Nearly thirty different Hewlett-Packard Windows PC models may be recording every keystroke their owners make and storing them in a human-readable file accessible to any user on the PC. Oh, boy.

Switzerland-based security company Modzero recently discovered a keylogger present in an audio program in HP PCs called MicTray. Modzero reported it on their blog early Thursday morning.

You can also find a complete list of affected HP PC models in the company's security advisory. Affected models include PCs from the HP Elitebook 800 series, HP ProBook 600 and 400 series', the EliteBook Folio G1, and others. The program has existed on HP PCs since at least late 2015, Modzero says.

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Windows 10 privacy is a contentious issue. This is in part because Windows 10 is integrated with cloud-based features like Cortana, and it has features influenced by mobile such as determining your location. Then there's Microsoft's more questionable goals, like scooping up diagnostic data and gathering information for better ad-targeting.

In previous versions of Windows 10, managing privacy was, to put it mildly, an insane process. Settings were strewn all over the operating system and the web.

Privacy isn't much better in the recently released Creators Update, but Microsoft has consolidated its web-based privacy information related to a user's Microsoft Account. In addition, privacy settings on the PC are a little more helpful.

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Microsoft Edge’s improvements with the Windows 10 Creators Update may finally make it a browser worth talking about. It debuted to shrugs with the original Windows 10 and saw incremental improvements with the Anniversary Update.

Edge is still catching up to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, but the browser now offers a few welcome new additions, as well as one significant change that can’t be beat on Windows 10, at least not yet. Here are the five key improvements you should check out.

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Intel’s revolutionary new non-volatile Optane Memory wants to make hard drives as fast as SSDs, but apparently not if you bought a PC on the cheap.

The super-fast Optane Memory M.2 drives announced Monday not only require a Kaby Lake processor, but a Core one at that, as first spotted by The Tech Report. According to Intel’s ARK database and Optane website, Kaby Lake-based Celeron and Pentium processors aren’t supported. 

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If you use Microsoft’s Docs.com to store personal documents, stop reading this and make sure you aren’t inadvertently leaking your private information to the world.

Microsoft sets any documents uploaded to the document sharing site as public by default—though it appears that many users aren’t aware of it. That means anyone can search Docs.com for sensitive personal information that wasn’t manually set private. PCWorld found social security numbers, health insurance ID numbers, bank records, job applications, personal contact details, legal correspondence, and drivers license numbers with just a few minutes of searching.

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The good thing and the bad thing about the cloud is, well, the cloud. The latter part of that trueism was brought home late Thursday when some Google users were suddenly signed out of their accounts and devices.

The problem affected Google Wifi mesh routers, Google’s OnHub router, other devices like the Chromecast, and even some plain old Google Accounts.

The impact on you at home: If this problem affected you last night and you were suddenly signed out of all your accounts, don’t worry. Malcious hackers hadn’t suddenly taken over all your devices. Google says it was just a snafu with the Google Account engine.

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The hotly anticipated Ryzen processors are expected to start rolling out in early March, but AMD's still pushing its older FX-series chips folks looking to build a budget gaming PC. Newegg and AMD just revealed a FX processor promotion that bundles a 6- or 8-core chip with the real-time strategy game Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, the poster child for cutting-edge DirectX 12 technology.

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Verizon is just full of surprises. Over the past year, Verizon went negative on its legacy unlimited data customers by purging anyone using too much data. Now, the company wants more unlimited data customers—at least up to a point. Starting Monday, you can sign up for the company’s new unlimited data plan, called Verizon Unlimited.

For $80 a month, Verizon customers receive unlimited 4G data on a single smartphone. Anyone with multiple devices can add two lines on Verizon Unlimited for $70 per line per month ($140 total), three for $54 ($162 total) per line, or four for $45 ($180 total) per line.

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Microsoft's mysterious Windows Cloud is supposedly a stripped-down version of Microsoft’s operating system that runs only Windows Store apps. Microsoft's not commenting, but an early build that leaked over the weekend appears to be authentic and gives further tantalizing hints of what the company may have in mind. 

Windows Cloud intrigues Microsoft watchers because of its uncanny resemblance to Windows RT, Microsoft’s failed ARM-based platform. It, too, could only run Windows Store apps, plus desktop versions of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office. There are numerous reasons why RT never succeeded, but the gist is there weren’t enough apps and nobody wanted to run a hobbled PC.

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Anyone who uses the popular Cisco WebEx extension for Chrome should update to the latest version pronto. Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy recently discovered a serious vulnerability in the Chrome extension that leaves PCs wide open to attack.

In older versions of the extension (before version 1.0.3) malicious actors could add a “magic string” to a web address or file hosted on a website. The magic string was designed to remotely activate the WebEx browser extension. Once the extension was activated the bad guys could execute malicious code on the target machine. 

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AT&T and Verizon are probably violating the Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules by allowing third-parties to pay for subscribers’ data usage.

That’s the determination FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler provided in a letter to several U.S. Senators on Wednesday, along with a report on the matter from The FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. But Wheeler is set to step down as FCC Chair once President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office next Thursday.

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Windows 10 Insider previews are sometimes just full of surprises. An unmentioned feature in Build 15002 was recently uncovered by Windows Central that appears to be a complementary feature to Windows Hello, the biometric login system that automatically unlocks your PC when you sit in front of it.

Dubbed Dynamic Lock, this newly discovered feature is designed to automatically lock down your computer when Windows detects that you’re away. It’s not clear if the feature is working yet and Microsoft has yet to discuss it publicly. For that reason it’s unknown what Dynamic Lock actually does. Though Windows Central says Microsoft’s internal name for the feature is “Windows Goodbye,” which indeed suggests a close relationship with Windows Hello.

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