Peter Sayer
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Ads mislead over broadband Internet access pricing, regulator warns
Pricing in ads for broadband Internet access is too often misleading and needs tighter regulation.That's the verdict of the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority, which on Wednesday gave ISPs six months to clean up their act before it introduces new rules on how they can promote their services.The monthly cost of broadband Internet access bundled with fixed-line telephone service ought to be simple enough to determine.INSIDER: 5 tricks to improve poor TCP performance However, after viewing a typical ad, only 23 percent of people could correctly identify the cost in a study by the ASA and the U.K.'s communications regulator, Ofcom.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Ads mislead over broadband Internet access pricing, regulator warns
Pricing in ads for broadband Internet access is too often misleading and needs tighter regulation.That's the verdict of the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority, which on Wednesday gave ISPs six months to clean up their act before it introduces new rules on how they can promote their services.The monthly cost of broadband Internet access bundled with fixed-line telephone service ought to be simple enough to determine.INSIDER: 5 tricks to improve poor TCP performance However, after viewing a typical ad, only 23 percent of people could correctly identify the cost in a study by the ASA and the U.K.'s communications regulator, Ofcom.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Craig Wright claims he is bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto
Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright is bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, he claimed on his personal blog and in media interviews on Monday. Within hours, skeptics were pointing to flaws in his claims. Wright was first outed as the developer of the cryptocurrency by Wired magazine in December, but would not confirm the magazine's claims at the time. Days later the magazine said fresh evidence pointed to another possibility it had raised: that Wright may be a sophisticated hoaxer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Google could face EU antitrust charges over Android next week
After a year-long investigation, the European Commission appears ready to accuse Google of abusing its dominant position in the smartphone OS market.It could announce formal antitrust charges as early as next Wednesday, the Financial Times reported Friday.The Commission began its Android investigation on April 15, 2015, the same day that it announced formal antitrust charges against Google in another investigation, accusing the company of favoring its own comparison shopping service over that of rivals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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EU plan to collect, not share, air traveler data is ‘absurd’
Air passengers entering or leaving the European Union will have their movements kept on file by police authorities from 2018 under draft legislation approved by the European Parliament.Critics, however, say a lack of provisions to share the data severely limits the plan's usefulness.Airlines running flights into or out of the EU must hand over the data to national Passenger Information Units (PIUs) that will hold the data for law enforcers. Member states may choose to gather data from travel agencies and to retain information about passengers on flights within the EU too.However, there will be no centralized EU database of arriving and departing passengers, and no automatic sharing of data between the various national PIUs. With open land borders between countries in the Schengen Area, and no mandatory collection of information on intra-EU flights, it will be difficult for investigators to use the data to determine whether a person of interest is in the EU.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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EU plan to collect, not share, air traveler data is ‘absurd’
Air passengers entering or leaving the European Union will have their movements kept on file by police authorities from 2018 under draft legislation approved by the European Parliament.Critics, however, say a lack of provisions to share the data severely limits the plan's usefulness.Airlines running flights into or out of the EU must hand over the data to national Passenger Information Units (PIUs) that will hold the data for law enforcers. Member states may choose to gather data from travel agencies and to retain information about passengers on flights within the EU too.However, there will be no centralized EU database of arriving and departing passengers, and no automatic sharing of data between the various national PIUs. With open land borders between countries in the Schengen Area, and no mandatory collection of information on intra-EU flights, it will be difficult for investigators to use the data to determine whether a person of interest is in the EU.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Privacy regulators: Commission ‘could do better’ on Privacy Shield
The Privacy Shield trans-Atlantic data transfer arrangement is better than its predecessor, Safe Harbor, but still not good enough, European Union data protection authorities said Wednesday.They want the European Commission improve the deal it has negotiated with U.S. authorities to ensure that EU citizens' personal information receives privacy protection equivalent to that of EU law when it is exported to the U.S.The authorities have been examining Privacy Shield since it was unveiled in February, and announced the results of their study Wednesday.The deal is too complex, they say, as it is composed of a collection of legal instruments, letters and annexes rather than a single, easily understandable document.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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EU privacy regulators: Commission ‘could do better’ on Privacy Shield
The Privacy Shield trans-Atlantic data transfer arrangement is better than its predecessor, Safe Harbor, but still not good enough, European Union data protection authorities said Wednesday. They want the European Commission improve the deal it has negotiated with U.S. authorities to ensure that EU citizens' personal information receives privacy protection equivalent to that of EU law when it is exported to the U.S. The authorities have been examining Privacy Shield since it was unveiled in February, and announced the results of their study Wednesday. The deal is too complex, they say, as it is composed of a collection of legal instruments, letters and annexes rather than a single, easily understandable document.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft endorses EU-US Privacy Shield data sharing pact
Microsoft is throwing its weight behind the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement, which is intended to safeguard the privacy of European Union citizens when their personal information is exported to the U.S. for processing.But a document leaked late last week suggests the proposed agreement does not have the backing of EU data protection authorities, who are meeting this week to finalize their position on it.Microsoft will seek approval to conduct data transfers under the agreement, its Vice President for EU Government Affairs, John Frank, wrote in a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft endorses EU-US Privacy Shield data sharing pact
Microsoft is throwing its weight behind the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement, which is intended to safeguard the privacy of European Union citizens when their personal information is exported to the U.S. for processing.But a document leaked late last week suggests the proposed agreement does not have the backing of EU data protection authorities, who are meeting this week to finalize their position on it.Microsoft will seek approval to conduct data transfers under the agreement, its Vice President for EU Government Affairs, John Frank, wrote in a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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5 things you should know about the blockchain
Talk of blockchain technology is everywhere, it seems -- but what is it, and what does it do?1. Don't call it "the" blockchainThe first thing to know about the blockchain is, there isn't one: there are many. Blockchains are distributed, tamper-proof public ledgers of transactions. The most well-known is the record of bitcoin transactions, but in addition to tracking cryptocurrencies, blockchains are being used to record loans, stock transfers, contracts, healthcare data and even votes.2. Security, transparency: the network's run by usThere's no central authority in a blockchain system: Participating computers exchange transactions for inclusion in the ledger they share over a peer-to-peer network. Each node in the chain keeps a copy of the ledger, and can trust others’ copies of it because of the way they are signed. Periodically, they wrap up the latest transactions in a new block of data to be added to the chain. Alongside the transaction data, each block contains a computational "hash" of itself and of the previous block in the chain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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5 things you should know about the blockchain
Talk of blockchain technology is everywhere, it seems -- but what is it, and what does it do?1. Don't call it "the" blockchainThe first thing to know about the blockchain is, there isn't one: there are many. Blockchains are distributed, tamper-proof public ledgers of transactions. The most well-known is the record of bitcoin transactions, but in addition to tracking cryptocurrencies, blockchains are being used to record loans, stock transfers, contracts, healthcare data and even votes.2. Security, transparency: the network's run by usThere's no central authority in a blockchain system: Participating computers exchange transactions for inclusion in the ledger they share over a peer-to-peer network. Each node in the chain keeps a copy of the ledger, and can trust others’ copies of it because of the way they are signed. Periodically, they wrap up the latest transactions in a new block of data to be added to the chain. Alongside the transaction data, each block contains a computational "hash" of itself and of the previous block in the chain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Hyperlinking to unlawfully published copyright images is still legal, says top European judge
Publishing hyperlinks to photos from, say, Playboy magazine is legal -- even if the website linked to doesn't have permission to publish the images, a top European Union judge has said.That's because hyperlinking to a document does not constitute a fresh publication, according to Melchior Wathelet, advocate general of the Court of Justice of the EU, in a legal opinion issued Thursday.But his opinion, on a case brought by the publisher of Playboy magazine, is only advisory, and it still remains for the CJEU to make a final ruling on the matter. The question of whether hyperlinking constitutes publication is important to copyright and libel law. It was last addressed by the CJEU in 2014, when it found that Swedish media aggregation site Retriever did not need a newspaper's permission to link to stories. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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France fines Google for not being forgetful enough
The French data protection authority has fined Google for failing to implement the so-called right to be forgotten as ordered.Last year, the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) decided that requests to have personal information delisted from search results should apply to all Google properties, not just those in European domains.Google had been removing results from searches performed on domains including google.co.uk and google.fr, but not from its main site, google.com, even though it is accessible from within the EU.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers The CNIL could have fined Google up to €300,000 (US$336,000) for failing to comply with its ruling, but in the end ordered the company to pay just €100,000.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Startup Sigfox wins over a carrier as new radios battle for the future of IoT
Altice, a network operator active in the U.S. and across Europe, is betting on French company Sigfox to expand its machine-to-machine business even as it tests LTE-M, a narrowband version of the 4G standard slimmed down for the Internet of Things. One technology it won't touch, though, is LoRa, the fledgling standard backed by a number of mobile operators, including Orange and Bouygues Telecom, the main rivals of Altice's French subsidiary, SFR. Machine-to-machine communications already constitute a significant market for Altice, which connects 5 million machines or objects via its cellular networks and has 2,600 enterprise clients in this field, company executives said Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Deutsche Telekom to boost security offering for European enterprises
"Bring your own device" can easily turn into bring your own disaster for corporate networks, if attackers use a compromised device as a bridgehead into a secure environment.That's one of the reasons Deutsche Telekom is partnering with two security companies to offer services to smaller companies that don't have the resources to install and operate their own MDM (mobile device management) or endpoint security systems.Internet Protect Pro and Mobile Protect Pro are rebranded versions of services from Zscaler and Zimperium, respectively. The CEOs of the two companies joined Deutsche Telekom executives on stage at the Cebit tradeshow in Hanover, Germany, on Thursday to announce the deals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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This one patch panel trick will make all your cables the right length
Remember that one time the cable you grabbed from the box was exactly the right length for the run from patch panel to server shelf?What if every patch cable you picked up were just the right length?That's the goal of 1-year-old Austrian company PatchBox, which wants to eliminate tangles and speed up network moves, adds and changes with its system of retractable cables in rack-mountable cassettes. It's showing the product in the start-up hall at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, this week.PatchBox sells kits of 24 cassettes that slot into a 1U module just under the patchboard, right where you would usually put your horizontal cable management system. Each shelf comes with four Patch Catches -- essentially cable posts that mount on the sides of the rack, around which you can route the cables on their way between patch boards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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This one patch panel trick will make all your cables the right length
Remember that one time the cable you grabbed from the box was exactly the right length for the run from patch panel to server shelf?What if every patch cable you picked up were just the right length?That's the goal of 1-year-old Austrian company PatchBox, which wants to eliminate tangles and speed up network moves, adds and changes with its system of retractable cables in rack-mountable cassettes. It's showing the product in the start-up hall at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, this week.PatchBox sells kits of 24 cassettes that slot into a 1U module just under the patchboard, right where you would usually put your horizontal cable management system. Each shelf comes with four Patch Catches -- essentially cable posts that mount on the sides of the rack, around which you can route the cables on their way between patch boards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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After New York, gigabit public Wi-Fi comes to Berlin
Ask someone in Hanover, Germany, where to find the best public Wi-Fi and the answer may well be "In Berlin," 250 kilometers to the East.That's because free gigabit Wi-Fi for Berliners was one of the first new services announced at the Cebit trade show in Hanover this week.New York got its first taste of free gigabit Wi-Fi in January, when CityBridge turned on its first LinkNYC hotspots, which are gradually replacing payphones in the city.In Berlin, it's not a billboard-advertising-funded startup that's delivering the service, but an established telecommunications operator.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Digiwell will teach you an NFC trick your old dog may already know
Patrick Kramer pulled back his sleeves and reached out an empty hand to offer his business card. His contact details appeared on the smartphone screen as if by magic, but it was a sufficiently advanced technology that made it happen. For an encore, he opened a locked door without a key. When anyone else touched the handle, it remained locked. Unlike other magicians, Kramer willingly explained the secret to the trick, which is so simple a dog could perform it: In the flesh between his left thumb and forefinger, he has inserted a tiny glass bead containing an NFC chip.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here