Twitter to confirm new accounts in spam fight

Yahoo – AFP, June 27, 2018

Twitter is among online platforms under pressure to do more to safeguard against
being used to spread misinformation or promote division (AFP Photo/DIPTENDU DUTTA)

San Francisco (AFP) - Twitter on Tuesday said it will begin asking for email addresses or phone numbers to confirm new accounts as part of a battle against manipulation, particularly by automated bots.

Adding a way to check that a real person is behind new accounts was described by Twitter as being among measures to fight abuse, trolls, and hateful content.

"This is an important change to defend against people who try to take advantage of our openness," Twitter executives Del Harvey and Yoel Roth said in a blog post.

The requirement will be rolled out later this year, and Twitter promised to make sure the change does not harm aspiring users in "high-risk" places.

Twitter recently began taking more steps to clean up spam and automated activity, and "close the loopholes they'd exploited," according to Harvey and Roth.

"We're also now automating some processes where we see suspicious account activity, like exceptionally high-volume tweeting with the same hashtag, or using the same @handle without a reply from the account you're mentioning," they said.

Twitter systems identified and challenged more than 9.9 million "potentially spammy or automated accounts" weekly in May, according to Harvey and Roth.

Twitter last month said that it was stepping up its long-running battle against online trolls, trying to find offenders by looking at "behavioral signals."

The new approach looks at behavioral patterns of users in addition to the content of the tweets, allowing Twitter to find and mute online bullies and trolls.

Even if the offending tweets are not a violation of Twitter policy, they may be hidden from users if they are deemed to "distort" a conversation, Twitter said.

Twitter already uses artificial intelligence and machine learning in this effort but the latest initiative aims to do more by focusing on the actions of certain users in addition to the content.

Twitter is among online platforms under pressure to do more to safeguard against being used to spread misinformation or promote division, as proved the case during the US presidential election in 2016, in which US intelligence says Russia meddled to help Donald Trump win.

US Supreme Court says warrant needed to get cell phone location data

Yahoo – AFP, Chris Lefkow, June 22, 2018

The US Supreme Court ruled that police need a warrant before obtaining cell phone tower
location data about a suspect from telecom companies (AFP Photo/JUSTIN SULLIVAN)

Washington (AFP) - In a landmark digital privacy case, the US Supreme Court ruled Friday that police need a warrant before obtaining cell phone location data about a suspect from telecom companies.

In a 5-4 decision, the nation's highest court said such data is protected under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure.

The case revolved about police acquisition of mobile phone location information about a robbery suspect, Timothy Carpenter, without a warrant.

Data from Carpenter's cell phone -- 12,898 location points over a period of 127 days -- was used to show the device was in the vicinity when several robberies took place, and the suspect was convicted.

Carpenter's attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued that the seizure of his cell phone location data records was unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court reversed a lower court's ruling which said police did not need a warrant to obtain such data.

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices on the court in the decision.

"We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier's data base of physical location information," the court said in its opinion.

"The government's position fails to contend with the seismic shifts in digital technology that made possible the tracking of not only Carpenter's location but also everyone else's, not for a short period but for years and years," it said.

"Prior to the digital age, law enforcement might have pursued a suspect for a brief stretch," the court said.

"(But) when the government tracks the location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone's user," it said.

"Whoever the suspect turns out to be, he has effectively been tailed every moment of every day," it said. "Only the few without cell phones could escape this tireless and absolute surveillance."

'Groundbreaking victory'

Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the ACLU who argued the case before the court in November, called the ruling a "groundbreaking victory for Americans' privacy rights in the digital age."

"Today's decision rightly recognizes the need to protect the highly sensitive location data from our cell phones," Wessler said.

"But it also provides a path forward for safeguarding other sensitive digital information in future cases -- from our emails, smart home appliances, and technology that is yet to be invented."

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon described the ruling as a "BIG win for privacy."

"I've argued for years that the sheer volume of information about every single American that's collected by our phones and computers requires a fundamental rethinking of the idea that giving your information to a company means the government can get it too," Wyden said.

In its opinion, the court left open the possibility of warrantless collection of data in what it described as "urgent" situations such as "bomb threats, active shootings and child abductions."

Consumers group hauls 1,000 fake websites from the net

DutchNews, June 21, 2018

Dutch consumers lobby group Consumentenbond has succeeded in forcing a further 1,000 fake websites targeting Dutch consumers offline since March, the organisation said on Thursday. 

SIDN which registers domain names in the Netherlands told Consumentenbond that two large foreign issuers of domain names had pulled the suspect websites. In March, 850 names were removed from the internet, following the publication of a list of 2,000 suspect companies. 

The websites were offering brand name clothing or luxury products at huge discounts. But in reality they were selling counterfeit items or failed to deliver completely. 

Nearly all the 2000 webshops identified by the Consumentenbond were registered at only four domain names companies.  The shops removed were all under the aegis of US-based GoDaddy or PDR of India, both domain name brokers.

Google buy more land in the Netherlands, may build new data centre

DutchNews, June 15, 2018

Google’s parent company Alphabet has bought 70 hectares of land in Noord-Holland province, which it may use to develop a new data centre, business news agency Bloomberg said on Friday. 

The company told Bloomberg it is still considering what to do with the site, but that a decision will be made soon. The location of the land was not given but it is thought to be close to Amsterdam. 

Google already has a major data centre in Eemshaven in the north of Groningen and said earlier this year it would spend €500m to expand its operations there. 

In May, the Dutch Data Centre Association warned that the shortage of electricity in areas where data centres are concentrated is threatening the industry’s expansion in the Netherlands. 

The situation is particularly acute around Amsterdam ‘where expanding the electricity grid is no longer possible,’ the association said. 

The Netherlands needs to develop an emergency plan or the country’s position as a ‘digital leader’ will be under threat, DDA director Stijn Grove said.

Visa outage blocks transactions across Europe

Yahoo – AFP, June 1, 2018

Visa users took to social media to complain of problems processing transactions
in Europe June 1, 2018 (AFP Photo/ALAIN JOCARD)

London (AFP) - Payment systems giant Visa was struggling to process transactions in Europe on Friday and said it was rapidly trying to fix the issue.

The blockage has left some customers stuck at the tills in stores across the continent and queueing at cash machines.

"We are currently experiencing a service disruption which is preventing some Visa transactions in Europe from being processed," a Visa spokesman told AFP.

"We are investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to resolve the situation."

The spokesman could not say how many Visa users across Europe had been affected.

Visa users took to social media to complain and banks tried to explain the situation their customers.

HSBC bank's UK Twitter account said: "From what we understand there are still intermittent issues but services are slowly recovering."

Paymentsense, which provides card machines, online payment gateways and virtual terminals to some 60,000 independent businesses in Britain and Ireland, advised users to try paying via contactless transactions.

"We have been informed that Visa has corrected the outage and transactions are now starting to go through. There is still some intermittency however, we believe this is due to a backlog of transactions," it said.

"We now understand that contactless transactions have a better chance of going through."

It is understood the Bank of England is aware of the issue and is in touch with Visa.

The Royal Bank of Scotland's Twitter help account said cash machine withdrawals were unaffected.

"This is an industry wide issue which is being investigated as a matter of urgency and we apologise for any inconvenience. ATM and MasterCard transactions are not impacted," it said.

Queues in shops

In a Primark store on Berlin's Alexanderplatz, frustrated customers were queueing for 20 minutes to pay. Staff did not know why transactions were not going through.

However, in the neighbouring store, transactions were being processed without any problems.

Sandra Foy, who owns a bookshop in Manchester, northwest England, told Sky News television: "I run a small business and the loss of any business is a big deal for us.

"Not knowing when this is going to be sorted out is incredibly frustrating."

The BBC posted a picture of a London supermarket worker standing outside holding a sign reading: "cash only".

It cited Elle Gibbs-Murray, from Bridgend in south Wales, as saying she was stuck in traffic on the Severn Bridge between England and Wales for 45 minutes as drivers were unable to pay the toll by card.

Alex Neill, Which? consumer magazine's managing director of home products and services, said: "Clearly this issue will be a huge inconvenience to customers and it must be resolved urgently. Visa and the banks need to ensure no-one is left out of pocket due to this outage.

"We strongly advise people to keep any evidence of extra expenses they've incurred in order to claim them back."

Amazon blocks Australia from global sites over tax

Yahoo – AFP, 31 May 2018

Amazon said Australian shoppers wanting to use its global platforms will
instead be directed to its smaller Australian site

US internet giant Amazon will block Australian shoppers from its international websites to counter new tax laws on online purchases, it announced Thursday.

New rules require internet retailers like the American behemoth to collect a 10 percent goods and services tax on everything bought from overseas sites from July 1, including under the current tax-free threshold of Aus$1,000 (US$760).

As a result, Amazon said Australian shoppers wanting to use its global platforms will instead be directed to its smaller Australian site, which offers much less for sale.

Amazon reportedly baulked at the massive administrative burden of tracking GST from all overseas transactions.

"While we regret any inconvenience this may cause customers, we have had to assess the workability of the legislation as a global business with multiple international sites," it said in a statement.

The retailer said it would compensate by opening a "global store" for Australians, adding an extra four million items previously available only on its American website.

"This will allow us to provide our customers with continued access to (our) international selection and remain compliant with the law," it said.

But even with the changes, the number of products available will be a fraction of what's on sale globally.

The new tax rules were brought in after years of lobbying by struggling local retailers, which have to apply GST to all online and store sales,

Low consumer confidence and tepid wage growth have also hit traditional brick and mortar retail operations.

Amazon only launched a local Australian site last December, shipping from a warehouse in Melbourne with another planned in Sydney.

It had around Aus$1 billion in sales from Australia annually through shipping from overseas ahead of the launch, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.

Treasurer Scott Morrison said the new laws "level the playing field for Australian businesses".

"The government doesn't apologise for ensuring multinationals pay a fair amount of tax here in Australia," he said.

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