then click OK. Your word count will now appear. When you’ve written more – or deleted – words, right-click the number then select Update Field (see screenshot) to refresh the word count. LIBREOFFICE CALC & MICROSOFT EXCEL Right-click a spreadsheet’s tab to duplicate it The latest version of LibreOffice…

It would be nice to think that 2023 will be the year that tech companies finally start respecting our private data, but – spoiler alert – that’s not going to happen. Old tracking habits die hard, and in the last few months alone we’ve seen Google settle a $392 million lawsuit for tracking its users’ locations (www.snipca.com/44113), Apple accused of collecting data through built-in iOS apps (www.snipca.com/44114), and TikTok forced to deny that it’s tracking US citizens using GPS (www.snipca.com/44116). Even the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo was found to allow Microsoft trackers in its mobile browser, though these have since been blocked (www.snipca.com/44117). The good news is that, by necessity, there are now plenty of tools that reduce the amount of data companies can gather and share about you as you browse…

Microsoft has said that the Windows 10 22H2 Feature update is now ready for “broad deployment”, meaning it’s available for many more computers. The update was released in October, but until now had been restricted to computers that Microsoft thought were best placed to install it smoothly. It will now be made available to an “expanded set of eligible devices”, though you still won’t get it if Microsoft thinks your computer will struggle running it. To check if you can install it, press Windows key+I, then click ‘Update & Security’, followed by Windows Update on the left and ‘Check for updates’ in the middle (1 in our screenshot). If you see the update, click ‘Download and install’ 2. On its ‘Release health’ page (www.snipca.com/44210), Microsoft wrote that computers running Windows 10…

Apple’s AirPods Pro earphones (pictured) can boost your hearing, but shouldn’t be used as replacements for hearing aids, a new study claims (www.snipca.com/44193). Researchers at Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan compared the Live Listen mode on the AirPods Pro with medically prescribed hearing aids. This mode amplifies sound if you place your iPhone or iPad near what you want to hear, then listen through your AirPods (see instructions at www.snipca.com/44195). Apple says it can “help you hear better in some situations — for example, when having a conversation in a noisy environment”. The researchers tested a pair of AirPods Pro (second generation, priced £249 from www.snipca.com/44196), comparing the results with hearing aids costing between $1,500 and $10,000 (£1,260 to £8,420). Participants were asked to repeat short sentences that were…

Am I due a refund for broken Freeview recorder? LEAD CASE Q In March 2021, I ordered a Humax FVP-5000T Freeview Play Recorder (pictured) from Argos, and have had nothing but problems with it for over a year. Humax’s technical team has tried various fixes, but nothing has worked. It even said there’s an inherent fault, but is now ignoring my emails demanding a refund. Can you confirm I’m entitled to one? Peter Williams A Peter may be due a refund, though he might have to put up with a repair or replacement first. However, he should be chasing the retailer (Argos) for this, not the manufacturer (Humax). His only contract with Humax is through its free warranty. Rather than refunds, manufacturers’ warranties usually offer only continued repairs or a…

GlassWire Premium www.snipca.com/44167 Price: £24 a year Free trial: 7 days What you need: Windows 7, 8.1. 10 or 11 GlassWire is an excellent program for monitoring network activity on your computer and checking your bandwidth usage by day, week and month. However, it’s slightly frustrating because it lets you try all its tools for free for seven days, then charges you £24 a year for its Premium plan to keep using many of them. Annoyingly, this applies to the two new features in its latest version, GlassWire 3.0, which are both potentially useful. Anomaly Detection compares the volume of data currently being used by programs on your PC with the average used by other GlassWire users, so it can identify unusual network traffic. The second new option, GlassWire Safety…

Air apparent If you were hoping that the latest iPad would update the features of the previous-generation model for the same or less money, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. This new version of Apple’s ‘basic’ tablet costs £499 and isn’t replacing anything, because the £369 9th-generation model is still available. In terms of price, the new model sits somewhere between that basic iPad and the iPad Air (which costs from £669). It looks a lot like an Air, with a narrower bezel around the edge and no front button. It also ditches Apple’s Lightning port and replaces it with USB-C. This makes the new iPad a slightly different shape to the previous model. It’s a tad shorter and wider (in landscape mode), half a millimetre thinner, and slightly lighter.…

Home stretch Mesh systems remain the best way to guarantee Wi-Fi coverage across your home, but they can be expensive. They’re also overkill if you only need to boost the Wi-Fi in one or two rooms – such as an upstairs bedroom or out in the garden shed. In these scenarios, a simple range extender can provide a more affordable solution. The new TP-Link RE700X supports the latest Wi-Fi 6 speeds. It’s dual band, so operates on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, and can transfer data at up to 3Gbps, which is more than fast enough to shift streaming and gaming data. It also has a Gigabit Ethernet port, for cabling a nearby device directly into your Wi-Fi network. “Smart and effective way to eliminate Wi-Fi blackspots” TP-Link’s Tether app…

What you need: Patch My PC Updater Time required: 20 minutes Patch My PC Updater (PMPU) makes updating programs a doddle. This small, portable tool scans your computer for software, checks whether updates are available, then downloads and installs them in a flash. Version 4.5.0 of the tool, which was released in November, features clearer menus and new colour-coding, making it easier to identify out-of-date software. In this Workshop, we explain how to set PMPU to run on a schedule, ensuring that your programs are always running the latest version. STEP 1 Go to https://patchmypc.com/home-updater, then scroll down and click the blue ‘Download Patch My PC Home Updater’ button 1. Because it’s under 3MB in size, PMPU takes only a few seconds to download. You don't need to install it…

ANDROID & iOS Check if an online service has gone offline When you’re having problems accessing a website, app or your internet network, it’s useful to know whether the problem is at your end or caused by the service you’re using. One of the best ways to find out is to check Downdetector (www.snipca.com/44165), which lets people report issues they’re currently experiencing with online services. Downdetector has now been integrated with the brilliant free app Speedtest by Ookla, so you can quickly diagnose if there’s trouble with your connection or if there’s a more widespread fault. To use this new feature, install the Speedtest app for Android (www.snipca.com/44118) or iOS (www.snipca.com/44119) and tap the Status tab at the bottom of the screen (see screenshot 1 below). This lists thousands of…

Turn your blog posts into audio Blog posts are great for passing information to your members, but some might prefer to hear them read aloud. You could turn them into podcasts, but that requires a decent microphone, technical know-how, software and plenty of time. A quicker alternative is using an app called Woord to convert your existing blog posts into an audio version, read by a realistic computer voice, without you needing to do very much at all. You can then embed the recordings into your newsletter or blog post. Paste your text and remove awkward elements First, visit www.getwoord.com/register, then enter your name, email address and password to create an account. Click the confirmation link in the email Woord sends you, and you’ll arrive at the audio-conversion page. You…

Why can’t I drag emails to File Explorer? Q In Issue 643’s ‘Save Anything to a USB Stick’ Cover Feature, you say you can use File Explorer to automatically back up emails from your inbox to your USB stick. But when I drag an email from my Gmail account to the edge of the inbox, it stays within that window and doesn’t cross to File Explorer. Can you help? Also, how does another person upload the saved files into their Gmail account to continue the conversation? Robert Cox A You can’t save emails from Gmail to a USB stick by dragging and dropping them into a File Explorer window – that advice was specific to exporting your emails from Thunderbird. Read a few paragraphs further in the same article and…

Police have texted 70,000 people to tell them they’ve been victims of a huge banking scam that stole millions of pounds from people. It followed the arrest of a man in east London accused of running the iSpoof website, which provided access to a server allowing scammers to make anonymous calls to victims’ phone numbers that appeared genuine. This meant scammers could pose as employees of banks including Barclays, HSBC and TSB. The site (pictured) was taken down following an international operation involving police from the UK, US and Netherlands. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the case was the biggest ever proactive counter-fraud investigation in the UK. He claimed the criminals were responsible for the “industrialisation of fraud”. Police obtained the phone numbers of victims, but not their…

WATCH LOCAL BBC ONE SHOWS IN HD NEXT YEAR Viewers in England will be able to watch local BBC One shows in high-definition (HD) from April 2023. The change is coming to YouView, Freeview, Sky and Freesat, following the roll-out on internet devices such as Sky Glass, Virgin Media Stream and BT TV Boxes. Currently, you have to switch from HD to standard definition to watch regional shows. EE ADDS 150 MORE TOWNS TO 5G NETWORK EE has expanded its 5G network to 150 new locations in England, Scotland and Wales, including Carlisle, Cowdenbeath, Merthyr Tydfil and Scunthorpe. It’s also boosting 5G coverage in many Christmas markets during December, including those in Edinburgh, Belfast and Newcastle. Read more at www.snipca.com/44205. TOMORROW’S WORLD We know computers can thrash us at chess,…

A secret feature in the 40th-anniversary edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator lets you play the first four versions of the game from within a plane’s cockpit. It’s a hidden extra in the latest update, made available in November, which also has gliders and helicopters for the first time, as well as the Airbus A310-300 (pictured below) and seven historical aircraft. To play the first four editions of Flight Simulator, released between 1982 and 1989, you’ll need to set up a flight with the Diamond DA62 plane. Next, while the plane is still on the tarmac, go to the cockpit, then flip the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) switch – located near the bottom right of the dashboard – to the ‘on’ position. You’ll now see the left screen in the cockpit…

WATCH OUT FOR… Fake QR codes on parking machines What’s the threat? Criminals are sticking fake QR codes on parking machines in order to steal money from drivers using their phones to pay. The scam has been highlighted by PayByPhone (https://paybyphone.co.uk), a payment service that has nearly 200 machines across the UK, such as this one in Brighton (pictured). If you scan the code with your phone, you’ll be taken to a fake version of PayByPhone’s site, where you’re asked to enter your payment-card details. The company said it was considering adding warnings about the scam to its machines. How can you stay safe? We know many of you regret the rise of cashless machines because it requires you to have a smartphone just to park your car. Well, this…

Search UK naturalisation records For many centuries people were given UK citizenship through private acts of Parliament, but since 1844 it has been the Home Office’s responsibility. There are many historic documents available for research, including naturalisation certificates, although surviving case records are mostly for those whose applications were successful. If papers do exist, they may list where and when the applicant was born, their address and profession, information about their dependents and, from 1878, a police report. Note that anyone born in countries within the British Empire before 1949 were automatically considered to be British citizens. Find records on Ancestry Original records from the application process are held by the National Archives – read its guide at www.snipca.com/43983. For the period 1870-1986, it includes nine different search tools to…

Can I control my PC and laptop using one program? Q I frequently switch between my Dell desktop PC and an HP laptop. A friend suggested I buy a machine that lets me use the same keyboard and mouse on both, but can you recommend software that does the same job? Stephen Clarkson A A KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch, as suggested by your friend, lets you do this, but it’s extra clutter on your desk and they cost upwards of £30. The free version of ShareMouse is a software alternative that lets you use a single keyboard and mouse on two computers. Once set up, you can choose which computer to control simply by moving your mouse from the desktop of one to the other. You’ll need to install ShareMouse…

LAPTOP Lenovo Yoga 6 Gen 7 £704 from www.snipca.com/42509 Tested Issue 637 Lenovo’s new laptop has an amazing screen, a fast processor and lasts 15 hours on a single charge. It has all the ports you need, including two USB-C, two USB 3.0 and HDMI. At £663. At £704, it represents great value. ALTERNATIVE Dell XPS 13 New Intel CPUs and a taller screen make this a more powerful, all-round slim laptop. Prices start at £850 from www.snipca.com/42979 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 £509 from www.snipca.com/42211 Tested Issue 634 Samsung has replaced its own Tab S7+ to become our favourite Android tablet. It’s fast with a stunning 11in screen, and has a longer battery life than the iPad. This model gives you 128GB – you’ll need to pay £699…

TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Open multiple web pages in one click My morning routine online is a quick glance through technology news. I’ve made this quick and easy using the Open Multiple URLs extension for Chrome, which lets you create a list of web pages you can open in a single click. Once you’ve installed the extension from www.snipca.com/44056, click its icon in your browser bar (1 in our screenshot) then tick the ‘Preserve input’ box 2 to save the URLs you enter in the box 3. You can type these, but it’s much easier to copy and paste them, particularly if you want to enter long URLs from a web page deep within a website. There’s no ‘Save’ button to click – it’s done automatically. To open every page, click…

WINDOWS 11 See a full list of voice commands One of the best features in the Windows 11 22H2 Feature update is ‘Voice access’, which lets you perform more tasks using your voice, such as switching between programs, browsing the web and dictating emails. To turn it on, open Settings then click Accessibility, scroll down to the Interaction section and click Speech. Click the ‘Voice access’ slider so it turns blue (see screenshot below), then click the Download button when Windows prompts you to download a speech model. It will also ask you to switch to US English because this currently works best (hopefully it’ll be optimised for UK English soon). Follow the instructions to set up your microphone and you’ll then be able to use ‘Voice access’. To launch…

What are they? New terms to describe very big units of measurement. Ronna is 1 followed by 27 zeroes (a billion billion billion), while quetta is 1 followed by 30 zeroes – a thousand times larger. Such huge numbers are needed to cope with the vast amounts of data being produced globally. Who came up with them? They were agreed by scientists attending the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures (GCWM) at Versailles Palace, near Paris. This meets roughly every four years to discuss issues related to the International System of Units, usually known as SI. The new measurements are the first to be approved since 1991. What was agreed back then? The zetta (21 zeroes) and yotta (24 zeroes). They were added chiefly to help chemists count molecules…

1080p Of the common types of high-definition video, this is the best quality: 1920x1080 pixels. 2FA Two-factor authentication. A system that uses two different means to identify the user. For example, a code sent to your phone in addition to a password. 2K A screen with 2048x1080 pixels. 4G/5G/6G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. Administrator Someone who can make changes to a computer that will affect others who also use it. AI Artificial Intelligence. Intelligence demonstrated by a machine rather than a human being. Often used to describe technology that can perform human-like tasks. Avatar A graphic or icon used to represent a computer user, either online or in a video game. Bandwidth A measure of how much data…