Microsoft Teams will let you keep your favourite messages for all to see

Being able to pin messages in Microsoft Teams should be possible very soon, the company has confirmed.

In the official entry on the Microsoft 365 roadmap,  the software giant confirmed that the ability to pin chat messages to the top of the Teams communications service is planned for February 2022.

The ability to pin messages, similar to that offered by the likes of Slack and Telegram already offer, allows users to “pin” a specific message to the top of the channel, so that it’s always visible to other participants, regardless of the number of messages that came afterward. 

Nothing for mobile yet

The feature is set to be released for Microsoft Teams on PC and Mac clients simultaneously, but there's no word on mobile platforms just yet.

For mobile, Microsoft has recently confirmed that it is planning on adding predictive text to Teams, making it harder to make spelling or grammatical errors when typing on the go. This should be particularly interesting to hybrid and remote workers, who are often forced to communicate with their co-workers and clients while on a bus or a train.

The launch will be one of a series of updates and upgrades to its online collaboration platform soon.

Elsewhere, there's also the ability to to combine business and consumer Teams accounts, hopefully putting an end to any unfortunate confusion between the two, and even the possibility of adding Microsoft's Cortana voice-recognition software to the platform.

The company also recently confirmed the launch of its walkie talkie feature in Microsoft Teams, allowing customers to use their smartphone or tablet as a walkie talkie that can work over both a cellular or wireless connection. 

Via: MSPowerUser 

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WhatsApp introduces new privacy settings to keep you safe

WhatsApp is giving its legions of users greater control over who can see data about them. As part of a move to protect people from unauthorized third-party apps, new privacy controls are rolling out.

If you've noticed that you have been unable to see the online status of businesses or contacts you are trying to connect with, these changes help to explain just why this is.

If you have never chatted with a particular account, you will not be able to see either their online status, or details of when they were last seen. The same is true of other people's – and apps' – ability to see information about you.

WhatsApp says of the changes that “to improve the privacy and security of our users, we're making it harder for people you don't know and haven't chatted with from seeing your last seen and online presence on WhatsApp.”

To allay fear about the implications of the change, WhatsApp adds: “This will not change anything between you and your friends, family, and businesses who you know or have previously messaged”.

Keep it private

On the face of things, this feels like quite a small change, but it's just one of a growing number of privacy and security tools available to WhatsApp users.

It also helps to close a fairly significant security loophole that was being used by some third-party tools. There are a number of apps available for download that can be used to track people's online status – or at least they could be used fore this purpose before WhatsApp introduced the changes.

For anyone who is concern about their privacy, but particularly anyone who has been a victim of cyberstalk, these changes are great news that will be warmly welcomed.

Via WABetaInfo

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Firefox 95 wants to keep itself safe from code security flaws

The latest version of Mozilla Firefox is including a welcome security upgrade that the company hopes can keep its browser safe from code-based attacks.

Available now, the desktop and mobile editions of Firefox 95 will come with RLBox technology, which looks to prevent and limit any damage caused by code security flaws or bugs.

The “novel sandboxing tool” will look to make Firefox the most secure browser option around, the company claims.

Firefox security

RLBox was developed by Mozilla alongside researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Texas.

The tool uses WebAssembly to isolate potentially buggy code, ensuring no possible infections or flaws are able to launch or execute without the user knowing.

Mozilla notes that although all major browsers, including Firefox, run web content in their own sandboxed process, hackers often chain together two vulnerabilities to break through -one to compromise the sandboxed process containing the malicious site, and another to escape the sandbox.

This has previously meant having to hoist subcomponents of a browser into a separate process, but this has some limitations – which is where RLBox comes in.

“Rather than hoisting the code into a separate process, we instead compile it into WebAssembly and then compile that WebAssembly into native code,” Mozilla says.

Although not suitable for every component, Mozilla says it is working on expanding the reach of RLBox as much as it can – including to other browsers. The company shipped a prototype to its Mac and Linux users to test in 2020, showing it can operate effectively across different operating systems.

“RLBox is a big win for us on several fronts: it protects our users from accidental defects as well as supply-chain attacks, and it reduces the need for us to scramble when such issues are disclosed upstream,” Mozilla's Bobby Holley wrote in a blog post announcing the news.

“This technology opens up new opportunities beyond what’s been possible with traditional process-based sandboxing, and we look forward to expanding its usage and (hopefully) seeing it adopted in other browsers and software projects.”

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