Heads up!
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/have-you-received-an-email-from-netflix-read-this-first-2018-01-12?reflink=MW_GoogleNews&google_editors_picks=true
Have you received an email from Netflix? Read this first…
Thousands of Netflix customers have been scammed into handing out their credit-card information through a convincing-looking false email.
The phishing scam prompted users to update their payment information on the site to avoid service being suspended. Once they clicked “update payment,” according to security company Mailguard, they were taken to what looked like a legitimate log-in portal to input credit-card information.
Scams like this, called “brandhacking,” rely on the strength of a company’s name to get users to trust such emails.






Interesting questions for Security experts who discover someone else’s breach.
https://www.troyhunt.com/streamlining-data-breach-disclosures-a-step-by-step-process/
Streamlining Data Breach Disclosures: A Step-by-Step Process
I don't know how many data breaches I'm sitting on that I'm yet to process. 100? 200? It's hard to tell because often I'm sent collections of multiple incidents in a single archive, often there's junk in there and often there's redundancy across those collections. All I really know is that there's hundreds of gigabytes spread across thousands of files. Sometimes - like in the case of the recent South Africa situation - I could be sitting on data for months that's actually very serious in nature and needs to be brought public awareness.
The biggest barrier by far to processing these is the effort involved in disclosure. I want to ensure that any incidents I load into Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) are first brought to the awareness of the organisations involved and whilst that may seem straight forward, it's often quite the opposite. There are notable exceptions (such as the recent Disqus disclosure), but more often than not, it's a laborious process of varying success. Because this is something I do over and over again, I want to streamline the process and more than that, I want to seek community input.
Tell me if I'm doing this right. This post documents how I intend to handle serious incidents with real consequences and frankly, I don't want to stuff it up.






Perhaps they should spend less time staring at encrypted phones?
FBI Is Disrupting 10X Fewer Cyber Crime Rings Than In 2015
Joseph Marks reports:

FBI agents took down or disrupted only about one-tenth as many cyber criminal operations during the 2017 fiscal year as they did three years earlier, according to annual reports.

The number of cyber crime operations that FBI agents dismantled or disrupted fell from nearly 2,500 in fiscal year 2014, the first year reliable records were kept, to just 262 in fiscal year 2017, according to annual audits.

Agents disrupted or dismantled 510 cyber crime operations in fiscal year 2015 and 259 operations in fiscal year 2016, according to the audits.

The FBI missed its own target of 500 disruptions or dismantlements in fiscal years 2016 and 2017, according to the report.

Read more on NextGov.






Perspective.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-15/alibaba-s-ai-outgunned-humans-in-key-stanford-reading-test
Alibaba's AI Outguns Humans in Reading Test
Alibaba has developed an artificial intelligence model that scored better than humans in a Stanford University reading and comprehension test.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. put its deep neural network model through its paces last week, asking the AI to provide exact answers to more than 100,000 questions comprising a quiz that’s considered one of the world’s most authoritative machine-reading gauges. The model developed by Alibaba’s Institute of Data Science of Technologies scored 82.44, edging past the 82.304 that rival humans achieved.
Alibaba said it’s the first time a machine has out-done a real person in such a contest. Microsoft achieved a similar feat, scoring 82.650 on the same test, but those results were finalized a day after Alibaba’s, the company said.






Not sure I agree.
https://www.teachthought.com/literacy/5-dimensions-of-critical-digital-literacy/
5 Dimensions Of Critical Digital Literacy: A Framework
Digital Literacy is increasingly important in an age where many students read as much on screens as they do from books.
In fact, the very definition of many of these terms is changing as the overlap across media forms increases. Interactive eBooks can function like both long-form blogs and traditional books. Threaded email can look and function like social media. Email and texting and social media messaging are increasingly similar.

1. Decoding

Focus: the media–modes, structures, and conventions of digital media

2. Meaning Making

Focus: the reader–style, purpose, interpretation

3. Analyzing

Focus: the author–aesthetics, ethics, and related choices

4. Persona

Focus: a community–how others perceive the issue, topics, and context

5. Using

Focus: a marriage of self and community–problem-solving and data acquisition for a variety of authentic–and changing–purposes

Could be amusing.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/15/googles-museum-app-finds-your-fine-art-doppelganger/
Google's museum app finds your fine art doppelgänger
If you've ever wondered if there's a museum portrait somewhere that looks like you and you're ready to have your ego crushed, there's now an app for that. Google Arts & Culture's latest update now lets you take a selfie, and using image recognition, finds someone in its vast art collection that most resembles you. It will then present you and your fine art twin side-by-side, along with a percentage match, and let you share the results on social media, if you dare.