Every day, we scan the tech world for interesting news, sometimes from outside the tech world. Every Thursday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Thursday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!<\/span><\/p>\n Hackers are using reCAPTCHA to trick users into infecting their own PCs with malware \u2014 how to stay safe<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Getting verified on these sites will leave your PC with a nasty malware infection<\/span><\/p>\n Proving you’re not a robot online can be really annoying, but now it can also be quite dangerous as hackers have devised a new way to use seemingly harmless CAPTCHAs in their attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n A Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (or a CAPTCHA for short) is a security measure you\u2019ve likely come across countless times online. Websites use these tests to determine if you\u2019re an actual human user or a bot sent to crawl a particular page.<\/span><\/p>\n By typing out the letters you see in a picture, the website is able to verify that you are actually human. You may have also come across a reCAPTCHA before, which is an evolution of the traditional CAPTCHA that has you do something like pick out which images in a grid contain bicycles.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, hackers have come up with a new way to weaponize reCAPTCHAs to hijack your computer\u2019s clipboard and get you to install info-stealing malware on your own PC. Here\u2019s everything you need to know about this new verification attack…<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read more at Tom’s Guide.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n FBI Warning\u2014Delete These Texts On Your iPhone, Android Phone<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The FBI warns a threat moving across America \u201cfrom state to state” targets citizens via malicious SMS (smishing) texts, teling iPhone, Android users to \u201cdelete any smishing texts received.\u201d Now cybercriminals have registered \u201cover 10,000 domains\u201d to fuel a new wave of attacks. These new texts are easy to detect \u2014 delete them right away.<\/span><\/p>\n The new report comes via Palo Alto Networks\u2019 Unit 42. The new campaign, it says, \u201centices users to reveal personal and\/or financial information, including credit or debit card and account information.\u201d The original threat focuses on toll scams, with state-specific payment links; the new set of domains adds delivery services into the mix.<\/span><\/p>\n The toll scam has been generating headlines in recent months, with rarely a week passing by without a new report from state or local media somewhere in America. The FTC warns that \u201cnot only is the scammer trying to steal your money…<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read More at Forbes.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Giant, AI ads are coming to Windows Copilot. Thanks, Microsoft<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Is this the future? Massive, unblockable ads within AI feeds? Count us out.<\/span><\/p>\n For years, Windows users have complained about \u201cads\u201d touting Microsoft services, showing up in various places. Now the alarm bells should be seriously ringing: Microsoft has publicly disclosed plans for monstrous ads within Copilot, as well as a roadmap to what appears to be AI-driven advertising, too.<\/span><\/p>\n Last week, Microsoft\u2019s advertising blog outlined what it called the \u201cfuture of audience engagement.\u201d And you already know what that is: AI. Microsoft believes that not only will generative AI provide a more natural interface for users to shop, but agents will assist them. It gets worse: Brands may even deploy their own agent AI, too.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe are committed to helping brands create agents and making it easy to connect them to our audiences,\u201d Microsoft wrote, via Windows Central. \u201cAs the first step in this journey, we are launching a pilot product that enables brands to create smart, AI-based agents on their websites.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cImagine if a website could talk?\u201d Microsoft suggested…<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read more at PC World.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Microsoft patches an \u2018extraordinary\u2019 number of zero-day security vulnerabilities<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Today is a good day to make sure your Windows 10 and 11 machines are up to date, as Microsoft has released a hefty new security update for a number of zero-day vulnerabilities. The patch, part of Microsoft\u2019s Patch Tuesday update, contains fixes for Windows Server as well and include patches for six vulnerabilities which have already been exploited plus six more critical issues.<\/span><\/p>\n The new update addresses security issues of a hefty seven zero-days, including flaws which can enable remote code execution, in which an attacker can run code on the victim\u2019s system. One of these vulnerabilities requires the attacker to first trick a local user into taking some specific actions like mounting a malicious virtual hard disk image, and has already been taken advantage of my some hackers. This vulnerability, CVE-2025-24993, is marked as a severity 7.8 by Microsoft so it\u2019s important to patch to protect against it….<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read more at Digital Trends<\/span><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Windows 10 security risks are now more of a reality for users<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n It appears more and more Windows 10 users may be finally ready to let go of the legacy operating system ahead of the end of its life status on October 14. Microsoft has been urging system users to update to the latest Windows 11 software before that date and after months of ignoring the call, tens of millions of users are now opting in to the update.<\/span><\/p>\n Figures from StatCounter indicate that the percentage of Windows 10 usage has now dipped below 60% for the first time with 58.7% of global users running the system as of February 2025. Meanwhile, stats for Windows 11 are slowly creeping up toward 40% with 38.2% of global users running this version of Microsoft\u2019s OS.<\/span><\/p>\n Notably, StatCounter doesn\u2019t account for exactly how users transition from one software version to another. Previous research has shown that businesses, in particular, were updating to Windows 11 when they replaced hardware, as opposed to upgrading systems from Windows 11\u2013 despite having PCs with the minimum requirements to upgrade to the latest operating system…<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read more at Digital Trends.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Thanks for reading this week’s Thursday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful.<\/span> <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s springtime and it\u2019s time to get your computer ready for summer. With our new Spring Checkup, Cleanup, and Optimization service, we\u2019ll make that EASY for you.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019ll check your PC, clean it up, optimize it, and get it ready for summer.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s what we\u2019ll do for you:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Get your Spring PC Checkup, Cleanup, and Optimization now! It\u2019s only $20 and only for a limited time!<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hackers are Using reCAPTCHA to Infect Computers; FBI Warns iPhone and Android Users to Delete Texts; Giant, Unblockable Ads Coming to Windows Copilot… and more! Every day, we scan the tech world for interesting news, sometimes from outside the tech world. Every Thursday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4421,101,1673,4430,1678,1426,1680,4202,1674,4522,4353,4221,4477,2366],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29938"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29938"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29940,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29938\/revisions\/29940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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