Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google's YouTube have agreed to share with one another identifying digital information of violent terror content that they find on their platforms.When they remove "violent terrorist imagery or terrorist recruitment videos or images" from their platforms, the companies will include in a shared industry database the hashes, or unique digital fingerprints, of the content.Other participants can use the shared hashes to help identify matching content on their hosted consumer platforms, review against their respective policies and definitions, and remove the content when appropriate, according to a statement by the companies on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google's YouTube have agreed to share with one another identifying digital information of violent terror content that they find on their platforms.When they remove "violent terrorist imagery or terrorist recruitment videos or images" from their platforms, the companies will include in a shared industry database the hashes, or unique digital fingerprints, of the content.Other participants can use the shared hashes to help identify matching content on their hosted consumer platforms, review against their respective policies and definitions, and remove the content when appropriate, according to a statement by the companies on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Twitter has swallowed social app developer Yes and is also getting a new product head as part of the deal.Keith Coleman, formerly CEO of the Palo Alto startup, is joining Twitter as vice president of product development. “Yes! Keith and team are joining Twitter to help lead and strengthen our service!,” wrote Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a message on the social network.The post of head of product development has been vacant for some time at Twitter, which has been struggling to boost its user base and turn a profit. In the third quarter, the company posted a loss of US$103 million on revenue of $616 million. Average monthly active users grew in the quarter by 3 percent year-on-year to 317 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Internet companies should not be required to monitor third-party terrorist content that they host or transmit, nor should they face direct or indirect liability from governments for such content, according to a new study.
The Global Network Initiative, a group that represents academics, investors, civil society organizations and companies including Facebook, Google and Microsoft, published its study Tuesday. It's the offshoot of a policy discussion it started in July 2015, exploring key issues such as the human rights implications of government efforts to restrict online content with the aim of protecting public safety.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Internet companies should not be required to monitor third-party terrorist content that they host or transmit, nor should they face direct or indirect liability from governments for such content, according to a new study.
The Global Network Initiative, a group that represents academics, investors, civil society organizations and companies including Facebook, Google and Microsoft, published its study Tuesday. It's the offshoot of a policy discussion it started in July 2015, exploring key issues such as the human rights implications of government efforts to restrict online content with the aim of protecting public safety.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A judge in Wisconsin has refused to order a recount by hand of ballots cast in the state for the U.S. presidential elections, shooting down a petition by Green Party candidate Jill Stein that the use of automatic tabulating equipment, identified as potential targets of foreign government agents, “risks tainting the recount process.”The Wisconsin Elections Commission decided Friday to recount the votes in the state, after concerns were raised that the voting systems can be hacked. Democratic party candidate Hillary Clinton also backed the recount, including the hand count.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A judge in Wisconsin has refused to order a recount by hand of ballots cast in the state for the U.S. presidential elections, shooting down a petition by Green Party candidate Jill Stein that the use of automatic tabulating equipment, identified as potential targets of foreign government agents, “risks tainting the recount process.”
The Wisconsin Elections Commission decided Friday to recount the votes in the state, after concerns were raised that the voting systems can be hacked. Democratic party candidate Hillary Clinton also backed the recount, including the hand count.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A judge in Wisconsin has refused to order a recount by hand of ballots cast in the state for the U.S. presidential elections, shooting down a petition by Green Party candidate Jill Stein that the use of automatic tabulating equipment, identified as potential targets of foreign government agents, “risks tainting the recount process.”
The Wisconsin Elections Commission decided Friday to recount the votes in the state, after concerns were raised that the voting systems can be hacked. Democratic party candidate Hillary Clinton also backed the recount, including the hand count.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said late Monday that no data had been accessed from its servers in a ransomware attack on the Muni transit system and the agency has never considered paying the ransom asked by the attacker.The statement by the SFMTA follows reports that the alleged attacker has threatened to dump 30GB of data stolen from the agency, if the ransom of the equivalent of about $73,000 in bitcoin was not paid.“The SFMTA network was not breached from the outside, nor did hackers gain entry through our firewalls,” the agency’s spokeswoman Kristen Holland wrote in a blog post. She did not mention how the ransomware had got to the SFMTA systems, though there is the possibility that it may have been activated through a link in an email or a web link by an unsuspecting insider.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said late Monday that no data had been accessed from its servers in a ransomware attack on the Muni transit system and the agency has never considered paying the ransom asked by the attacker.The statement by the SFMTA follows reports that the alleged attacker has threatened to dump 30GB of data stolen from the agency, if the ransom of the equivalent of about $73,000 in bitcoin was not paid.“The SFMTA network was not breached from the outside, nor did hackers gain entry through our firewalls,” the agency’s spokeswoman Kristen Holland wrote in a blog post. She did not mention how the ransomware had got to the SFMTA systems, though there is the possibility that it may have been activated through a link in an email or a web link by an unsuspecting insider.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
San Francisco’s Muni transit system was reportedly hit by ransomware since Friday, leading to the message “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted” being displayed on the computer screens at stations, according to newspaper reports.The message asked that cryptom27 at yandex.com should be contacted for the key to unlock the data.Fare payment machines at stations also displayed that they were “out of service,” and San Francisco's Municipal Railway, widely known as Muni, was allowing free rides on its light-rail vehicles as it was unable to charge customers, according to the Examiner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
San Francisco’s Muni transit system was reportedly hit by ransomware since Friday, leading to the message “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted” being displayed on the computer screens at stations, according to newspaper reports.The message asked that cryptom27 at yandex.com should be contacted for the key to unlock the data.Fare payment machines at stations also displayed that they were “out of service,” and San Francisco's Municipal Railway, widely known as Muni, was allowing free rides on its light-rail vehicles as it was unable to charge customers, according to the Examiner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has decided to recount the votes in the state in the last U.S. presidential elections, after concerns were raised that the voting systems can be hacked.The recount, which was requested by Jill Stein, candidate of the Green Party for the U.S. presidential election, and Rocky Roque De La Fuente, another candidate, is expected to begin late next week, the Elections Commission said.“The Commission is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States, as requested by these candidates,” administrator Michael Haas said in a statement Friday.Citing the hack of the Democratic National Committee of the Democratic Party in the run-up to the election and reports of breaches of voter registration databases in at least two states, Stein in her petition for recount wrote that Wisconsin uses both the optical scan and direct-recording electronic types of electronic voting machines, which are both susceptible to compromise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has decided to recount the votes in the state in the last U.S. presidential elections, after concerns were raised that the voting systems can be hacked.The recount, which was requested by Jill Stein, candidate of the Green Party for the U.S. presidential election, and Rocky Roque De La Fuente, another candidate, is expected to begin late next week, the Elections Commission said.“The Commission is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States, as requested by these candidates,” administrator Michael Haas said in a statement Friday.Citing the hack of the Democratic National Committee of the Democratic Party in the run-up to the election and reports of breaches of voter registration databases in at least two states, Stein in her petition for recount wrote that Wisconsin uses both the optical scan and direct-recording electronic types of electronic voting machines, which are both susceptible to compromise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook has reportedly developed a software tool that will help keep certain content away from users’ news feeds in certain geographies, reflecting the company’s apparent willingness to meet Chinese government censorship demands part of the way.The social networking site has been banned in China since 2009 because of the government’s censorship rules and like many other U.S. technology companies would like to reenter the market with nearly 1.4 billion people.CEO Mark Zuckerberg has learned Mandarin, visited the country often and cultivated the local leadership including President Xi Jinping.The new tool suppresses posts from appearing to people in certain geographies but will not be used directly by Facebook, reported The New York Times on Tuesday, citing three current and former Facebook employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the tool is confidential.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has appointed two opponents of current net neutrality rules to his team charged with overseeing the transition in the Federal Communications Commission.The FCC voted in February last year by 3-2 to reclassify broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service, thus prohibiting providers from selectively blocking or throttling or offering paid prioritization of traffic. The new president, who will be sworn in January, will likely undo some of the policies in the 2015 Open Internet Order, as both his nominees to the transition team - Jeff Eisenach and Mark Jamison – have previously opposed the new FCC rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has appointed two opponents of current net neutrality rules to his team charged with overseeing the transition in the Federal Communications Commission.The FCC voted in February last year by 3-2 to reclassify broadband as a regulated, common-carrier service, thus prohibiting providers from selectively blocking or throttling or offering paid prioritization of traffic. The new president, who will be sworn in January, will likely undo some of the policies in the 2015 Open Internet Order, as both his nominees to the transition team - Jeff Eisenach and Mark Jamison – have previously opposed the new FCC rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Returning to the controversy over fake news on the social networking site, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said over the weekend that the company was working with fact-checking organizations to put in place third-party verification of the authenticity of news on its site.
Facebook has been criticized for fake news on its site, which is claimed to have tilted the recent U.S. presidential elections in favor of Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Zuckerberg warned in his post late Friday that the website needs to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or to mistakenly restrict accurate content. “We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties,” he wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple has said that a few iPhone 6s smartphones are unexpectedly shutting down, confirming a problem reported last week by a Chinese consumer protection group.The company said the problem is restricted to a small number of phones within a limited serial number range that were manufactured between September and October last year.Apple said it was not a safety issue, and appeared to suggest that the problem would be resolved by a replacement battery which the company offered free. It did not say how many iPhone 6s phones were affected and in which markets.The China Consumers Association asked Apple to investigate problems with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s phones that were automatically shutting off. The unexpected shutdowns were said to happen when the phone’s battery charge dropped to between 60 and 50 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Aiming to boost its consumer security business, Symantec is acquiring LifeLock, a vendor of identity protection services, for US$2.3 billion in enterprise value.
The deal will create what the two companies described as the world’s largest consumer security business with over $2.3 billion in annual revenue based on last fiscal year revenue for both companies.
The immediate opportunity for Symantec comes from the large number of consumers worldwide that have been victims of cybercrime, generating as a result greater user concern in digital safety. The companies estimate the market at $10 billion, and growing in the high single digits. In the U.S. alone, the total addressable market is estimated to be about 80 million people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
John Ribeiro