Irish data protection authority fines Meta 390 million euros and appeals it's own decision

Posted on 2023-01-05 by guenni

[German]The Irish Data Protection Authority (DPC) has imposed a fine of €390 million on Meta for user-based advertising on Facebook and Instagram. As a result, Meta is no longer allowed to run ads using users' personal data without their explicit consent. The whole thing was imposed only after massive protests from the remaining 26 data protection commissioners of other European countries. At the same time, the DPC has announced that it will file a lawsuit against its own decision. Seems it's developing a scandal or a kind of "banana republic".

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Exchange Reporter 3.12 available

Posted on 2023-01-04 by guenni

Exchange Logo[German]Brief note for Exchange administrators. Probably administrators of Microsoft Exchange (on-premises) installations know the Exchange Reporter by Frank Zöchling. The tool generates statistics for a Microsoft Exchange Server and outputs them as a report. Frank Zöchling released Exchange Reporter version 3.12 yesterday, January 3, 2023.

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Microsoft Office Updates (January 3, 2023)

Posted on 2023-01-04 by guenni

[German]As of January 3, 2023 (first Tuesday of the month), Microsoft has released non-security updates for still-supported versions of Microsoft Office. This month, there are only updates for Microsoft Office 2016, fixing crash errors in Access ODBC accesses and in OLEDB accesses to Sharepoint. Microsoft Office 2013 has not received any updates. Here's a brief overview of the updates.

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Attention: Central Adobe CA certificate expires on January 7, 2023 – no new certificate for perpetual licensing customers!

Posted on 2023-01-04 by guenni

Stop - Pixabay[German]Brief note for users or administrators of Adobe perpetual licensing software. A German blog reader alerted me about the expiration of a CA certificate on Adobe AEM servers or Adobe LiveCycle ES servers. As of January 7, 2023, any Adobe document servers still in use will no longer function. And there is no certificate renewal for customers who don't have a subscription from Adobe.

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Microsoft Office: End of Life dates and feature drops in 2023

Posted on 2023-01-03 by guenni

[German]There will be some changes for Microsoft Office users in 2023. For example, Microsoft Office 2013 will reach the end of support and access to Microsoft online services will no longer be supported in Office 2016/2019. Furthermore, features in mobile versions of Office are likely to be dropped at the end of 2022. And there are innovations at the beginning of 2023 in Office 365. Here is a brief overview of these topics.

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Why ISL Online: Critical factors when choosing a remote desktop solution

[Sponsored Post]In the rapidly evolving IT world, choosing the right remote desktop software is critical for organizations that value security, ease of use and reliability. One provider of secure remote access that has been on the market since 2001 is ISL Online, which presents some considerations for choosing such software below. More ...

Thunderbird can't connect via IMAP an oAuth with Exchange Online (outlook.office365.com)

Posted on 2023-01-03 by guenni

[German]At the turn of the year 2022/2023, Microsoft has deactivated Basic Authentication for Exchange Online. This forced Thunderbird users into connection issues with mail servers via IMAP. Thunderbird reports that the user is authenticated  (via oAuth2) but is not connected. But there is a workaround for Thunderbird. Addendum: It seems that Microsoft has fixed the issue.

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Microsoft Teams: Issues with special characters in profile names

Posted on 2023-01-02 by guenni

Teams[German]When using Microsoft Teams, administrators should make sure that no special characters appear in the profile names. This can lead to strange errors. The Teams client may refuse to start if, for example, a round bracket appears in the profile name. Frank Carius came across the problem at a customer in mid-December 2022 and then analyzed the whole thing. And there is a second find from mid-December 2022 in the form of a post in the Microsoft Techcommunity. In both cases, there are tickets at Microsoft, but they relate to different versions of the MS Teams app. Here is a brief overview of these cases, where I am not yet aware of any solutions from Microsoft (only workarounds that users have found).

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Security risk Microsoft Outlook App: Transfers credentials and mails to the cloud

Posted on 2023-01-01 by guenni

Stop - Pixabay[German]At the beginning of the year 2023, I am once again bringing up a topic that I already addressed here on the blog in 2015 and in January 2021. It's about the Microsoft Outlook app, which is available for Android and iOS devices and, in my opinion, is widely used. In the corporate environment, however, those responsible are sailing in risky waters, because this app transfers login data and mails to the Microsoft Cloud, so that they can be analyzed there. In the EU Parliament, the use was prohibited and I had pointed out the issue again in 2021. The issue has now come to my attention again because Baden-Württemberg's data protection commissioner has subjected the app to an analysis. It also came out that the app transfers data to the cloud.

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Happy New Year – 2023

Posted on 2023-01-01 by guenni

That's what I wish all blog readers and above all health and optimism in these times. The year 2022 is over, and now 2023 is upon us, whatever the new year may bring.

Simon Beck Snow Art
(Source: Snow Art by Simon Beck, Vita of retired engineering colleague on Wikipedia, and an article)

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WhatsApp will discontinue support for various Android and Apple smartphones at December 31, 2022

Posted on 2022-12-31 by guenni

For users of very old Apple iPhones and various Samsung Android smartphones, WhatsApp will end it's upport as of today, December 31, 2022. That means, that it's no longer possible, to install the WhatsApp app on such a device. That's because Meta, the operator of the WhatsApp service, has announced the end of support for older OS versions, which affects 49 older smartphone models.

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