Category Archives: Internet

Trolls exploit Zoom privacy settings as app gains popularity

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‘Zoombombers’ broadcast explicit imagery or abuse other users in video hangouts

Working and socialising from home has brought new risks to everyday life, as webcam meetings and chatroom cocktail hours contend with privacy invasions, phishing attacks and “zoombombings” – uninvited guests abusing the popular video service to broadcast shocking imagery to all.

Public Zoom hangouts have become a popular way to spend time for isolated remote workers, who are joining calls with names such as “WFH Happy Hour” to spend time in the company of others.

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UK ministers will no longer claim ‘no successful examples’ of Russian interference

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Change of official line is first admission that Kremlin may have distorted UK elections

Ministers have been told they can no longer say there have been “no successful examples” of Russian disinformation affecting UK elections, after the apparent hacking of an NHS dossier seized on by Labour during the last campaign.

The dropping of the old line is the first official admission of the impact of Kremlin efforts to distort Britain’s political processes, and comes after three years of the government’s refusal to engage publicly with the threat.

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Russian-led troll network based in west Africa uncovered

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Fake Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts seemed to aim to inflame divides in US

A newly discovered Russian-led network of professional trolls was being outsourced to Ghanaian and Nigerian operatives, according to Facebook and Twitter, who removed the network’s accounts on Thursday.

The network was small: just 49 Facebook accounts, 85 Instagram accounts and 71 Twitter accounts in question. But it marks the first time that a Russian information operation targeting the US has been found to be run from Africa.

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List of world’s worst ‘digital predators’ stretches from India and Brazil to US

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Freedom of expression group names and shames alleged offenders on online censorship and orchestrated repression

A freedom of expression group has launched a list of “digital predators”, ranking what it says are 20 of the world’s worst offenders for cyber-censorship and orchestrated online repression.

Published on Thursday by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to coincide with World Day Against Cyber-Censorship, the list names and shames entities around the globe whose activities it regards as “tantamount to preying on journalism”.

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Inquiry calls for web pre-screening to stop UK child abuse ‘explosion’

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IICSA report calls for social media firms to be made to act, as police struggle to keep up

Social media companies should be forced to pre-screen all uploaded material to help law enforcement agencies cope with the “explosion” in online child sexual abuse in the UK, a critical report says.

The UK is identified as the third-biggest consumer in the world of the livestreaming of abuse in the 114-page study by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA).

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China cracks down on ‘sexual innuendo’ and ‘celebrity gossip’ in new censorship rules

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Controls on the ‘online information content ecosystem’ bring heightened concern about freedom of speech

Sweeping new internet censorship rules have gone into effect in China, prompting concerns that authorities will further control information and online debate as the country reels from the coronavirus outbreak.

China’s cybersecurity administration has since Saturday implemented a set of new regulations on the governance of the “online information content ecosystem” that encourage “positive” content while barring material deemed “negative” or illegal.

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Ted Cruz tried to mock AOC’s scientific knowledge – it didn’t end well

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The Texas senator tried to pick a fight after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out Mike Pence’s coronavirus credentials

If you were in search of a scientifically minded, steadying presence to guide the country through the potential fallout of the coronavirus, you could not do much worse than Vice-President Mike Pence. This being the Donald Trump administration, however, where qualifications and expertise are often seen as prohibitive factors for top jobs, that’s exactly who we’ve been given.

Cutting to the heart of the matter with her characteristic bluntness, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez this week pointed out the absurdity of placing Pence in charge of a potentially looming health crisis.

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Concerns over safety at Amazon warehouses as accident reports rise

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Figures obtained by GMB show safety at its UK warehouses could be worsening

More than 600 Amazon workers have been seriously injured or narrowly escaped an accident in the past three years, prompting calls for a parliamentary inquiry into safety at the online retailer’s vast UK warehouses.

Amazon, whose largest shareholder is the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos, recently launched an advertising campaign fronted by contented staff members, after a string of embarrassing revelations about working conditions.

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Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook must accept some state regulation

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Co-founder says site sits between telephone company and newspaper as content provider

Facebook must accept some form of state regulation, acknowledging its status as a content provider somewhere between a newspaper and a telephone company, its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has said.

He also claimed an era of clean democratic elections, free of interference by foreign governments, is closer due to Facebook now employing 35,000 staff working on monitoring content and security.

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Trump claims he has ‘legal right’ to intervene in criminal cases

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President reasserts his right to tweet on judicial issues following William Barr’s warning the posts ‘make it impossible for me to do my job’

Donald Trump has ignored a plea from his attorney general, William Barr, to not tweet about ongoing legal cases, by using his Twitter account to say he has a “legal right” to do so.

Barr delivered a remarkable public rebuke of the president just hours earlier, saying that Trump’s tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job” and that he would not be “bullied or influenced” over justice department decisions.

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Jeff Bezos buys lavish Beverly Hills estate for record $165m – report

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Amazon founder purchases nine-acre estate once owned by Warner Bros president, Wall Street Journal says

Jeff Bezos has set a new property price record in Los Angeles with the purchase of a $165m Beverly Hills estate, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Amazon founder’s purchase of the home from the media mogul David Geffen is the largest amount paid for a single-family Los Angeles-area home. The nine-acre estate originally belonged to Jack Warner, the late former president of Warner Bros Studios. Warner built up the estate’s 13,600-sq-ft Georgian-style mansion in the 1930s, reportedly with the wood floor that Napoleon was standing on when he proposed to Josephine.

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Man dubbed ‘largest facilitator’ of child abuse images pleads guilty

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Eric Eoin Marques, citizen of US and Ireland, faces up to 30 years in prison over web hosting service

A man once described by an FBI agent as the world’s largest “facilitator” of child abuse websites pleaded guilty on Thursday to operating a web hosting service that allowed users to anonymously access hundreds of thousands of images and videos depicting child abuse.

Eric Eoin Marques, 34, faces a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 30 years after his guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to advertise child abuse images. A plea agreement will ask the US district judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland to sentence Marques to 15 to 21 years in prison, but the judge is not bound by the recommendation.

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Revealed: the Saudi heir and the alleged plot to undermine Jeff Bezos

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Apparent targeting of Amazon billionaire’s phone fits into broader pattern of behaviour by Saudi Arabia

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post, had no reason to be suspicious when he received a WhatsApp message from the account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia in May 2018.

Bezos and Mohammed bin Salman had attended a dinner together in Hollywood a few weeks earlier hosted by Brian Grazer, the Oscar-winning producer, and Ari Emanuel, the powerful talent agent, as part of the young crown prince’s tour of America, which was hailed by some observers as an effort to rebrand the kingdom and set it on a new course.

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Amazon plans $1bn investment in India despite trader backlash

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Jeff Bezos pledges funds to help digitise small businesses as anti-Amazon protests spread

Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has pledged to invest $1bn (£776m) in small businesses in India, despite a growing backlash against the online retailer by the country’s powerful local traders.

During a three-day visit to India, where Amazon has its sights set on dominating the burgeoning e-commerce market, Bezos laid out his ambitious plans for Amazon’s investment in India over the next five years, including helping to digitise millions of small businesses.

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Disinformation and lies are spreading faster than Australia’s bushfires

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Social media claims of an arson epidemic and obstructive environmentalists have infected mainstream reporting of the bushfire crisis

Lies have spread faster than grassfire during Australia’s unprecedented national emergency.

They’ve ranged from the exaggerated to the outrageous.

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Skype audio graded by workers in China with ‘no security measures’

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Exclusive: former Microsoft contractor says he was emailed login after minimal vetting

A Microsoft programme to transcribe and vet audio from Skype and Cortana, its voice assistant, ran for years with “no security measures”, according to a former contractor who says he reviewed thousands of potentially sensitive recordings on his personal laptop from his home in Beijing over the two years he worked for the company.

The recordings, both deliberate and accidentally invoked activations of the voice assistant, as well as some Skype phone calls, were simply accessed by Microsoft workers through a web app running in Google’s Chrome browser, on their personal laptops, over the Chinese internet, according to the contractor.

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Greta Thunberg changes Twitter name to Sharon after quiz show error

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Actor Amanda Henderson answered ‘Sharon’ to Thunberg-related question on Celebrity Mastermind – and the teen activist loved it

Greta Thunberg has been mocked and called many names since becoming the world’s most famous climate activist.

Related: Greta Thunberg: 'I wouldn't have wasted my time' speaking to Trump

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Mystery of Rolling Stones tracks posted briefly on YouTube

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Vintage recordings may have been published in attempt to extend copyright protection

A mysterious YouTube account that posted, then hid, a collection of 75 rare and unpublished Rolling Stones recordings may have been a canny attempt to avoid EU copyright laws and keep the tracks out of the public domain on the 50th anniversary of their creation.

Shortly before midnight on 31 December, the YouTube account 69RSTRAX posted a collection of recordings including studio out-takes and live performances to its public page on the video-sharing site, with no commentary or explanation. Hours later, on 1 January, again with no warning, the account made all the videos private.

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Get yourself cybersecure for 2020

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With ever more tech in our lives, our data is vulnerable. Here are our six top tips to keep it safe in the new year

Technology is changing our lives for the better; yet it’s also exposing us to organised crime, online scammers and hackers – and whole industries built around monetising our personal data. But you don’t have to be resigned to cyber-victimhood. Give yourself, and your devices, a security update for 2020 and start fighting back.

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India primed: what Amazon’s vast new Hyderabad campus reveals about its plans

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Amazon have arrived in force in rapidly expanding Hyderabad, with designs on the currently almost non-existent Indian e-commence market

The futuristic lobby of the new Amazon building in Hyderabad feels as though it should have a permanent orchestra blasting out Also Sprach Zarathustra. The scale is intended to awe. A large slogan on a wall suggests the company is “Delivering smiles”. The only sound that rises above the hush is a synthesised beep, coming from a giant screen playing a video of the campus at various stages of its construction.

Built on nine acres in this Indian city’s financial district, it is Amazon’s single largest building globally and the only Amazon-owned campus outside the US. It can house over 15,000 employees, but its size is its main architectural feature: it resembles the same cube of glass steel and chrome seen in corporate offices across Hyderabad, though a flash of magenta reflected in one of the top floor windows, from a billowing sari across the road, is a nice Indian touch.

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