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If you're not paying for your VPN service, you could be putting yourself at risk. But there are limited-service free VPNs provided by reputable companies you could try out, such as ProtonVPN. Here's why there isn't one best free VPN, but there are options we like.
 
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." That phrase has actually been around since the days of Old West saloons. If you bought a drink, the saloon would provide you with a free lunch. There was a catch, of course. The lunches were so salty that patrons wound up buying more and more drinks, to slake their thirst.

Windows 11 2022 Update has spent about a year in the Windows Insider program, allowing users to report as many bugs as possible for Microsoft to fix before shipping the thing to the general public. Still, some bugs have managed to slip under the radar. The software giant has already confirmed problems with printers, crippled SSDs, and broken provisioning. Now Microsoft is looking into complaints about botched Remote Desktop connections.
 
According to reports from regular customers and IT admins published on Microsoft's forums and other social media, Windows 11 has a hard time connecting to remote desktops after upgrading to version 22H2. Symptoms vary from case to case and include problems with connecting, random disconnections, and freezes.

In a perfect example of there being no honor among thieves, a threat actor named 'Water Labbu' is hacking into cryptocurrency scam sites to inject malicious JavaScript that steals funds from the scammer's victims.
 
In July, the FBI warned of scam 'dApps' (decentralized applications) that impersonated cryptocurrency liquidity mining services but, in reality, stole a victim's crypto investments.
 
Liquidity mining is when an investor lends their crypto to a decentralized exchange in exchange for high rewards, commonly generated through trading fees.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Bullet Train' tops the chart, followed by ‘Vesper'. 'Hocus Pocus 2' completes the top three.
 
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Microsoft rolled out Windows 11 Dev Channel build 25211 a few days ago, and it's a significant update not because of the new features it packs, but arguably, for returning a basic functionality that people have been clamoring for since Windows 11 became available. This is the ability to open the Task Manager by right-clicking the Windows 11 Taskbar.
 
Windows 11 has been available for almost a year, and it has become very obvious to its users that while it is aesthetically pleasing, Microsoft has cut a lot of functionalities. One such feature was the ability to open the Task Manager by right-clicking the Taskbar and selecting the option from the associated context.

KB5017389 is the first preview cumulative update for the recently released Windows 11 2022 Update. It does not contain security improvements and fixes, and Microsoft does not require installing it as soon as possible. KB5017389 introduces Widgets notifications, patches for the Microsoft Store, daylight saving time improvements in Chile, and other enhancements.

We are at the end of another busy week, which means that it's time to recap everything important that happened in the Microsoft-verse in the past few days. This time around, we have items related to issues and new features in the Windows 11 2022 Update, recent capabilities in Microsoft Teams, and some news related to apps, including the death of SwiftKey for iOS.
Windows 11 2022 Update... and printer issues

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft restored the redesigned system tray in Windows 11 preview builds from the Dev Channel. Back then, we called this redesigned a "half-improved and half-crippled" job due to improvements mixing with removed features, such as the ability to drag icons in and out of the taskbar. Microsoft promised to continue improving the system area to address customer feedback, and the company has delivered in a short period.
 
Windows 11 build 25211 has brought a much improved system tray with better visuals and the previously missing features. Icons now have a rounded focus area that matches the rest of the buttons on the taskbar, the overflow menu appears with "delightful" animations, and the tooltips follow the system theme. Although visual changes and consistency are great additions that Windows 11 need a lot, many users seem to care more about arranging icons by dragging them. That feature is also back, and it has a modern-looking divider helping you to place an icon in the right spot. Neat.

Just like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge gets new major releases roughly every four weeks. While Chrome 106 arrived yesterday, Edge 106 is yet to become available. Ahead of its release, Microsoft has now detailed a new API in Edge 105 that makes desktop web apps feel more native.
 
Window Controls Overlay is a new Progressive Web App (PWA) feature that Microsoft initially talked about in January 2020. The company then started working on an early implementation in March 2021 through the Chromium project followed by an Origin trial, with Chrome actually adopting it with version 102 in May 2022. It has now become the default experience on Edge 105 too with a formal specification being published too.

High-end chips have more cache and cores; laptop and mid-range CPUs come later.

An overview of the improvements coming to Intel's 13th-gen desktop chips.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Thor: Love and Thunder' tops the chart, followed by ‘Top Gun: Maverick'. 'Three Thousand Years of Longing' completes the top three.

Ryzen 7000 CPUs use a new platform—with plenty of changes.
AMD's Ryzen 7000 launch is bigger than just the processors. The processor architecture is changing, but it's also being accompanied by changes to everything from the chipset to the physical socket that the chips plug into. The last time this many things changed at once was back in 2017, when the first-generation Ryzen chips originally launched.

Windows 11 22H2 was just released, and with it comes a new security feature called Enhanced Phishing Protection that warns users when they enter their Windows password in insecure applications or on websites.
 
Windows login credentials are valuable to threat actors as they allow them to access internal corporate networks for data theft or ransomware attacks.
 
These passwords are commonly acquired through phishing attacks or by users saving their passwords in insecure applications, such as word processors, text editors, and spreadsheets.

It's that time of the week again, where we recap everything important that went on in the world of Microsoft in the past few days. This was quite an eventful week in the Redmond camp due to the rollout of the Windows 11 2022 Update, a significant Dev Channel build, and some news about upcoming Surface devices. Without further ado, let's dive in to our weekly digest for September 17 - September 23.

As reports had suggested, Microsoft released Windows 11 version 22H2 to the general availability channel on September 20. You can read all about the new exciting stuff in these articles here. A few days before that, some users received the 2022 feature update early with new devices. The machines were shipping with build 22621.521 (KB5017321) which was indeed the 22H2 update as confirmed later by Microsoft.
 
Since release, many, however, are reporting of problems and issues when trying to update to Windows 11 22H2. According to these reports, the update is failing with an error code "0x800f0806". This is apparently happening when trying to do an in-place upgrade via Windows Update in Settings due to some compatibility issue or something similar. A clean install though is seemingly working fine.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Thor: Love and Thunder' tops the chart, followed by ‘Top Gun: Maverick'. 'Three Thousand Years of Longing' completes the top three.

The day is finally upon us. Windows 11 is receiving its first major update in the form of Windows 11 2022 Update. That's correct, Microsoft is seemingly getting rid of its "year-half" naming convention - at least publicly - which would have dubbed this release as "version 22H2". It does make sense considering Microsoft shifted to an annual update cadence with Windows 11 so it doesn't need to signify which half of the year an update was released in.

We are at the end of the week and it's time yet again to break down everything important that happened in the world of Microsoft in the past few days. Unlike the previous edition, we have lots of ground to cover this week ranging from Patch Tuesday updates to Insider builds and app improvements. Without further ado, let's dive into our weekly digest for September 10 - September 16!

It looks like Windows 11, version 22H2 has apparently already begun shipping inside new laptops. A forum member on Thurott with the username WILL had ordered a new Dell laptop but was surprised to notice a new boot animation. They soon realized that Dell had shipped them a device packing Windows 11 22H2.
 
Early reports, backed up by some compelling evidence, had pointed to a September 20th general availability (GA) of next feature update. Rumor also had it that build 22621.382 was meant to be packaged as the GA release. However, WILL claims that the build which has arrived on their Dell device is 22621.521 instead.

Microsoft has released the latest Patch Tuesday update (KB5017328). It includes a fix for a web dialog not appearing when signing in and out of your Microsoft account, an issue that has been present since KB5016691. There are also several known issues and relevant workarounds. After applying the update, your system will be on Build 22000.978.

It's the second Tuesday of the month, which means it's Patch Tuesday time again. As such, today Microsoft is rolling out the monthly security update (also called "B release") for July 2022 on Windows Server 20H2, and Windows 10 for the latest versions, 21H1, 21H2. The new updates are being distributed under KB5017308, bumping up the builds to 19042.2006, 19043.2006, and 19044.2006.

Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 8.1 (KB5017367) and Windows 7 (KB5017361). Both updates include improvements and issues for their respective Windows versions, but luckily, the issues have workarounds outlined, so you can get around the problems.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Thor: Love and Thunder' tops the chart, followed by ‘Top Gun: Maverick'. 'Where the Crawdads Sing' completes the top three.

Microsoft has pushed an update to Office Insiders (Beta Channel) on Windows, taking it to Version 2209 (Build 15629.20058). The latest Office Insider version adds some important new features for Office apps such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. It also comes with notable bug fixes and improvements.
 
Office Insiders on Windows are getting a new Sensitivity toolbar that prevents data leaks. Powered by Microsoft Purview Information Protection, sensitivity labels are displayed alongside the filename in the app’s title bar. The new toolbar also appears while saving new documents or renaming existing ones. It is available in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

Researchers this week unveiled a new strain of Linux malware that's notable for its stealth and sophistication in infecting both traditional servers and smaller Internet-of-things devices.
 
Dubbed Shikitega by the AT&T Alien Labs researchers who discovered it, the malware is delivered through a multistage infection chain using polymorphic encoding. It also abuses legitimate cloud services to host command-and-control servers. These things make detection extremely difficult.