Fin des mises à jour sur Windows 10 : quelles conséquences ?
La fin mi-octobre des mises à jour de Windows 10, le logiciel d’exploitation de Microsoft, suscite les critiques d’associations et les inquiétudes de nombreux utilisateurs qui craignent de devoir changer leurs ordinateurs.Qu’en est-il de cet arrêt, et quelles seront ses conséquences ?Que va-t-il se passer le 14 octobre ?A partir du 14 octobre, les ordinateurs fonctionnant avec Windows 10, une version apparue en 2015, cesseront de recevoir des mises à jour de la part de son développeur, Microsoft. Ces correctifs étaient destinés à “mettre régulièrement à jour le système d’exploitation, car il était devenu la cible de nombreuses cyberattaques”, explique à l’AFP Martin Kraemer, spécialiste de la sensibilisation à la sécurité au sein de l’entreprise américaine KnowBe4.Quelles conséquences pour les consommateurs ?Dans une note en ligne, Microsoft a conseillé aux utilisateurs de passer à Windows 11, disponible depuis 2021.Mais certains ordinateurs ne sont pas compatibles avec cette transition : pour ces cas, l’entreprise propose une formule de mises à jour étendues, au tarif de 30 dollars et pour une durée d’un an. Une situation dénoncée par des associations de consommateurs.Aux États-Unis, l’association Consumer Reports a déploré le fait que “des ordinateurs incapables de faire fonctionner Windows 11 étaient encore disponibles à la vente en 2022 et 2023″, et risquent ainsi de devenir obsolètes trois ans après leur achat.En France, une coalition de 22 associations, dont l’UFC-Que Choisir et Halte à l’obsolescence programmée (HOP), ont lancé une pétition pour demander des mises à jour gratuites jusqu’en 2030.Sollicité par l’AFP, Microsoft a refusé d’indiquer combien d’utilisateurs seraient concernés. Mais selon Consumer Reports, près de 650 millions de personnes à l’échelle mondiale utilisaient Windows 10 au mois d’août. D’après une autre association américaine, le Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), jusqu’à 400 millions d’ordinateurs seraient incompatibles avec Windows 11.Quels sont les risques ?Pour les utilisateurs qui ne peuvent pas passer à Windows 11 et qui continueraient à utiliser Windows 10 sans souscrire à l’extension de mises à jour Microsoft, les vulnérabilités face aux cyberattaques vont s’accroître.”En ne recevant plus les mises à jour, vous n’êtes plus protégés contre les menaces cyber les plus récentes”, explique Martin Kraemer. Si le danger est “très difficile” à quantifier, selon le spécialiste, il est certain que les utilisateurs de Windows 10 deviendront des cibles privilégiées pour les cyberattaquants en quête de failles de sécurité.Les applications sont aussi concernées, soulève Paddy Harrington, analyste au sein du cabinet américain Forrester.”Les fournisseurs d’applications comptent sur le fournisseur du système d’exploitation pour assurer certaines fonctionnalités et si celles-ci ne sont pas mises à jour, le fournisseur d’application ne peut pas s’assurer que son application continuera à fonctionner correctement”, assure-t-il.Quelles options alternatives ?Interrogés au sujet de l’efficacité de logiciels antivirus, les experts soulignet leur insuffisance face à un système d’exploitation non mis à jour. “Il y a une limite à la protection qu’ils peuvent offrir (…). C’est bien mieux que de ne rien faire, mais cela devrait être une solution temporaire, le temps de trouver une solution permanente”, déclare Paddy Harrington à l’AFP.Reste la possibilité de changer pour un autre système d’exploitation, en gardant son ordinateur. Des logiciels libres, tels que Linux, peuvent ainsi être utilisés, mais nécessitent d’être installés par l’utilisateur.”Tant que vos applications supportent ce système d’exploitation et que vos outils de gestion et de sécurité le prennent en charge, c’est un bon choix”, assure Paddy Harrington.
Togolese take protests online to circumvent repression at homeTue, 23 Sep 2025 06:05:48 GMT
Togolese artists and activists living abroad have responded to intimidation of anti-government protesters in the country by spearheading a digital revolt to keep up pressure on President Faure Gnassingbe to leave power.Young people in the tiny west African country began taking to the streets in June to protest at the arrest of government critics, a …
Hopes of Western refuge sink for Afghans in Pakistan
In their Pakistan safehouse, Shayma and her family try to keep their voices low so their neighbours don’t overhear their Afghan mother tongue.But she can belt out Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin'” any time she likes, and no-one would guess it comes from a 15-year-old refugee in hiding.”In the kitchen, the sound is very good,” she told AFP alongside her sister and fellow young bandmates.By now, Shayma should have been testing the acoustics of her new home in New York.But before her family’s scheduled February flight, US President Donald Trump indefinitely suspended refugee admissions, stranding around 15,000 Afghans already prepared to fly out from Islamabad.Thousands more are waiting in the city for relocation to other Western nations, but shifting global sentiment towards refugees has diminished their chances and put them at risk of a renewed deportation drive by Pakistan, where they have long exhausted their welcome.For girls and women, the prospect is particularly devastating: a return to the only country in the world that has banned them from most education and jobs.”We will do whatever it takes to hide ourselves,” said Shayma’s 19-year-old bandmate, Zahra.”For girls like us, there is no future in Afghanistan.”-‘Not a transit camp’ -After the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, tens of thousands of Afghans travelled to neighbouring Pakistan to register refugee and asylum applications with Western embassies, often on the advice of officials.Many had worked for the US-led NATO forces or Western NGOs, while others were activists, musicians or journalists. Four years on, thousands are still waiting, mostly in the capital Islamabad or its outskirts, desperately hoping that one of the embassies will budge and offer them safe haven.Hundreds have been arrested and deported in recent weeks, and AFP gave interviewees pseudonyms for their protection.”This is not an indefinite transit camp,” a Pakistan government official told AFP on condition of anonymity. He said Pakistan would allow Afghans with pending cases to stay if Western nations assured the government that they would resettle them.”Multiple deadlines were agreed but they were not honoured,” he added. – Miraculous music -The teenaged musicians learned to play guitar back in Kabul at a nonprofit music school for girls, who are now dispersed across Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States.”We want to use our music for those who don’t have a voice, especially for the girls and women of Afghanistan,” said Zahra, one of the four in Pakistan.The school opened under Kabul’s previous US-backed government, when foreign-funded initiatives proliferated alongside NATO troops.Overcoming social taboos, Shayma and her sister Laylama attended the after-school lessons run by an American former arena rocker, who helped kids get off the streets and into guitar practice.One of 10 siblings, Laylama sold sunflower seeds to help support the family. She had cherished a stringless plastic guitar, until she encountered the real thing.”Music really changed our life,” she said.But fearing retribution from the Taliban government, which considers Western music anti-Islamic, Laylama’s father burned her guitar.”I cried all night,” the 16-year-old told AFP.- ‘Drastic measures’ -Since they were smuggled into Pakistan in April 2022 to apply for refugee status with the United States, Shayma and her bandmates have had to move four times, driven deeper into hiding.At the start of Pakistan’s crackdown in 2023, the US embassy provided the government with a list of Afghans in its pipeline that should be spared, according to a former staffer with the State Department’s Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts. That office, and the protections it offered, have been dismantled by the Trump administration.”Leaving these refugees in limbo is not just arbitrary, it’s cruel,” said Jessica Bradley Rushing of the advocacy coalition #AfghanEvac.As Pakistan expands its “Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan” to include refugees, it may be seeking leverage over foreign partners in its counter-terrorism campaign, said International Crisis Group analyst Ibraheem Bahiss.”These are really drastic measures not only to put pressure on the Taliban government but also to show the international community they are very serious,” he told AFP. For the girls, every day brings the fear that a knock on the door will send them back.Outside, mosque loudspeakers in Afghan neighbourhoods order migrants to leave, while refugees are picked up from their homes or workplaces, or off the street.To stem their anxiety, the girls maintain rigorous daily routines, starting with the dawn call to prayer.They rehearse a Farsi version of Coldplay’s “Arabesque” and a riff on Imagine Dragons’ “Believer”.They also practice English through YouTube videos and reading “Frankenstein”.”It’s not normal to always stay in the house, especially for children. They should be in nature,” Zahra said.”But going back to Afghanistan? It’s a horrible idea.”
Trump to see Zelensky and lay out dark vision of UN
Donald Trump meets Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday as patience wears thin on Russia, at a UN summit where the US president is expected to offer a dark take on the future of the world body.Trump will address the United Nations for the first time since he returned to office and quickly took to slashing the US role in international organizations.It will be Trump’s second time seeing Zelensky since the US leader invited Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 to Alaska, a meeting that broke Moscow’s isolation in the West but yielded no breakthrough on Ukraine.Russia has not only kept up its barrage of attacks on Ukraine in the past month but has increasingly raised fears in the West, with drone or air incursions in NATO members Poland, Estonia and Romania.Mike Waltz, newly installed as the US ambassador to the United Nations, voiced solidarity over the airspace violations.”The United States and our allies will defend every inch of NATO territory,” said Waltz, who was earlier Trump’s national security advisor.Trump took office vowing that he could end within one day the Ukraine war, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, and boasted of his personal chemistry with Putin.But Trump acknowledged last week that Putin had “really let me down.” Zelensky is expected to press Trump to take a harder line and impose long-threatened new sanctions on Russia.But Secretary of State Marco Rubio, last week previewing the talks with Zelensky, said that Trump was not ready to pressure Putin, saying that without him, “there’s no one left in the world that could possibly mediate” on Ukraine.Zelensky will again need to tread carefully with Trump, who — along with Vice President JD Vance — berated the wartime leader in an explosive February 28 meeting at the White House, calling him ungrateful for billions of dollars in US military assistance.- Attacking ‘globalist’ institutions -Trump, a native New Yorker, is spending barely a day in town for the weeklong summit. One of his few other one-on-one meetings will be with Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei, an ideological ally to whose government the United States is considering offering an economic lifeline.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump would discuss the “renewal of American strength around the world.””The president will also touch upon how globalist institutions have significantly decayed the world order, and he will articulate his straightforward and constructive vision for the world,” she told reporters in Washington.Trump in his second term has moved more aggressively in his nationalist “America First” vision of curbing cooperation with the rest of the world.He has moved to pull the United States out of the World Health Organization and the UN climate body, severely curtailed US development assistance and wielded sanctions against foreign judges over rulings he sees as violating sovereignty.”Instead of inflaming global crises and fueling chaos and inequality, he should use his power and influence to work with the global community to provide meaningful solutions,” said Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America.Trump’s appearance comes a day after French President Emmanuel Macron led a group of Western allies of the United States in recognizing a Palestinian state, a historic but largely symbolic step strongly opposed by Israel.The United States and Israel both shunned the special session.
White House rejects talks offer from Venezuela’s Maduro
The White House on Monday dismissed a request by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for talks with counterpart Donald Trump to de-escalate tensions between the two arch-foes.The brush-off came as two Venezuelan opposition leaders backed a US naval build-up near the South American country, calling it critical for the restoration of democracy.Trump has dispatched eight warships and a submarine to the southern Caribbean in an anti-drug operation Venezuela fears could be the preamble to an invasion.US forces have destroyed at least three suspected Venezuelan drug boats in recent weeks, killing over a dozen people.On Sunday, the Venezuelan government released a letter that leftist Maduro had sent to Trump.In the missive, Maduro — whose July 2024 reelection was rejected as fraudulent by Venezuela’s opposition and much of the international community — rejected as “absolutely false” US allegations that he leads a drug cartel and urged Trump to “keep the peace.”Reacting on Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Maduro’s letter contained “a lot of lies.”She added the Trump administration’s position on Venezuela “has not changed” and it viewed the regime as “illegitimate.”The US deployment is the biggest in the Caribbean in years.Maduro has accused Trump — who during his first term tried unsuccessfully to expedite the Venezuelan president’s ouster — of trying to affect regime change.It was “a first letter, I will certainly send them more,” Maduro said Monday night during his weekly television program, during which he said his goal was “to defend the truth of Venezuela.” “If they close a door, you open a window, and if they close a window, you open a door with the truth of your country, lighting up the world, illuminating the White House with the light of the truth of Venezuela,” he added.Maduro’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, last week accused the United States of waging “an undeclared war” in the Caribbean, underlining that occupants of alleged drug boats were “executed without the right to a defense.”Thousands of Venezuelans have joined a civilian militia in response to Maduro’s call for bolstering the cash-strapped country’s defenses.Some Venezuelans have welcomed the US actions, however, hoping they hasten Maduro’s downfall.- ‘Real and growing threat’ -Exiled presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who the United States views as Venezuela’s democratically-elected leader, said the military deployment was “a necessary measure to dismantle the criminal structure” he said Maduro leads.Opposition figurehead Maria Corina Machado agreed, and said Venezuelan crime gangs were “a real and growing threat to the security and stability” of the Americas.Maduro’s claim to election victory last year sparked violent protests that were harshly repressed, leaving more than two dozen dead and hundreds behind bars.The opposition said its own tally of results showed Gonzalez Urrutia, who stood in after the regime barred Machado from running, had defeated Maduro hands down.Threatened with arrest, Gonzalez Urrutia fled to Spain. Machado remains in Venezuela, in hiding.Another opposition figure, Henrique Capriles, last week came out against any US invasion.”I continue to believe that the solution is not military, but political,” the two-time presidential candidate said, adding Trump’s actions were counterproductive and “entrenching those in power.”burs-ba/jgc/sla
Amazon au tribunal, accusé d’avoir rusé pour multiplier ses abonnés Prime
Amazon a débuté lundi aux Etats-Unis un procès d’environ un mois, censé déterminer si le géant du commerce électronique a déployé des astuces illégales pour contraindre des millions de gens à s’abonner à son service payant Prime et rendre la résiliation quasi impossible.L’audience devant une cour fédérale de Seattle (nord-est), près du siège du groupe, a démarré lundi par le choix du jury et doit se poursuivre mardi avec les propos liminaires des avocats.L’affaire a été ouverte en 2023 par l’agence américaine de protection des consommateurs, la FTC. Elle accuse Amazon d’avoir sciemment déployé des interfaces manipulatrices, appelées “dark patterns”, pour amener les consommateurs, au moment de payer leur achat, à s’abonner en plus au service Prime pour 139 dollars par an.L’affaire se concentre sur deux accusations: avoir gagné des abonnés sans leur consentement explicite grâce à des processus de paiement confus et avoir créé un système d’annulation délibérément complexe, surnommé en interne “Iliade”, du nom du poème d’Homère sur la longue et difficile guerre de Troie.L’affaire est examinée par un jury présidé par le juge John Chun, également chargé d’une autre affaire lancée par la FTC contre Amazon, cette fois pour des accusations de monopole illégal. Cet autre dossier sera jugé en 2027.La semaine dernière, le juge Chun a par ailleurs conclu qu’Amazon avait enfreint une loi sur la protection des acheteurs en ligne en récupérant les données de facturation des abonnés Prime avant de leur expliquer les conditions d’utilisations, selon des extraits du jugement publiés sur X.Ces affaires font partie d’une série de poursuites récentes entamées aussi bien sous l’administration démocrate que républicaine pour limiter la domination sans partage de plusieurs grandes entreprises des technologies, telles que Google ou Apple, après des années de mansuétude gouvernementale.D’après les documents de la cour, Amazon avait connaissance de l’existence répandue d'”inscriptions non sollicitées” à Prime, mais s’est opposé aux changements qui auraient réduit leurs nombres et donc ses revenus.Selon la FTC, le processus de paiement d’Amazon obligeait les clients à naviguer dans des interfaces compliquées, où le refus de l’adhésion à Prime nécessitait de cliquer sur de petits liens discrets, tandis que l’adhésion se réalisait en cliquant sur de gros boutons bien visibles. Le prix et le renouvellement automatique étaient souvent cachés ou en petits caractères.- “Des millions de consommateurs” -“Pendant des années, Amazon a sciemment trompé des millions de consommateurs en les incitant à s’inscrire à son service Amazon Prime à leur insu”, indique l’accusation initiale.Les abonnements Prime représentaient 25 milliards de dollars du chiffre d’affaires annuel d’Amazon, selon le dossier d’accusation de 2023.Prime est devenu central dans le modèle commercial d’Amazon, car ces abonnés dépensent beaucoup plus sur la plateforme que les non-membres.Le procès vise aussi le processus de résiliation d’Amazon, qui obligeait les clients à naviguer, selon la FTC, dans un “labyrinthe” de quatre pages, six clics et 15 options pour annuler l’abonnement.La FTC demande à la cour de prononcer des sanctions, d’accorder des compensations financières et d’enjoindre l’entreprise à changer ses pratiques.L’affaire se fonde en partie sur la loi ROSCA, entrée en vigueur en 2010, qui interdit de facturer des services en ligne activés par défaut, sans indiquer clairement les conditions, ni obtenir le consentement explicite des clients et fournir des procédures simples de désabonnement.La FTC affirme qu’Amazon a manqué à ses exigences.La défense d’Amazon consistera principalement à faire valoir que cette loi et les autres réglementations n’interdisent pas clairement les pratiques en débat et que la FTC est allée trop loin. L’entreprise a aussi dit qu’elle avait amélioré ses processus d’inscription et d’annulation et que les accusations étaient caduques.Le procès s’appuiera largement sur les communications et les documents internes d’Amazon, ainsi que sur les témoignages des dirigeants et des experts du groupe.