If you’re worried about deepfake likenesses of yourself showing up online, you’re not alone; YouTube is worried for you. It wants to protect you by having you upload a selfie video and government ID to its site.

The idea is that the video giant will use its own AI to patrol the service for fake videos using your likeness. In exchange, you get the chance to have them taken down.

This isn’t available for everyone, though. It’s for celebs, those in vulnerable jobs, and now, most YouTube creators.

YouTube has been working on this concept, which it calls its “likeness detection” system, since it first floated the idea publicly in September 2024. That December, it launched a partnership with the Creative Artists Agency that saw it using the technology with sporting and entertainment figures.

In October last year, it expanded likeness detection to cover more creators, and then in March it expanded it again to cover politicians and journalists. And last month, it widened the net again, offering the service to Hollywood celebs. They can use it regardless of whether they have a YouTube account, it added.

Now, in its latest move, anyone 18 or older with a selfie and ID can sign up. At least in theory, as it hasn’t rolled out to everyone yet. It’s also for faces only; AI-generated voice clones are another problem entirely.

The privacy risk

Privacy advocates warned that YouTube’s likeness detection system could normalize handing biometric data to large tech platforms, even if YouTube says the data is only used to improve likeness detection models with creator permission.

On the help page for the likeness detection service, YouTube says creators can separately choose whether their face and voice templates are used to improve its likeness detection models.

“When you sign up for Likeness detection, you also have the option to allow YouTube to use your face and voice templates to develop and improve likeness detection models. This helps us build better, more accurate likeness detection technologies.”

Adding:

“You can opt out of YouTube’s use of this data for development and improvement of likeness models at any time.”

YouTube supports legislation intended to tackle deepfakes, such as the NO FAKES and TAKE IT DOWN acts. These are designed to help stop the misappropriation of someone’s image online. TAKE IT DOWN, which became law a year ago, focuses purely on “nonconsensual intimate imagery.” But that doesn’t cover other kinds of deepfakes, such as fake politicians or celebrity endorsements. Those are becoming increasingly common. NO FAKES, which hasn’t yet become law, is far broader in scope, assigning people federal rights over their own image.

So is it worth the trade?

Deepfakes, intimate and otherwise, are definitely a threat, especially for YouTubers who become popular. And the barrier to entry is lowering all the time. Google’s own DeepMind researchers found most generative AI misuse isn’t sophisticated; it’s mundane likeness manipulation by anyone with a browser.

So do you hand over your face and government ID for your protection, to a company whose broader data collection practices have faced years of scrutiny, and hope its policies don’t change? Or do you skip it and hope that the deepfake merchants don’t decide to target you?

Creators commenting on YouTube’s video revealing the service six months ago were less than impressed. One commenter said:

“I was 100% on board, up until the ID upload. That makes me very uncomfortable.”

Echoing several others who complained that it’s difficult to get takedown requests actioned, another added:

“If YouTube actually acted upon these kinds of reports, then I’d be more in favour of this.”

Whether you decide to sign up for the service or not, just be sure to do it with your eyes open.

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If you’re worried about deepfake likenesses of yourself showing up online, you’re not alone; YouTube is worried for you. It wants to protect you by having you upload a selfie video and government ID to its site.

The idea is that the video giant will use its own AI to patrol the service for fake videos using your likeness. In exchange, you get the chance to have them taken down.

This isn’t available for everyone, though. It’s for celebs, those in vulnerable jobs, and now, most YouTube creators.

YouTube has been working on this concept, which it calls its “likeness detection” system, since it first floated the idea publicly in September 2024. That December, it launched a partnership with the Creative Artists Agency that saw it using the technology with sporting and entertainment figures.

In October last year, it expanded likeness detection to cover more creators, and then in March it expanded it again to cover politicians and journalists. And last month, it widened the net again, offering the service to Hollywood celebs. They can use it regardless of whether they have a YouTube account, it added.

Now, in its latest move, anyone 18 or older with a selfie and ID can sign up. At least in theory, as it hasn’t rolled out to everyone yet. It’s also for faces only; AI-generated voice clones are another problem entirely.

The privacy risk

Privacy advocates warned that YouTube’s likeness detection system could normalize handing biometric data to large tech platforms, even if YouTube says the data is only used to improve likeness detection models with creator permission.

On the help page for the likeness detection service, YouTube says creators can separately choose whether their face and voice templates are used to improve its likeness detection models.

“When you sign up for Likeness detection, you also have the option to allow YouTube to use your face and voice templates to develop and improve likeness detection models. This helps us build better, more accurate likeness detection technologies.”

Adding:

“You can opt out of YouTube’s use of this data for development and improvement of likeness models at any time.”

YouTube supports legislation intended to tackle deepfakes, such as the NO FAKES and TAKE IT DOWN acts. These are designed to help stop the misappropriation of someone’s image online. TAKE IT DOWN, which became law a year ago, focuses purely on “nonconsensual intimate imagery.” But that doesn’t cover other kinds of deepfakes, such as fake politicians or celebrity endorsements. Those are becoming increasingly common. NO FAKES, which hasn’t yet become law, is far broader in scope, assigning people federal rights over their own image.

So is it worth the trade?

Deepfakes, intimate and otherwise, are definitely a threat, especially for YouTubers who become popular. And the barrier to entry is lowering all the time. Google’s own DeepMind researchers found most generative AI misuse isn’t sophisticated; it’s mundane likeness manipulation by anyone with a browser.

So do you hand over your face and government ID for your protection, to a company whose broader data collection practices have faced years of scrutiny, and hope its policies don’t change? Or do you skip it and hope that the deepfake merchants don’t decide to target you?

Creators commenting on YouTube’s video revealing the service six months ago were less than impressed. One commenter said:

“I was 100% on board, up until the ID upload. That makes me very uncomfortable.”

Echoing several others who complained that it’s difficult to get takedown requests actioned, another added:

“If YouTube actually acted upon these kinds of reports, then I’d be more in favour of this.”

Whether you decide to sign up for the service or not, just be sure to do it with your eyes open.

---

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Microsoft said it will change Edge’s password handling as a “defense‑in‑depth” measure.

Originally, Edge decrypted the entire saved‑password store on startup and kept all credentials resident in process memory in clear text for the whole browser session, regardless of whether a given credential was ever used or not.

A short while ago, Microsoft said this plaintext password behavior was by design. Now, Microsoft has changed course, and the new password-handling behavior is already present in Canary (the experimental preview version of Microsoft Edge), with rollout prioritized across all channels.

The researcher who originally flagged the issue said:

“Edge is the only Chromium‑based browser I’ve tested that behaves this way. By contrast, Chrome uses a design that makes it far harder for attackers to extract saved passwords by simply reading process memory.”

Microsoft Edge Security Lead Gareth Evans said Microsoft is now taking a broader view and has committed to changing Edge so that saved passwords are no longer loaded into memory on startup as clear text. As a result, exposure will be reduced as a defense‑in‑depth improvement. That means even if an attacker has administrative control of a device, it becomes harder to harvest all the passwords.

According to Microsoft:

“Going forward, Microsoft Edge will no longer load all saved passwords into memory at browser startup. Instead, passwords will be decrypted only when needed for autofill or password management operations.”

The change is already live in the Edge Canary channel and will be included in the next update for all supported Edge releases (build 148 and newer across Stable, Beta, Dev, Canary, and Extended Stable).

The reason for this change is probably more reputational and strategic rather than an acknowledgment of an exploitable vulnerability. Microsoft seems to want to align reality with its “secure by design” messaging and reduce a very visible, easy‑to‑demo weakness, even if it still doesn’t treat it as a classic memory‑disclosure bug.

Passwords in your browser

Please note that this change just means Edge will become roughly as secure an option to store passwords as every other Chromium-based browser.

Your browser password manager gives you ease of use, but that comes with some security tradeoffs. Of course, password managers aren’t foolproof either, so it’s important to decide for yourself where you store your passwords.

If you’re confident a website is safe, and anyone who can access it under your account wouldn’t learn anything sensitive, feel free to store the password in your browser, but disable autofill so you stay in control.

Use MFA where possible. It enormously reduces the risk if someone gets hold of your password. And avoid using the browser password manager to store your credit card details or other sensitive personally identifiable information, such as medical information.

---

Let’s face it, an incognito window can only do so much. 
 
Breaches, dark web trading, credit fraud. Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection monitors for all of it, alerts you fast, and comes with identity theft insurance. 

Microsoft said it will change Edge’s password handling as a “defense‑in‑depth” measure.

Originally, Edge decrypted the entire saved‑password store on startup and kept all credentials resident in process memory in clear text for the whole browser session, regardless of whether a given credential was ever used or not.

A short while ago, Microsoft said this plaintext password behavior was by design. Now, Microsoft has changed course, and the new password-handling behavior is already present in Canary (the experimental preview version of Microsoft Edge), with rollout prioritized across all channels.

The researcher who originally flagged the issue said:

“Edge is the only Chromium‑based browser I’ve tested that behaves this way. By contrast, Chrome uses a design that makes it far harder for attackers to extract saved passwords by simply reading process memory.”

Microsoft Edge Security Lead Gareth Evans said Microsoft is now taking a broader view and has committed to changing Edge so that saved passwords are no longer loaded into memory on startup as clear text. As a result, exposure will be reduced as a defense‑in‑depth improvement. That means even if an attacker has administrative control of a device, it becomes harder to harvest all the passwords.

According to Microsoft:

“Going forward, Microsoft Edge will no longer load all saved passwords into memory at browser startup. Instead, passwords will be decrypted only when needed for autofill or password management operations.”

The change is already live in the Edge Canary channel and will be included in the next update for all supported Edge releases (build 148 and newer across Stable, Beta, Dev, Canary, and Extended Stable).

The reason for this change is probably more reputational and strategic rather than an acknowledgment of an exploitable vulnerability. Microsoft seems to want to align reality with its “secure by design” messaging and reduce a very visible, easy‑to‑demo weakness, even if it still doesn’t treat it as a classic memory‑disclosure bug.

Passwords in your browser

Please note that this change just means Edge will become roughly as secure an option to store passwords as every other Chromium-based browser.

Your browser password manager gives you ease of use, but that comes with some security tradeoffs. Of course, password managers aren’t foolproof either, so it’s important to decide for yourself where you store your passwords.

If you’re confident a website is safe, and anyone who can access it under your account wouldn’t learn anything sensitive, feel free to store the password in your browser, but disable autofill so you stay in control.

Use MFA where possible. It enormously reduces the risk if someone gets hold of your password. And avoid using the browser password manager to store your credit card details or other sensitive personally identifiable information, such as medical information.

---

Let’s face it, an incognito window can only do so much. 
 
Breaches, dark web trading, credit fraud. Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection monitors for all of it, alerts you fast, and comes with identity theft insurance. 

Businesses are advised against paying – but many are prepared to deal to protect users’ privacy

After a week of outages, hundreds of millions of students’ data stolen, delayed assignment due dates and school login pages being defaced by hackers, the US tech firm Instructure – which operates the education platform Canvas, used by education providers worldwide – announced it had “reached an agreement with the unauthorised actor” behind the ransomware attack.

Experts read the careful language as a sign that a ransom has been paid. The company has not confirmed this.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Boonchai Wedmakawand/Getty Images

© Photograph: Boonchai Wedmakawand/Getty Images

© Photograph: Boonchai Wedmakawand/Getty Images

Recent news had us wondering whether Meta actually knows what it wants.

On one platform, Meta is promoting AI chats that it says even it cannot read. On another, it has removed one of the few features that genuinely prevented Meta from accessing private conversations.

“Meta removed support for end-to-end encrypted chats from Instagram as of May 8, 2026.”

“Meta adds fully private AI chats to WhatsApp.”

At the moment, Meta is heavily promoting a new Incognito Chat mode for its Meta AI assistant in WhatsApp, built on top of a system it calls Private Processing. According to WhatsApp’s own announcement, Incognito Chat is:

 “Truly private — no one can read your conversation, not even us.”

When you start an Incognito chat with Meta AI, you get a temporary conversation where messages aren’t saved and disappear by default, which Meta pitches as “a space to think and explore ideas without anyone watching.”

BBC News and others report that these AI chats are text‑only for now, run in a sandboxed environment, and are separate from your regular end‑to‑end encrypted (E2EE) messaging with other people on WhatsApp.

Meta is also preparing “Side Chat,” which will let you invoke Meta AI inside other WhatsApp chats, again using this Private Processing infrastructure to claim AI assistance without breaking the underlying encryption.

On paper, that’s an impressive technical and marketing story: powerful AI, wrapped in layers of privacy‑preserving infrastructure, added to an app that already has a strong reputation for end‑to‑end encryption by default.

Meanwhile, on Instagram…

Now contrast that with what’s happening on Instagram. On 8 May 2026, Meta removed optional end‑to‑end encryption for Instagram Direct Messages (DMs) entirely. Users who had previously turned the feature on were shown notices that “end‑to‑end encrypted messaging on Instagram is no longer supported as of 8 May 2026,” and were urged to download backups of their encrypted conversations before the cutoff.

End‑to‑end encryption ensures that only the sender and recipient can read their conversations. Instagram offered this as an opt‑in feature since late 2023, but it was buried several taps deep inside individual conversation settings and never turned on by default. Meta’s explanation for shutting it down is that “very few people” used encrypted DMs and that maintaining a separate encrypted system added complexity. Critics have pointed out the circular logic. The company hid the feature, did not advertise it, and is now using low adoption as the reason to kill it rather than, say, making it easier to find or turning it on by default.

What all this means

From a user’s perspective, the result is confusing: one Meta product introduces stronger privacy than ever for AI chats, while another removes the one feature that truly stopped Meta from reading your conversations.

The key point to remember here is that “incognito” and “private” are marketing words, while end‑to‑end encryption is a technical guarantee.

For security‑conscious users, this split personality means you can no longer treat all Meta chats the same. WhatsApp remains end‑to‑end encrypted for person‑to‑person messages and adds optional privacy features around its AI, while Instagram DMs should now be assumed readable by Meta and potentially accessible to law enforcement, advertisers, or attackers who gain access to Meta’s systems.

---

---

Why make AI chats private?

We’ve seen that AI chats have suddenly turned up in search results without users’ knowledge. So there definitely is a positive side to this new feature.

We also know there have been lawsuits against chatbot providers in cases where the outcome of an AI conversation led to very undesirable results. But how would you be able to provide evidence when messages auto-disappear?

How to proceed

Meta’s recent moves show that strong privacy features can be added where they support a strategic narrative and removed where they conflict with business or regulatory priorities. Users can’t control those decisions, but they can respond by choosing where they hold their most sensitive conversations and by assuming that if a chat isn’t end‑to‑end encrypted by default, it is ultimately readable by someone other than the people in it.

So, what’s a safe way to move forward?

• Treat Instagram DMs as postcard-level privacy. Now that E2EE is gone, assume Meta can read and scan your messages and that content could be accessed under legal orders or in a breach. Do not send passwords, recovery codes, banking details, or compromising photos over Instagram.
• When someone asks you to move a conversation to Signal, WhatsApp, or another E2EE messenger, ask them why. It does make sense when you’re sharing financial details, personal images, health information, or anything you would not want a platform provider to read. But sometimes scammers prefer encrypted platforms too, because they’re harder to monitor.
• Do not confuse “incognito” AI chats with full encryption. WhatsApp’s Incognito mode for Meta AI may be a privacy improvement over standard cloud AI chats, but it is still a conversation with a large language model owned by the same company that runs the platform. Share only what you’re comfortable entrusting to Meta.
• Regularly review your privacy and security settings. Check which devices are logged in, enable two‑factor authentication, and verify which of your chat apps are actually end‑to‑end encrypted by default.

---

Scammers know more about you than you think. 

Malwarebytes Mobile Security protects you from phishing, scam texts, malicious sites, and more. With real-time AI-powered Scam Guard built right in. 

Download for iOS → Download for Android → 

Recent news had us wondering whether Meta actually knows what it wants.

On one platform, Meta is promoting AI chats that it says even it cannot read. On another, it has removed one of the few features that genuinely prevented Meta from accessing private conversations.

“Meta removed support for end-to-end encrypted chats from Instagram as of May 8, 2026.”

“Meta adds fully private AI chats to WhatsApp.”

At the moment, Meta is heavily promoting a new Incognito Chat mode for its Meta AI assistant in WhatsApp, built on top of a system it calls Private Processing. According to WhatsApp’s own announcement, Incognito Chat is:

 “Truly private — no one can read your conversation, not even us.”

When you start an Incognito chat with Meta AI, you get a temporary conversation where messages aren’t saved and disappear by default, which Meta pitches as “a space to think and explore ideas without anyone watching.”

BBC News and others report that these AI chats are text‑only for now, run in a sandboxed environment, and are separate from your regular end‑to‑end encrypted (E2EE) messaging with other people on WhatsApp.

Meta is also preparing “Side Chat,” which will let you invoke Meta AI inside other WhatsApp chats, again using this Private Processing infrastructure to claim AI assistance without breaking the underlying encryption.

On paper, that’s an impressive technical and marketing story: powerful AI, wrapped in layers of privacy‑preserving infrastructure, added to an app that already has a strong reputation for end‑to‑end encryption by default.

Meanwhile, on Instagram…

Now contrast that with what’s happening on Instagram. On 8 May 2026, Meta removed optional end‑to‑end encryption for Instagram Direct Messages (DMs) entirely. Users who had previously turned the feature on were shown notices that “end‑to‑end encrypted messaging on Instagram is no longer supported as of 8 May 2026,” and were urged to download backups of their encrypted conversations before the cutoff.

End‑to‑end encryption ensures that only the sender and recipient can read their conversations. Instagram offered this as an opt‑in feature since late 2023, but it was buried several taps deep inside individual conversation settings and never turned on by default. Meta’s explanation for shutting it down is that “very few people” used encrypted DMs and that maintaining a separate encrypted system added complexity. Critics have pointed out the circular logic. The company hid the feature, did not advertise it, and is now using low adoption as the reason to kill it rather than, say, making it easier to find or turning it on by default.

What all this means

From a user’s perspective, the result is confusing: one Meta product introduces stronger privacy than ever for AI chats, while another removes the one feature that truly stopped Meta from reading your conversations.

The key point to remember here is that “incognito” and “private” are marketing words, while end‑to‑end encryption is a technical guarantee.

For security‑conscious users, this split personality means you can no longer treat all Meta chats the same. WhatsApp remains end‑to‑end encrypted for person‑to‑person messages and adds optional privacy features around its AI, while Instagram DMs should now be assumed readable by Meta and potentially accessible to law enforcement, advertisers, or attackers who gain access to Meta’s systems.

---

---

Why make AI chats private?

We’ve seen that AI chats have suddenly turned up in search results without users’ knowledge. So there definitely is a positive side to this new feature.

We also know there have been lawsuits against chatbot providers in cases where the outcome of an AI conversation led to very undesirable results. But how would you be able to provide evidence when messages auto-disappear?

How to proceed

Meta’s recent moves show that strong privacy features can be added where they support a strategic narrative and removed where they conflict with business or regulatory priorities. Users can’t control those decisions, but they can respond by choosing where they hold their most sensitive conversations and by assuming that if a chat isn’t end‑to‑end encrypted by default, it is ultimately readable by someone other than the people in it.

So, what’s a safe way to move forward?

• Treat Instagram DMs as postcard-level privacy. Now that E2EE is gone, assume Meta can read and scan your messages and that content could be accessed under legal orders or in a breach. Do not send passwords, recovery codes, banking details, or compromising photos over Instagram.
• When someone asks you to move a conversation to Signal, WhatsApp, or another E2EE messenger, ask them why. It does make sense when you’re sharing financial details, personal images, health information, or anything you would not want a platform provider to read. But sometimes scammers prefer encrypted platforms too, because they’re harder to monitor.
• Do not confuse “incognito” AI chats with full encryption. WhatsApp’s Incognito mode for Meta AI may be a privacy improvement over standard cloud AI chats, but it is still a conversation with a large language model owned by the same company that runs the platform. Share only what you’re comfortable entrusting to Meta.
• Regularly review your privacy and security settings. Check which devices are logged in, enable two‑factor authentication, and verify which of your chat apps are actually end‑to‑end encrypted by default.

---

Scammers know more about you than you think. 

Malwarebytes Mobile Security protects you from phishing, scam texts, malicious sites, and more. With real-time AI-powered Scam Guard built right in. 

Download for iOS → Download for Android → 

Some Malwarebytes users have recently noticed frequent web protection alerts while reading email in Yahoo Mail’s web interface. These alerts are caused by background connections from the Yahoo Mail page to a set of third‑party domains that our products and other security tools currently classify as risky.

What we are seeing under the hood

When you open Yahoo Mail in a browser, the page loads various embedded components for navigation, features, and metrics. As part of this, the interface makes calls to domains such as cook.howduhtable.com and related subdomains, sometimes in the context of URLs that include /ybar/mail.yahoo.com/ and a long encoded parameter. That encoded string often resolves to a URL like:

https://gpt.mail.yahoo.net/sandbox?client=novation&version=0.1&haq=1&cache=1

This suggests the traffic is being routed through what appears to be a sandboxed web component that Yahoo can use for things like telemetry, testing infrastructure, or mail features. It may also be part of an advertising or tracking flow, but at this time we cannot say with certainty exactly what purpose Yahoo is using it for.

Regardless of intent, multiple security systems have observed these redirect domains and assigned them poor reputations. Characteristics include:

• Frequently changing, opaque subdomains that do not resemble normal consumer‑facing Yahoo addresses
• Use of encoded parameters and chained redirects that make it difficult for users, and sometimes defenders, to see the final destination at a glance
• Existing detections and blocklists from other vendors that classify the infrastructure as suspicious or potentially malicious

Because of these signals, Malwarebytes Web Protection and Browser Guard have been blocking a growing list of related subdomains to protect users, which is why some people see repeated alerts while using Yahoo Mail.

What we are not saying

It is important to be clear about what we do and do not know.

We have not established that Yahoo Mail itself is compromised or that Yahoo is deliberately distributing malware through its mail platform. What we can say is that third‑party or internal components invoked from within the Yahoo Mail web interface are making connections through domains that behave very similarly to infrastructure commonly associated with malicious or deceptive advertising and tracking.

From a security standpoint, this creates unnecessary risk. Any mechanism that injects content or runs sandboxed components via opaque redirect chains could, if misused or subverted in the future, expose users to harmful content without them ever clicking a suspicious link.

Blocking these domains is a precautionary step in line with our normal protection standards.

Why Malwarebytes blocks these redirects

Our decision to block these connections is based on a combination of technical behavior and third‑party reputation data:

• The redirects are triggered by embedded components in the Yahoo Mail interface, not by users intentionally browsing to those domains
• The infrastructure relies on frequently changing, non‑descriptive domains and subdomains, a pattern we often see in malicious or evasive advertising and tracking systems
• Multiple security vendors and automated reputation feeds already flag these domains as risky or malicious, and some have seen them associated with unwanted or harmful activity

Because of this, Malwarebytes products currently block connections to these third‑party domains when they are invoked as part of Yahoo Mail’s web experience. This does not mean that all of Yahoo Mail is considered malicious. It means we are specifically interrupting a narrow set of background calls that present elevated risk.

What this means for users

If you use Yahoo Mail in a browser with Malwarebytes enabled, you may see:

• Web protection or MWAC alerts referencing domains like cook.howduhtable.com or similar names while you are reading or composing email
• Multiple alerts in a short period, because the mail interface may retry or rotate through different subdomains or IP addresses in the same family

In most cases, your email content itself still loads, though certain embedded elements, metrics, or ad‑related content may fail to load or behave differently.

How to stay safe and reduce interruptions

You should not need to lower your protection to continue using Yahoo Mail. Here are some practical steps you can take:

• Keep Malwarebytes protection enabled
  Leaving Web Protection and Browser Guard on ensures blocks remain in place if these redirects change behavior or begin serving harmful content in the future.
• Avoid allowlisting the suspicious domains
  While it’s technically possible to add exclusions for individual domains, doing so would allow their traffic to load unfiltered in your browser. We don’t recommend this unless you fully understand and accept the risk.
• Use private/incognito windows for Yahoo Mail
  Accessing Yahoo Mail in a private/incognito session can help reduce persistence of certain tracking and advertising data because the browser discards cookies and local storage when you close the window.
• Clear cookies and site data periodically
  If you see repeated alerts, clearing Yahoo‑related cookies and cached data may reduce some of the underlying tracking behavior that triggers these redirects.
• Consider fewer‑ads options
  Yahoo offers paid plans that reduce or remove ads, and users can also use reputable content‑blocking extensions alongside Malwarebytes to cut down on ad‑driven behavior in webmail interfaces.

Our ongoing monitoring

The domains and infrastructure involved in these redirects are operated outside Malwarebytes, and their configuration or behavior may change over time. We are actively monitoring telemetry, sandbox reports, and reputation data for these domains and related infrastructure, and we will adjust our detections if new information emerges.

Our priority is to keep users safe while being transparent about why protection events occur, especially in widely used services such as webmail. If we learn more about the exact role of this component within Yahoo Mail, or if Yahoo provides additional clarity, we will update this article accordingly.

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Stop threats before they can do any harm.

Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocks phishing pages and malicious sites automatically. Free, one click to install. Add it to your browser →

Some Malwarebytes users have recently noticed frequent web protection alerts while reading email in Yahoo Mail’s web interface. These alerts are caused by background connections from the Yahoo Mail page to a set of third‑party domains that our products and other security tools currently classify as risky.

What we are seeing under the hood

When you open Yahoo Mail in a browser, the page loads various embedded components for navigation, features, and metrics. As part of this, the interface makes calls to domains such as cook.howduhtable.com and related subdomains, sometimes in the context of URLs that include /ybar/mail.yahoo.com/ and a long encoded parameter. That encoded string often resolves to a URL like:

https://gpt.mail.yahoo.net/sandbox?client=novation&version=0.1&haq=1&cache=1

This suggests the traffic is being routed through what appears to be a sandboxed web component that Yahoo can use for things like telemetry, testing infrastructure, or mail features. It may also be part of an advertising or tracking flow, but at this time we cannot say with certainty exactly what purpose Yahoo is using it for.

Regardless of intent, multiple security systems have observed these redirect domains and assigned them poor reputations. Characteristics include:

• Frequently changing, opaque subdomains that do not resemble normal consumer‑facing Yahoo addresses
• Use of encoded parameters and chained redirects that make it difficult for users, and sometimes defenders, to see the final destination at a glance
• Existing detections and blocklists from other vendors that classify the infrastructure as suspicious or potentially malicious

Because of these signals, Malwarebytes Web Protection and Browser Guard have been blocking a growing list of related subdomains to protect users, which is why some people see repeated alerts while using Yahoo Mail.

What we are not saying

It is important to be clear about what we do and do not know.

We have not established that Yahoo Mail itself is compromised or that Yahoo is deliberately distributing malware through its mail platform. What we can say is that third‑party or internal components invoked from within the Yahoo Mail web interface are making connections through domains that behave very similarly to infrastructure commonly associated with malicious or deceptive advertising and tracking.

From a security standpoint, this creates unnecessary risk. Any mechanism that injects content or runs sandboxed components via opaque redirect chains could, if misused or subverted in the future, expose users to harmful content without them ever clicking a suspicious link.

Blocking these domains is a precautionary step in line with our normal protection standards.

Why Malwarebytes blocks these redirects

Our decision to block these connections is based on a combination of technical behavior and third‑party reputation data:

• The redirects are triggered by embedded components in the Yahoo Mail interface, not by users intentionally browsing to those domains
• The infrastructure relies on frequently changing, non‑descriptive domains and subdomains, a pattern we often see in malicious or evasive advertising and tracking systems
• Multiple security vendors and automated reputation feeds already flag these domains as risky or malicious, and some have seen them associated with unwanted or harmful activity

Because of this, Malwarebytes products currently block connections to these third‑party domains when they are invoked as part of Yahoo Mail’s web experience. This does not mean that all of Yahoo Mail is considered malicious. It means we are specifically interrupting a narrow set of background calls that present elevated risk.

What this means for users

If you use Yahoo Mail in a browser with Malwarebytes enabled, you may see:

• Web protection or MWAC alerts referencing domains like cook.howduhtable.com or similar names while you are reading or composing email
• Multiple alerts in a short period, because the mail interface may retry or rotate through different subdomains or IP addresses in the same family

In most cases, your email content itself still loads, though certain embedded elements, metrics, or ad‑related content may fail to load or behave differently.

How to stay safe and reduce interruptions

You should not need to lower your protection to continue using Yahoo Mail. Here are some practical steps you can take:

• Keep Malwarebytes protection enabled
  Leaving Web Protection and Browser Guard on ensures blocks remain in place if these redirects change behavior or begin serving harmful content in the future.
• Avoid allowlisting the suspicious domains
  While it’s technically possible to add exclusions for individual domains, doing so would allow their traffic to load unfiltered in your browser. We don’t recommend this unless you fully understand and accept the risk.
• Use private/incognito windows for Yahoo Mail
  Accessing Yahoo Mail in a private/incognito session can help reduce persistence of certain tracking and advertising data because the browser discards cookies and local storage when you close the window.
• Clear cookies and site data periodically
  If you see repeated alerts, clearing Yahoo‑related cookies and cached data may reduce some of the underlying tracking behavior that triggers these redirects.
• Consider fewer‑ads options
  Yahoo offers paid plans that reduce or remove ads, and users can also use reputable content‑blocking extensions alongside Malwarebytes to cut down on ad‑driven behavior in webmail interfaces.

Our ongoing monitoring

The domains and infrastructure involved in these redirects are operated outside Malwarebytes, and their configuration or behavior may change over time. We are actively monitoring telemetry, sandbox reports, and reputation data for these domains and related infrastructure, and we will adjust our detections if new information emerges.

Our priority is to keep users safe while being transparent about why protection events occur, especially in widely used services such as webmail. If we learn more about the exact role of this component within Yahoo Mail, or if Yahoo provides additional clarity, we will update this article accordingly.

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Schools love a good photo, whether it’s from a trip to a castle, a science prize ceremony, or sports day shot from three angles. For two decades, celebratory images like these have gone straight onto school websites, captioned with a name and a grade. But those days are gone, because it’s the internet in 2026 and we can’t have nice things.

As first reported by the Guardian, experts are now urging schools to take those pictures down. According to the UK’s National Crime Agency, the Internet Watch Foundation, and an advisory body called the Early Warning Working Group (EWWG), blackmailers have been scraping ordinary school photos, feeding them through AI deepfake tools to manufacture child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and demanding payment to keep the images offline.

One school, 150 images

Late last year, cybercriminals contacted an unnamed UK secondary school with that demand. The IWF classified 150 of the resulting images as CSAM under UK law and generated digital fingerprints for each image so major platforms could block reuploads.

The IWF isn’t naming the school or the police force, and it doesn’t believe this was an isolated case. The EWWG says it’s “only a matter of time” before more schools face similar demands.

UK safeguarding minister Jess Phillips called it a “deeply worrying emerging threat.” In February 2025, the UK became the first country to ban AI tools designed specifically to generate CSAM.

How we got here

This threat didn’t appear overnight, and it isn’t limited to the UK. It’s an evolution of a long-time threat: sextortion, when someone uses intimate images to blackmail you. Traditionally, sextortion relied on real intimate images that were stolen or shared, but deepfake AI has changed everything.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) logged more than 16,000 sextortion complaints in the first half of 2021, with losses exceeding $8 million. By June 2023, the bureau warned the playbook had shifted: attackers were using ordinary social media photos to create fake explicit images and extort minors.

UK children’s counseling helpline Childline has seen similar shifts as deepfake tools become more accessible. It already logs many sextortion cases each year, many from kids who were manipulated into sharing intimate images of themselves. Now, the organization is getting calls from children who are being sent deepfake CSAM images of themselves without any prior contact.

One 15-year-old girl, for example, was sent a “really convincing” fake nude built from her Instagram photos.

By November 2025, IWF reports of AI-generated CSAM had more than doubled year over year, rising from 199 to 426. Girls accounted for 94% of the victims. Reported cases included children ranging from newborns to two-year-olds, according to the organization.

The ecosystem around these tools is industrial. In April 2025, a researcher found an exposed AWS S3 bucket belonging to South Korean “nudify” app GenNomis containing 93,485 AI-generated images alongside the prompts that produced them.

What the schools are being told

The EWWG’s advice is to replace close-up, identifiable photos with images taken from a distance, blurred images, or photos shot from behind. It also advises schools to remove full names from captions, audit existing images, and ask parents to re-sign consent forms.

In fact, it advises schools to rethink whether they need to publish children’s photos online at all.

Some schools have already acted. According to the Guardian, Loughborough Schools Foundation, a group of three private schools sharing a website, removed recognizable pupil images entirely last year.

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says that it “would still generally expect you to offer an opt-out to parents” when publishing an identifiable photo of a child, but says this isn’t legally the same as consent, which has a higher bar.

Things get murkier in the US, where states often have their own student privacy statutes. Broadly, though, under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools typically include identifiable photos of students under the category of directory information. This category also covers name, address, telephone listing, date and place of birth, participation in officially recognized activities and sports, and dates of attendance.

Under FERPA, schools can publish this type of information unless the child’s guardian specifically opts out. They have to notify a guardian when they want to publish it, but that process may not apply indefinitely after a student leaves the school.

That means student photos and information can remain online long after families assume they have disappeared.

What happens next

Back in the UK, Childline’s Report Remove service allows children to flag explicit images or videos of themselves that have been posted online. The service took 394 blackmail reports from under-18s last year, up by one-third compared to 2024.

Meanwhile, the UK government is amending the Crime and Policing Bill, forcing platforms to take flagged intimate images down within 48 hours or face fines of 10% of global revenue.

We anticipate a race between regulators and AI-enabled cybercriminals. Right now, attackers still have to manually find the photos themselves. The concern is that this process could soon become automated, allowing criminals to scrape names and photos from school websites and social media platforms at scale.

For parents, the simplest protection may be limiting how many identifiable pictures of your children are available online. That includes being vigilant not just with your child’s school, but their sports clubs, extracurricular activities, and social media accounts.

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Schools love a good photo, whether it’s from a trip to a castle, a science prize ceremony, or sports day shot from three angles. For two decades, celebratory images like these have gone straight onto school websites, captioned with a name and a grade. But those days are gone, because it’s the internet in 2026 and we can’t have nice things.

As first reported by the Guardian, experts are now urging schools to take those pictures down. According to the UK’s National Crime Agency, the Internet Watch Foundation, and an advisory body called the Early Warning Working Group (EWWG), blackmailers have been scraping ordinary school photos, feeding them through AI deepfake tools to manufacture child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and demanding payment to keep the images offline.

One school, 150 images

Late last year, cybercriminals contacted an unnamed UK secondary school with that demand. The IWF classified 150 of the resulting images as CSAM under UK law and generated digital fingerprints for each image so major platforms could block reuploads.

The IWF isn’t naming the school or the police force, and it doesn’t believe this was an isolated case. The EWWG says it’s “only a matter of time” before more schools face similar demands.

UK safeguarding minister Jess Phillips called it a “deeply worrying emerging threat.” In February 2025, the UK became the first country to ban AI tools designed specifically to generate CSAM.

How we got here

This threat didn’t appear overnight, and it isn’t limited to the UK. It’s an evolution of a long-time threat: sextortion, when someone uses intimate images to blackmail you. Traditionally, sextortion relied on real intimate images that were stolen or shared, but deepfake AI has changed everything.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) logged more than 16,000 sextortion complaints in the first half of 2021, with losses exceeding $8 million. By June 2023, the bureau warned the playbook had shifted: attackers were using ordinary social media photos to create fake explicit images and extort minors.

UK children’s counseling helpline Childline has seen similar shifts as deepfake tools become more accessible. It already logs many sextortion cases each year, many from kids who were manipulated into sharing intimate images of themselves. Now, the organization is getting calls from children who are being sent deepfake CSAM images of themselves without any prior contact.

One 15-year-old girl, for example, was sent a “really convincing” fake nude built from her Instagram photos.

By November 2025, IWF reports of AI-generated CSAM had more than doubled year over year, rising from 199 to 426. Girls accounted for 94% of the victims. Reported cases included children ranging from newborns to two-year-olds, according to the organization.

The ecosystem around these tools is industrial. In April 2025, a researcher found an exposed AWS S3 bucket belonging to South Korean “nudify” app GenNomis containing 93,485 AI-generated images alongside the prompts that produced them.

What the schools are being told

The EWWG’s advice is to replace close-up, identifiable photos with images taken from a distance, blurred images, or photos shot from behind. It also advises schools to remove full names from captions, audit existing images, and ask parents to re-sign consent forms.

In fact, it advises schools to rethink whether they need to publish children’s photos online at all.

Some schools have already acted. According to the Guardian, Loughborough Schools Foundation, a group of three private schools sharing a website, removed recognizable pupil images entirely last year.

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says that it “would still generally expect you to offer an opt-out to parents” when publishing an identifiable photo of a child, but says this isn’t legally the same as consent, which has a higher bar.

Things get murkier in the US, where states often have their own student privacy statutes. Broadly, though, under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools typically include identifiable photos of students under the category of directory information. This category also covers name, address, telephone listing, date and place of birth, participation in officially recognized activities and sports, and dates of attendance.

Under FERPA, schools can publish this type of information unless the child’s guardian specifically opts out. They have to notify a guardian when they want to publish it, but that process may not apply indefinitely after a student leaves the school.

That means student photos and information can remain online long after families assume they have disappeared.

What happens next

Back in the UK, Childline’s Report Remove service allows children to flag explicit images or videos of themselves that have been posted online. The service took 394 blackmail reports from under-18s last year, up by one-third compared to 2024.

Meanwhile, the UK government is amending the Crime and Policing Bill, forcing platforms to take flagged intimate images down within 48 hours or face fines of 10% of global revenue.

We anticipate a race between regulators and AI-enabled cybercriminals. Right now, attackers still have to manually find the photos themselves. The concern is that this process could soon become automated, allowing criminals to scrape names and photos from school websites and social media platforms at scale.

For parents, the simplest protection may be limiting how many identifiable pictures of your children are available online. That includes being vigilant not just with your child’s school, but their sports clubs, extracurricular activities, and social media accounts.

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Attorney General (AG) of Texas Ken Paxton announced that he sued Netflix for spying on Texans, including children, and collecting users’ data without their knowledge or consent.  

The suit alleges Netflix secretly tracks and monetizes detailed viewing behavior of users, including children, while misleading users about its data practices. The case could reshape how Netflix collects data, targets ads, and designs “addictive” features, especially for minors. 

According to the complaint, Netflix allegedly ran what the AG’s office calls a “surveillance program,” turning every click, pause, and binge session into data that could be sold to advertisers and data brokers.

Netflix firmly denies the accusations, calling the lawsuit “inaccurate” and claiming it complies with privacy laws wherever it operates. Spokesperson Jamil Walker said:

“The suit lacks merit and is based on inaccurate and distorted information.”

But regardless of how this specific case plays out, the lawsuit raises a bigger question for all subscribers: Just how much does your streaming service really know about you, and what does it do with that information?

The Texas complaint paints a picture of Netflix as a data company first and a streaming service second. Paxton’s office even describes Netflix as:

“A logging company that records and monetizes billions of behavioral events—and occasionally streams movies.”

The complaint also references a 2024 ruling by the Dutch Data Protection Authority, which said Netflix does not disclose the true scale or granularity of this data collection. The lawsuit claims Netflix did not just use this data internally for recommendations but also sold it to commercial data brokers and ad tech companies, generating “billions of dollars” annually. 

The AG wants to stop the unlawful collection and disclosure of user data, require Netflix to disable autoplay by default on kid’s profiles, and impose other injunctive relief and civil penalties.

For customers, the main consequences could include potential changes to data collection, targeted advertising, autoplay defaults, and clearer consent and privacy controls. For subscribers on Netflix’s ad‑supported plans, this could slightly change how “personal” ads feel, at least in jurisdictions where regulators clamp down.

Plus, the lawsuit serves as a reminder that streaming habits may be far more trackable than users assumed. Even if Netflix ultimately wins or settles without admitting wrongdoing, the lawsuit puts a spotlight on what the company collects and why.

Netflix privacy and account settings

It will probably take a while before this lawsuit leads to any changes. But there are a few things you can do to protect your privacy:

• Netflix lets users view and remove entries from their watch history per profile, which can reduce how much historical behavior feeds into recommendations.
• Where available, turn off non‑essential marketing emails or in‑app promotions that rely on behavioral profiling.
• Use the parental controls Netflix offers you and turn off autoplay previews.

Basically, treat your Netflix account like any other online account: Review every profile, remove old ones, and take five minutes to walk through the privacy- and playback‑related options.

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Scammers don’t need to hack you. They just need you to click once. 

Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection catches suspicious activity before it becomes a problem.

Attorney General (AG) of Texas Ken Paxton announced that he sued Netflix for spying on Texans, including children, and collecting users’ data without their knowledge or consent.  

The suit alleges Netflix secretly tracks and monetizes detailed viewing behavior of users, including children, while misleading users about its data practices. The case could reshape how Netflix collects data, targets ads, and designs “addictive” features, especially for minors. 

According to the complaint, Netflix allegedly ran what the AG’s office calls a “surveillance program,” turning every click, pause, and binge session into data that could be sold to advertisers and data brokers.

Netflix firmly denies the accusations, calling the lawsuit “inaccurate” and claiming it complies with privacy laws wherever it operates. Spokesperson Jamil Walker said:

“The suit lacks merit and is based on inaccurate and distorted information.”

But regardless of how this specific case plays out, the lawsuit raises a bigger question for all subscribers: Just how much does your streaming service really know about you, and what does it do with that information?

The Texas complaint paints a picture of Netflix as a data company first and a streaming service second. Paxton’s office even describes Netflix as:

“A logging company that records and monetizes billions of behavioral events—and occasionally streams movies.”

The complaint also references a 2024 ruling by the Dutch Data Protection Authority, which said Netflix does not disclose the true scale or granularity of this data collection. The lawsuit claims Netflix did not just use this data internally for recommendations but also sold it to commercial data brokers and ad tech companies, generating “billions of dollars” annually. 

The AG wants to stop the unlawful collection and disclosure of user data, require Netflix to disable autoplay by default on kid’s profiles, and impose other injunctive relief and civil penalties.

For customers, the main consequences could include potential changes to data collection, targeted advertising, autoplay defaults, and clearer consent and privacy controls. For subscribers on Netflix’s ad‑supported plans, this could slightly change how “personal” ads feel, at least in jurisdictions where regulators clamp down.

Plus, the lawsuit serves as a reminder that streaming habits may be far more trackable than users assumed. Even if Netflix ultimately wins or settles without admitting wrongdoing, the lawsuit puts a spotlight on what the company collects and why.

Netflix privacy and account settings

It will probably take a while before this lawsuit leads to any changes. But there are a few things you can do to protect your privacy:

• Netflix lets users view and remove entries from their watch history per profile, which can reduce how much historical behavior feeds into recommendations.
• Where available, turn off non‑essential marketing emails or in‑app promotions that rely on behavioral profiling.
• Use the parental controls Netflix offers you and turn off autoplay previews.

Basically, treat your Netflix account like any other online account: Review every profile, remove old ones, and take five minutes to walk through the privacy- and playback‑related options.

---

Scammers don’t need to hack you. They just need you to click once. 

Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection catches suspicious activity before it becomes a problem.

A researcher found that Yarbo yard robots came with a host of vulnerabilities which, among others, allowed an attacker to harvest WiFi passwords.

Security researcher Andreas Makris found he could remotely hijack thousands of Yarbo yard robots worldwide, and proved it by having his mower run him over. The root cause was a cluster of “legacy” design choices: every robot shared the same hardcoded root password, remote tunnels were left open, and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) messaging was so weakly protected that once you had one device, you effectively had the worldwide fleet.

An attacker could pull GPS coordinates, email addresses, and Wi‑Fi passwords, turn cameras into remote spying tools, and even re‑arm the mower after someone hit the emergency stop. 

All of this was enabled by a persistent backdoor tunnel that users could neither see nor meaningfully control. The risks fell into three very different buckets:

• A heavy mower with remotely controllable blades and an emergency stop that can be bypassed is a real-world safety hazard.
• Exposed telemetry meant attackers could map where devices were, see who owned them, and in some reports even view camera feeds.
• Network abuse through shared root credentials meant compromised robots could scan local networks, steal more data, or be folded into a botnet.

Yarbo’s public response is unusually detailed for a consumer Internet of Things (IoT) vendor. It’s also refreshingly blunt in admitting that the researcher’s core findings were accurate. The company temporarily disabled the remote diagnostic tunnels, reset root passwords, locked down unauthenticated endpoints, and began ripping out unnecessary legacy access paths.

More importantly, Yarbo promises structural changes:

• Unique per‑device credentials.
• Over-the-Air  (OTA) credential rotation.
• Audited, allowlist‑based remote diagnostics.
• Dedicated security contact, with a possible bug bounty to follow.

That is the sort of long‑term security hygiene we rarely see spelled out this clearly after an IoT fiasco.

From a disclosure and remediation standpoint, Yarbo is doing many things right: crediting the researcher, apologizing, prioritizing fixes, and explaining both short‑term patches and long‑term architectural changes in human language. For buyers of connected devices with blades, that level of transparency is a positive precedent.

But Yarbo has explicitly chosen to keep a remote access tunnel, although wrapped in better controls and logs, instead of offering users the option to remove or fully opt out of it.

How to secure IoT devices

The vulnerabilities uncovered in the Yarbo case present an almost a live-action demo of what the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act is trying to prevent in US government deployments. While the Act doesn’t apply to Yarbo directly, its National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-driven requirements map neatly onto what went wrong here.

So, it’s still up to users to make sure you:

• Change the default credentials.
• Check if the vendor will make updates available and how easy it is to install them before buying an IoT product. And then install the updates when available.
• If you can, put your IoT devices on a separate network. Use a guest Wi‑Fi or separate VLAN when available.
• Disable what you don’t need. Turn off UPnP, remote access, cloud control, and unnecessary services if you’re not actively using them.
• If your router or security suite logs connections from IoT devices, skim those logs for odd spikes or unknown destinations.

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Let’s face it, an incognito window can only do so much. 
 
Breaches, dark web trading, credit fraud. Malwarebytes Identity Theft Protection monitors for all of it, alerts you fast, and comes with identity theft insurance.