IANS reports:
In a major relief to Reliance JIO
customers, an initial police probe has found there was no theft of data by a
computer engineer arrested from Rajasthan, a top investigating official said
here on Thursday.
“According to our probe so far, no data has been leaked or stolen. But investigations are still in the
initial stage and we will learn more after the accused is brought here late on
Thursday night,” Navi Mumbai Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Tushar Doshi
told IANS.
Read more on Business
Standard.
(Related)
Reliance Jio admits to systems breach in police complaint
… The complaint is
the telecom company’s first official acknowledgement of a systems breach. Jio
has so far denied media reports and user accounts of a leak.
… Several local
news sites reported late on Sunday that names, telephone numbers and email
addresses of Jio users were visible on a site called ‘Magicapk,’ which was
subsequently taken down.
… Experts say
India has inadequate data protection laws that do not mandate companies or
agencies to notify clients if their personal data has been breached. Advocates for stronger data protection laws
say this results in data leaks often going unreported.
“There is a clear stigma attached to being hacked, or data
being stolen,” said Akash Mahajan, a web security consultant in Bengaluru,
adding this is why companies in India often do not admit to data breaches.
Deny, deny, deny.
Verizon Downplays Leak of Millions of Customer Records
Cyber resilience firm UpGuard reported on Wednesday that
its researchers discovered an unprotected AWS S3 bucket containing information
on as many as 14 million Verizon customers, including names, addresses, phone
numbers, PINs used for identity verification purposes, customer satisfaction
data, and service purchases.
The data, which appears to represent daily logs collected
over the first six months of 2017, was not exposed by Verizon itself, but by
NICE Systems, an Israel-based partner that provides call center services. UpGuard reported the leak to Verizon on June
13, but the exposed database was only protected on June 22.
… In a statement
published on its corporate website, Verizon downplayed the incident, claiming
that the details of only 6 million unique customers were exposed. The company blamed the leak on human error,
and pointed out that no one other than UpGuard had accessed the unprotected
cloud storage area.
… Willy Leichter,
vice president of marketing at Virsec, believes “this will be a heated
board-level issue for a $1 billion company like Nice, and a $125 billion-plus
company like Verizon.”
“If the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
was in effect (it is starting in May 2018) there could
be a fine as large at $5 billion (4% of annual revenue) for this single
incident,” Leichter said.
Backups are good!
Easy backups are better!
Google launches a new Backup & Sync desktop app for
uploading files and photos to the cloud
As promised last month, Google has today launched its new “Backup and Sync from
Google” tool, which aims to help users more easily back up the files and photos
on their computer.
… The new tool
offers a simple user interface, where you’ll first sign into your Google
account, then select the folders you want Google to continually back up to
Google Drive.
… Both products‘
websites are currently hosting the updated software, which is a free download
for consumers.
If there is even a hint of something to do with AI,
companies are snapping up start=ups.
Google acquires India’s Halli Labs, which was building AI
tools to fix ‘old problems’
Some more M&A news in the world of artificial intelligence.
Today it was made public that Google has
acquired Halli Labs, a very young (its first public appearance was on May 22 of this year) startup
based out of Bengaluru, India, that was focused on building deep learning and
machine learning systems to address what it describes as “old problems.”
… It’s not clear
whether or not Halli Labs was funded.
… It’s also not
clear how many more people were working at Halli Labs. We’re trying to find that out too.
The world, she is a changing…
It is barely 20 years since Sergey Brin and Larry Page
registered the domain name google.com, and only 10 years since Steve Jobs
walked onto a stage in San Francisco and introduced the iPhone. Yet in this short period, digital technologies
have upended our world. We introduced the Digital Evolution Index in HBR in 2015 to
trace the emergence of a “digital planet,” how physical interactions — in
communications, social and political exchange, commerce, media and
entertainment — are being displaced by digitally mediated ones. We identified many hotspots around the world
where these changes are happening rapidly and other spots where momentum has
slowed. Two years on, depending on where
we live, we continue to move at different speeds toward the digital planet.
Honesty? That’s a
concept?
Minnesota attorney general sues CenturyLink over billing
Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson sued CenturyLink
on Wednesday as she alleged that the internet, phone and cable television
provider frequently billed Minnesota customers at higher rates than its sales
agents quoted.
Flanked by Minnesotans who have filed some of the
“hundreds” of complaints about charges they say they didn’t agree to, Swanson
said she’s asking a judge to impose civil penalties, order the company to
change its sales practices and require that CenturyLink pay restitution to
customers who were misled about their purchases.
… The lawsuit,
filed in Anoka County District Court, accuses Louisiana-based CenturyLink of
committing consumer fraud and engaging in deceptive trade practices. It cites 37 specific cases in which people
were overbilled by the company and denied the opportunity to reduce those
charges — even when they had the original offer in writing.
No doubt Google googled “tax breaks.”
Why Europe can’t beat Google on corporate taxes
Google isn’t liable for 1.1 billion euros ($1.25 billion)
of back-taxes after all, a French court has decided. That won’t be the last battle the U.S. search
engine faces over how it arranges its profits. Giant technology companies will always have an
advantage over local tax authorities, though. Unlike competing European countries, they can
put their global interest first.
… A big company
might argue, as Google has, that its UK business merely offers marketing
services to an Irish-based sales company, which means that profit from actual
sales is rightly taxed in Ireland. In
some cases, it might be possible to argue that certain staff members in Britain
were effectively engaging in sales. Even
then, though, the principle that tax is payable where profit is booked – not
where the customer is based – is still intact.
For my students.
Remember, there’s a downside to every new technology. Think of this article when the doomsayers
predict that robots mean the end of all jobs.
What Every Entrepreneur Can Learn From the Bicycle
In 1896, the bicycle was a thrilling and newfangled
invention. But not everyone was
impressed. A writer named Joseph Bishop
went around interviewing
angry business owners, who claimed their sales fell as a result of the
two-wheeler. “Before the bicycle craze
struck us,” one barber said, “the men used to come in on Saturday afternoons
and get a shave, and a haircut, and maybe a shampoo, in order to take their
lady friends to the theater, or go out somewhere else in the evening. Now they go off on a bicycle and do not care
whether they are shaved or not.”
Booksellers said people weren't reading as much, because
they were cycling. Saloon owners
complained that they weren't selling as much beer, because bicyclists drank
more refreshing beverages. The cigar
trade was in a panic, claiming that it was shrinking at the rate of one million
fewer cigars sold a day. Shoe-makers
raised the alarm, because nobody was walking anymore. And hatters, Bishop reported, “say they are
injured because bicyclists wear cheap caps and thus either save their more
expensive ones or else get on without them. One irate member of the trade proposes that
Congress be asked to pass a law compelling each bicycle-rider to purchase at
least two felt hats a year.”
Making “cut & paste” easier?
Internet tool that removes everything from a web page except
for its text
by on
“The text-only internet tool Textise is a new way of
looking at the Web. It’s an internet
tool that removes everything from a web page except for its text. In practice, this means that images, forms,
scripts, pretty fonts, they all go, leaving plain text.
How to use this page:
1) Type or paste the URL of a web page into the box below
and click “Textise”. A text only version
of the web page will be displayed.
2) Type a search term into the box, select a search engine from the drop-down list, and click “Search”. You will be taken to a text only version of the search results.
Textise will also display search forms on selected sites (for example bbc.co.uk, amazon.com) if enabled on the Options page.
3) Read more
2) Type a search term into the box, select a search engine from the drop-down list, and click “Search”. You will be taken to a text only version of the search results.
Textise will also display search forms on selected sites (for example bbc.co.uk, amazon.com) if enabled on the Options page.
3) Read more
Could help me map my students.
See all your Google Contacts on a Google Map
… The Map My
Contacts script is open-source and the source code is
published under the MIT License. The app
does not store or upload your data anywhere – read privacy policy.
Another set of tools for my students.
Resources for my students…
It’s not always easy to find podcasts you want to listen
to, especially ones about technology. It
seems comedy and crime are the two vogue genres of the podcast world at the
moment.
So when a fresh podcast comes along, it’s certain to grab
our attention — and the new .future podcast from Microsoft has
done exactly that. If you love tech
talk, it won’t disappoint you. I promise.
… The new .future
podcast marks a second official venture, but this time Microsoft products are not
the focus.
… If you want to
subscribe, you can find it in the iTunes Directory or by using the RSS
link. The first episode aired on June
28, so make sure you download the old episodes first.
An important correction!
(Fortune got it wrong!) You must
buy a dozen at regular price before getting a dozen for 80 cents.
7/14 get an 80 cent Original Glazed dozen when you buy any dozen
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