Airline apologises after credit card details of about 2,200 passengers were stolen
EasyJet has revealed that the personal information of 9 million customers was accessed in a “highly sophisticated” cyber-attack on the airline.
The company said on Tuesday that email addresses and travel details were accessed and it would contact the customers affected.
Continue reading...Tim Bray’s departure comes as company faces increased scrutiny and employee activism around its Covid-19 response
Tim Bray, a top engineer and vice-president at Amazon, announced on Monday he is resigning “in dismay” over the company’s firing of employee activists who criticized working conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Bray’s resignation comes as Amazon faces increased scrutiny and employee activism surrounding its internal response to coronavirus. Amazon workers on Friday participated in a nationwide sick-out to, claiming the company has failed to provide enough face masks for workers, did not implement regular temperature checks it promised at warehouses, and has refused to give workers paid sick leave protest working conditions and inadequate safety protections.
Continue reading...Fifteen years ago, when the word podcast was added to the dictionary, only the tech-savvy were listening. Now, as star names pile in, they’re big business. Can the quality survive?
Hello friends! Do you fancy listening to “a new type of time-shifted amateur radio”? No? How about a brilliant podcast? Of course you do.
Fifteen years ago, Macworld, a magazine for fans of Apple products, announced, with limited fanfare, that Apple was about to add podcasts to iTunes, its music download offer. Unfortunately, few readers knew what a podcast was, hence Macworld’s “time-shifted radio” definition. In June 2005, the idea of having thousands of ready-to-hear audio shows, anything from true-crime documentaries to all-chums-together comedy, to up-to-the-minute news to gripping drama to revealing interviews, and being able to listen to these shows whenever you want, wherever you are – well, that wasn’t quite happening. So Apple’s move didn’t seem important. Nor did the fact that the Oxford English Dictionary added “podcast” to its lexicon in the same year, after tech journalist Ben Hammersley came up with the term in 2004 (which was also the year the BBC launched a downloadable version of In Our Time). Podcasts were new. It takes time for the new to become everyday.
Continue reading...Amazon’s sales have hit £8,800 a second, while concerns persist about its tax affairs, treatment of staff and effect on small retailers. Here’s how to buy everything from technology to beauty to books without it
With the shutters down on high streets and retail parks around the world, meaning that home delivery is the only option for almost anything other than food and medicine, it’s no surprise that Amazon is seeing business boom. The online retailer, already a one-stop shop for many people, has seen customers flock through its virtual doors in the weeks since coronavirus hit.
The site is experiencing an extended period of sales at the level usually reserved for the shopping frenzy of Black Friday, with reported surges reaching $11,000 (£8,800) a second. Its share price is booming, too, making its already rich founder, Jeff Bezos, even richer.
Continue reading...Problems with internet and phone service were once just an inconvenience. Now they can prove to be catastrophic
Cut off by telecoms company, pensioner missed call as partner died of Covid-19
Barbara Parry* arranged to switch her phone and broadband account from Sky to Now TV in March, a week before lockdown. Instead, she was left incommunicado as her line was cancelled and her phone number reallocated.
During the following four weeks, as she pleaded in vain to be reconnected, her partner contracted Covid-19. He died four days later in hospital. Due to the blunders by Now TV, he was unable to call Parry from his deathbed and she was unable to say goodbye. The news was broken by a relative as the hospital could not get through on her cancelled number.
Continue reading...Covid-19 has forced millions into the unfamiliar world of the home office, where new security threats loom. Here’s how to protect yourself and colleagues
Businesses are used to being prepared for a disaster and most will have had a well-rehearsed continuity plan in place in case one struck. But even the best plan couldn’t have effectively anticipated the wholesale overnight shift to home working that Covid-19 has caused.
“As a result,” Morgan Wright, chief security adviser at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne says, “issues of privacy, collaboration, access and compliance have highlighted weakness in policies and gaps in security.” One of the problems is that even at many larger companies, being caught on the hop by the lockdown has meant that individual departments have been left to find their own ways to work collaboratively.
Continue reading...Planned purchase by a private equity firm leads to worries that low-cost domain option could become prohibitively expensive
Websites using .org domain names fear they could lose their web addresses as intense backlash over the domain registry’s proposed sale continues.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the not-for-profit organization that coordinates the internet’s domain name system, is deciding whether control of .org will be sold to a private equity firm about which little is known.
Continue reading...Fewer than three out of 15 families in NSW far west have broadband, making digital classrooms unviable
Teachers in far western NSW say they have been hand-delivering lessons to Aboriginal students at home because families don’t have reliable access the internet and many don’t have computers for their children to work on.
To allow children to keep learning, Wilcannia central school teachers have been making lesson packs for their students and delivering them in person every few days, on a 9km round trip in the school minibus.
Continue reading...Vaughan Gething heard decrying Labour colleague after leaving his audio live on video call
Wales’s health minister, Vaughan Gething, has learned the hard way about one of the risks of videoconferencing after he accidentally broadcast a sweary rant about one of his colleagues during a virtual session of Welsh assembly.
Having apparently left his microphone live after addressing the assembly, the minister could be heard loudly decrying his fellow Labour assembly member Jenny Rathbone.
Continue reading...Company says it made a loss last year due to investment and the competitive market
Amazon received €294m (£258m) in tax credits last year that it can deduct from future bills for its European business, as revenues at the online retailer rose significantly to €32bn.
The company said it received the tax credits because it made a loss last year due to its investment programme and the highly competitive retail environment across Europe and the UK.
Continue reading...Restrictions on frequently forwarded messages intended to disrupt false Covid-19 claims
WhatsApp is to impose a strict new limit on message forwarding as the Facebook-owned chat app seeks to slow the dissemination of fake news, the company has announced.
If a user receives a frequently forwarded message – one which has been forwarded more than five times – under the new curbs, they will only be able to send it on to a single chat at a time. That is one fifth the previous limit of five chats, imposed in 2019.
Continue reading...Site will reduce recommendations of videos promoting misinformation
YouTube will reduce the amount of content spreading conspiracy theories about links between 5G technology and the coronavirus that it recommends to users and actively remove videos that breach its policies, the company has said.
Content that is simply conspiratorial about 5G mobile communications networks, without mentioning coronavirus, is still allowed on the site. YouTube said those videos may be considered “borderline content” and subjected to suppression, including loss of advertising revenue and being removed from search results on the platform.
Continue reading...Video app has seen a surge in popularity for both work and private use during lockdown
Zoom, the hit video conferencing platform, will freeze new feature development and shift all engineering resources on to security and safety issues, its founder has said..
The move comes as the company battles the damage caused by a string of minor scandals ultimately related to the same scrappy approach that enabled it to capitalise on the wave of global lockdowns in the first place.
Continue reading...‘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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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).
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...