Bing is the new decision engine from Microsoft. A decision engine is like a search engine that harnesses the information on the Web to help you make better decisions about things like travel reservations, shopping online, your health, and more. If you use Bing on a public computer or on your family’s shared computer and you don’t want others to know what you were searching for, you can control your search history. Sure, you can use this for nefarious purposes, but you might also want to hide your search history so your loved one doesn’t know that you’ve been using Bing to get the best deal on a birthday gift.
To learn more about search history and how you can view it, pause it, turn it off, or clear it, see See your search history.
If you’re using a different search engine, learn how to use your browser to delete search history.
Do you get your operating system updates from Microsoft Update? Did you know that you can update your Microsoft Office programs at Microsoft Update too?
That’s right, you don’t have to use Office Update to update Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and all your other Microsoft Office programs.
In fact, starting August 1, 2009, Microsoft discontinued support for Office Update and the Office Update Inventory Tool. To continue getting the latest updates for Microsoft Office products, use Microsoft Update.
Your best bet: Automatic updating
If you don’t want to waste time trying to figure out where to go, just use automatic updating. You’ll get all the updates for Microsoft Office and for your operating system and you don’t have to think about it.
For more information, see About Microsoft Office Update: Frequently Asked Questions.
Microsoft releases security updates on the second Tuesday of every month. Today Microsoft released 9 new security updates.
Get the updates
To download the updates, visit the Microsoft Update Web site. If you have automatic updating turned on, your computer will update and install these security updates.
Read more about the updates.
Watch a short video about the updates.
Get technical information about the updates
For technical details, visit Microsoft TechNet.
In the past few weeks, we’ve been talking here about Microsoft’s new search tool called Bing. Bing helps you find Web pages, images, video, and more. It also helps you avoid downloading unwanted software to your computer (also known as malware) and helps you avoid unsafe Web sites.
One of the fastest rising security risks on the Web is fake security software, also known as rogue security software. Rogue security software, also known as "scareware," is software that appears to be beneficial from a security perspective but provides limited or no security, generates misleading alerts, or attempts to lure users into participating in fraudulent transactions.
Bing’s malware filter helps you avoid rogue security software Web sites by identifying them and alerting you as you search or by removing dangerous sites from search results before you even see them.
For more information, read Bing keeps the Web safe with malware filter.
As we’ve mentioned in the last few posts, Bing is a powerful new search tool that lets you make smarter decisions when you search the Web. It’s also a great search engine for families or for anyone who’d rather not see sexually explicit search results. Bing does not return any sexually explicit videos in search results, by default. SafeSearch is a feature of Bing that lets you block sexually explicit content from all search results. If you want to make your results more family-friendly, you can adjust your SafeSearch settings.
For more information, see Block explicit websites and Report websites with adult content.
The Trustworthy Computing Team at Microsoft recently launched a new blog page that allows you to see all Trustworthy Computing blogs about security and privacy in one place. This new page will make it easier for you to get all the news you need without wasting time searching all over the place. You can bookmark the page or subscribe to one RSS feed to be notified when new blog posts are made on any of the Trustworthy Computing security and privacy blogs. The page also includes the Microsoft Translator tool, that lets you translate the blogs in several different languages.
Have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/twc/blogs.