Avoid Windows Live Mail 2012 patch KB 3093594 -- it freezes Windows

Microsoft's latest distribution technique smells a lot like malware

Friday afternoon I started hearing about a mysterious message from Microsoft that warned Windows Live Mail users their systems wouldn't work "in a few weeks." They were exhorted to download and install a patch -- there's a link to KB 3093594 -- or upgrade to Windows 10 and use the new Universal Mail app (which is almost universally panned).

The sign-up message looks exactly like malware. The patch crashes many systems in many different ways, with the Calendar app taking particular credit. It's a mess, and you should avoid it.

No phone, no problem: NSA will target the cloud instead

Terrorism fears are ramping up government spying and creating more laws around cloud data access -- it'll cost us billions

As of last week, the National Security Agency can no longer cull through Americans' phone records, but it can continue to eavesdrop on our emails, video chats, and documents. The NSA can keep metadata already collected until Feb. 29, 2016, and your phone data will continue to be collected by telecom companies.

But the fact that phone records can no longer be easily searched is nearly meaningless to the world of cloud computing. If the data is still up for grabs -- and it is -- then we're likely to have the same concerns we did before the USA Freedom Act that curtailed some of the NSA's activities last week. 

In fact, we should be more concerned because there will likely be a shift of focus in the NSA from phone records to data.