World Wide Web

Requiem for Google Reader, dead for a decade but not forgotten

Special report RSS pioneer Dave Winer sees Mastodon as a positive sign

Networks14 Mar 2023 | 50

Biden attacks Big Tech's data addiction, wants more protection for kids

Old man yells at cloud, literally

Personal Tech08 Feb 2023 | 5

W3C's planned transition to HTTPS stymied by legacy laggards

Timing for plan to redirect HTTP requests now indeterminate to allow for further feedback

Networks22 Aug 2022 | 41

W3C overrules objections by Google, Mozilla to decentralized identifier spec

Oh no, he DIDn't

Applications01 Jul 2022 | 69

The Return of Gopher: Pre-web hypertext service is still around

<movietrailer voice>The world was not ready for this gift. It is still not ready for this gift. Coming soon to a Gopherspace near you

Networks23 May 2022 | 51

Microsoft says the internet is the nicest it's been since 2016. Obviously they didn't look at The Reg comments

Women, on the other hand, haven't seen much difference

Offbeat08 Feb 2022 | 60

Lawmakers propose TLDR Act because no one reads Terms of Service agreements

The bill calls for concise, machine readable summaries of how websites and apps use client data

Legal14 Jan 2022 | 36

Thousands of Firefox users accidentally commit login cookies on GitHub

GitHub: 'Credentials exposed by our users are not in scope'

Security18 Nov 2021 | 27

Microsoft engineer fixes enterprise-level Chromium bug students could exploit to cheat in online tests

Ability to block 'view source' for specific URLs hasn't actually worked for years

Applications12 Nov 2021 | 59

FYI: Code compiled to WebAssembly may lack standard security defenses

Mechanisms taken for granted on x86 vanish in WASM land, says trio

Security04 Nov 2021 | 20

As Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

From January 2023, add-ons built with Manifest V2 API will fail

Software27 Sep 2021 | 57

Google experiments with user-choice-defying Android search box

Analysis Apple-flavored approach running as test 'for a small percentage of users'

Applications22 Sep 2021 | 41

Microsoft warns of widespread open redirection phishing attack – which Defender can block, coincidentally

Some tactics never change much

Security27 Aug 2021 | 9

WEB@30: The Register pokes around historical hardware of the WWW

ASCII selfies and hands-on action in the heart of Cambridge

Personal Tech23 Aug 2021 | 17

Google Groups kills RSS support without notice

Chocolate Factory mum as remaining feed fans search for alternatives

Applications16 Aug 2021 | 35

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

Column It's wonderful that code written for Windows 3.1 still works well today

Columnists11 Aug 2021 | 136

Mozilla slams post-cookie ad tech proposals SWAN and UID2 - needs much more work

Replacements for cookie-based tracking still pose privacy problems

Software05 Aug 2021 | 15

Google hits undo on Chrome browser alert change that broke websites, web apps

'This is peak Chrome; a reasonably good idea hampered because it was pushed out thoughtlessly'

Applications05 Aug 2021 | 43

Ad tech ruined the web – and PDF files are here to save it, allegedly

One publisher's attempt to roll the internet back to a more innocent time

Software20 Jul 2021 | 94

Sir Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web NFT fetches $5.4m at auction while rest of us gaze upon source code for $0

Proceeds to go towards charitable causes, Father of the Web confirms

Software01 Jul 2021 | 30

Google: About that whole getting rid of third-party cookies thing – we're gonna need another year or so

Plan to reinvent advertising turns out to be more difficult than expected

Personal Tech25 Jun 2021 | 20

From I'm feeling lucky to I'm feeling Brave: Browser maker erects web search engine beta

Even just to remind the world there's life beyond Google and DuckDuckGo

Personal Tech22 Jun 2021 | 7

Spyware, trade-secret theft, and $30m in damages: How two online support partners spectacularly fell out

Chat-bot maker LivePerson wins lawsuit against call-center outfit [24]7.ai

Applications18 Jun 2021 | 16

Bad Apple Safari update breaks IndexedDB JavaScript API, upsets web apps

Developers fed up with iGiant neglecting non-native software

Applications16 Jun 2021 | 8

Funny how Sir Tim Berners-Lee, famous for hyperlinks, is into NFTs, glorified hyperlinks

Updated Source code auction 'similar to selling an autograph copy of a book'

Software16 Jun 2021 | 30

ALPACA gnaws through TLS protection to snarf cookies and steal data

Boffins find flaw in web security that enables certificate confusion

Security10 Jun 2021 | 11

Global Fastly outage takes down many on the wibbly web – but El Reg remains standing

Updated 'Potential impact to performance' drops some of the world's biggest websites offline

Off-Prem08 Jun 2021 | 103

Firefox to adopt Chrome's new approach to extensions – sans the part that threatens ad blockers

Mozilla says Google's content-filter API doesn't meet developer needs, others agree

Applications28 May 2021 | 28

What happens when a security hole is fixed in WebKit's source but not released as a patch by Apple? Let's find out

Three weeks and counting for Cupertino to update Safari's engine

Applications27 May 2021 | 11

Cloudflare stops offering to block LGBTQ webpages

Like, you wouldn't filter out pages by Black people, right?

Networks21 May 2021 | 89

Google to revive RSS support in Chrome for Android

Who's Reader? I don't know any Reader. Do you know any Reader?

Applications20 May 2021 | 21

Tor users, beware: 'Scheme flooding' technique may be used to deanonymize you

By probing for installed apps with custom URL schemes, it's possible to build a 32-bit unique fingerprint

Security14 May 2021 | 35

Googler demolishes one of Apple's monopoly defenses – that web apps are just as good as native iOS software

Safari savaged for falling behind in web APIs

Applications04 May 2021 | 59

Google's FLoC flies into headwinds as internet ad industry braces for instability

Analysis Reinventing web advertising tech at a time of heightened privacy concern proves difficult

Personal Tech17 Apr 2021 | 69

Is it still possible to run malware in a browser using JavaScript and Rowhammer? Yes, yes it is (slowly)

Firefox 'fully compromised' in 15 minutes via SMASH attack

Security15 Apr 2021 | 10

Google Sites blight: Over 100,000 web pages for business form searches overrun with backdoor RATs

eSentire warns of remote-access trojans masquerading as PDFs

Security14 Apr 2021 | 8

Wormhole encrypted file transfer app reboots Firefox Send after Mozilla fled

App's developers believe they can manage potential abuse

Software09 Apr 2021 | 26

Browser tracking protections won't stop tracking, warns DuckDuckGo

Privacy don't like it, block the tracker, block the tracker

Security30 Mar 2021 | 65

Intel accused of wiretapping because it uses analytics to track keystrokes, mouse movements on its website

Session monitoring scripts prompt dozens of privacy lawsuits against Big Biz, mainly in California and Florida

Security30 Mar 2021 | 37

Chrome 90 goes HTTPS by default while Firefox injects substitute scripts to foil tracking tech

Privacy. Are we there yet? No, but there's some progress at least

Security24 Mar 2021 | 54

Google's 'privacy-first' ad tech FLoC squawks when Chrome goes Incognito, says expert. Web giant disagrees

Updated Chocolate Factory still stomping bugs out of its bird-themed post-third-party-cookie features

Security15 Mar 2021 | 10

Huge if true: If you show people articles saying that Firefox is faster than Chrome, they'll believe it

Mozillians formulate 'prime' directive for browser's comeback following psychological study

Software11 Mar 2021 | 88

Sign of the primes: Linux Foundation serves up free code-signing service

Cryptographic software assurance backed by Google, Red Hat, Purdue U

Devops09 Mar 2021 | 10

Google engineer urges web devs to step up and secure their code in this data-spilling Spectre-haunted world

'This is going to be a lot of work ... a reasonable set of mitigation primitives exists today, ready and waiting for use'

Security08 Mar 2021 | 23

Brave buys a search engine, promises no tracking, no profiling – and may even offer a paid-for, no-ad version

Pitches pro-privacy platform with customizable results filter dubbed Goggles

Applications03 Mar 2021 | 30

Mozilla Firefox keeps cookies kosher with quarantine scheme, 86s third-party cookies in new browser build

Hey man, are your cookies trackin' me? Take 'em out. You gotta keep 'em separated

Security24 Feb 2021 | 23

Spanish banished: Google Chrome to snub Camerfirma for lax cert management

Mozilla meanwhile wants to continue compliance discussions with security certificate vendor

Security02 Feb 2021 | 4

If my calculations are correct, when Google Chrome hits version 88, you're gonna see some serious... security

Manifest v3 plus JavaScript timer throttling, vuln fixes, FTP killed off, etc

Software19 Jan 2021 | 10

Brave bets on the decentralized web with IPFS browser support for a more peer-to-peer approach

Peer-to-peer protocol promises availability and resilience, but awaits proof of speed and resource thrift

Personal Tech19 Jan 2021 | 16

Facebook tells Portuguese court that a biz called Oink And Stuff makes profile-harvesting browser extensions

Not a machine-generated headline, we swear

Personal Tech17 Jan 2021 | 31

Parler games: Social network for internet rejects sues Amazon Web Services for pulling plug on hosting

Updated And no, Parler wasn't hacked either. Its public posts were simply scraped

SaaS11 Jan 2021 | 141

Google AMP gets a shock to its system as advisor quits, lawsuit claims foul play

No one's AMPing up the love

Software19 Dec 2020 | 42

Google Chrome's crackdown on ad blockers and browser extensions, Manifest v3, is now available in beta

Web advertising giant says it has been working with filter makers, others to 'evolve the platform'

Security10 Dec 2020 | 50

Happy silver jubilee to JavaScript, king of the web at 25 and still hanging on to its crown, for now

Two and a half decades on, JavaScript is everywhere

Software05 Dec 2020 | 64

Google tells Chrome extension devs to declare their code's usage of personal data

Ad biz is serious about making others disclose information collection

Software19 Nov 2020 | 10

Boffins devise early-warning system for fake news: AI fingers domains that look sus

Detecting deceptive websites as soon as they get registered may help reduce the contagion of misinformation

AI + ML12 Nov 2020 | 7