NEW DELHI: Facebook Inc. has claimed that it is taking steps to reduce the spread of false information on its platform ahead of India’s general election.
Samidh Chakrabarti, director of Facebook’s Product Management for Civic Integrity division, said that Facebook has put the Indian elections a “top priority,” and put in a “tremendous amount of efforts over the last two years” to prepare for the polls.
He informed that Facebook listed a variety of measures it is taking, from blocking fake accounts to employing third-party fact-checking organizations, through the campaign and voting, with polling scheduled to take place in stages from April 11 to May 19.
He said Facebook has partnered with Indian media organizations to check and flag false stories in English, Hindi and some other regional Indian languages.
India has the highest number of Facebook users in the world, with more than 300 million. That is about a third of the 900 million people eligible to vote in 2019.
The elections will be held in seven phases to ensure proper security and manageable logistics across the country of 1.3 billion people. (Agencies)
LONDON: When people are buried in avalanche, every passing minute can mean the difference between life and death. A new app could help rescuers reach them faster.
A French inventor – a keen skier himself – has come up with an app which could point rescuers in the right direction in a worst-case scenario. Now he and his business partner hope skiers and other mountain users will download it so they’re safer on the slopes.
Avalanches can strike without warning, burying victims under mounds of snow. Many people are left injured under a layer of snow – and the longer it takes for rescuers to reach them, the more likely they are to die.
(Agencies)
SYDNEY: Australia is considering tough measures in regulating Facebook and Google in order to safeguard personal information.
Australia’s government will introduce measures to increase fines for breaches, strengthen disclosure policies and embolden its privacy regulator to crack down on data misuse, according to a statement Sunday.
“They need to stop hate content and they need to do the right thing with people’s information,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement.
The Australian plan comes amid mounting pressure for social media platforms to remove offensive and extremist content after 50 people died in last week’s attacks on two mosques in New Zealand. The shooting were live-streamed.
The measures will increase the penalty for serious or repeated data-breaches from A$2.1 million ($1.49 million) to A$10 million. Companies could also be charged three times the value of any benefit gained or 10 percent of the company’s annual domestic turnover, whichever is greater.
Social media and online companies will also be called on to stop using or disclosing an individual’s information upon request, and face tighter rules on protecting the personal information of children and vulnerable groups.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner will also receive new powers to issue infringement notices to those who do not cooperate in resolving minor breaches.
Next week’s federal budget will also provide the regulator with a A$25 million funding boost over three years to investigate breaches and oversee online privacy rules.
The policies will be made through amendments to the Privacy Act. Legislation will be drafted for consultation in the second half of 2019.
SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook left hundreds of millions of user passwords readable by its employees for years, the company acknowledged Thursday after a security researcher exposed the lapse.
By storing passwords in readable plain text, Facebook violated fundamental computer-security practices. Those call for organizations and websites to save passwords in a scrambled form that makes it almost impossible to recover the original text.
There is no valid reason why anyone in an organization, especially the size of Facebook, needs to have access to users’ passwords in plain text,” said cyber security expert Andrei Barysevich of Recorded Future.
Facebook said there is no evidence its employees abused access to this data. But thousands of employees could have searched them. The company said the passwords were stored on internal company servers, where no outsiders could access them. Even so, some privacy experts suggested that users change their Facebook passwords.
The incident reveals yet another huge and basic oversight at a company that insists it is a responsible guardian for the personal data of its 2.3 billion users worldwide.
Facebook said it will likely notify “hundreds of millions” of Facebook Lite users, millions of Facebook users and tens of thousands of Instagram users that their passwords were stored in plain text.
Facebook Lite is a version designed for people with older phones or low-speed internet connections. It is used primarily in developing countries.
Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted a new ”privacy-focused vision ” for the social network that would emphasize private communication over public sharing. The company wants to encourage small groups of people to carry on encrypted conversations that neither Facebook nor any other outsider can read.
The fact that the company couldn’t manage to do something as simple as encrypting passwords, however, raises questions about its ability to manage more complex encryption issues — such in messaging — flawlessly.
Facebook said it discovered the problem in January. But security researcher Brian Krebs wrote that in some cases the passwords had been stored in plain text since 2012. Facebook Lite launched in 2015 and Facebook bought Instagram in 2012.
The problem, according to Facebook, wasn’t due to a single bug. During a routine review in January, it says, it found that the plain text passwords were unintentionally captured and stored in its internal storage systems. This happened in a variety of circumstances — for example, when an app crashed and the resulting crash log included a captured password.
Facebook’s normal procedure for passwords is to store them encoded, the company noted Thursday in its blog post.
That’s good to know, although Facebook engineers apparently added code that defeated the safeguard, said security researcher Rob Graham. “They have all the proper locks on the doors, but somebody left the window open,” he said.
(Agencies)
KATHMANDU: Huawei P30 series is set to launch on March 26 in Paris. Its camera and design details have attracted mobile users.
The Huawei P30 will have triple camera setup at the back aligned vertically at the top left corner. The smartphone is said to feature a 40 MP primary camera with f/1.8 lens, a 16 MP MP wide-angle camera with f/2.2 lens and an 8 MP telephoto lens that will likely permit 5x lossless zoom.
The report revealed the camera details of the high-end model P30 Pro as well. The smartphone is tipped to carry a 40 MP primary camera with f/1.6 lens and OIS support, a 20 MP wide-angle camera with f/2.2 lens and an 8 MP camera that is said to have “periscope” zoom system with a focal length equivalent to 135 mm.
The periscope zoom system is expected to give the camera an ‘optical magnification’ of 7.8x. The fourth camera is said to be a ToF (Time-of-Flight) sensor that will capture 3D depth information. Up front, the Huawei P30 Pro is said to have a 32 MP camera that will likely be embedded in a waterdrop notch.
The expensive variant Huawei P30 Pro is seen featuring sleek side bezels and a reduced chin. From the front, the design looks quite similar to Samsung’s Galaxy S9 series (except for the notch and thick top, bottom bezels). The renders corroborate the previous hands-on images that showed the camera arrangement of the P30 Pro. The cameras are seen aligned vertically with the ToF camera sitting on the right side underneath the LED flash module.
Unlike the P30 Pro, the base variant Huawei P30 is seen featuring thick bezels around the display and a squared-off design instead of smooth curved corners. The display could house a waterdrop notch to accommodate the front-facing camera.
As for the screen size, reports suggest that the Huawei P30 Pro will have a 6.47-inch OLED panel with 2,340 x 1,080 pixel resolution. While the regular version P30 could come with a 6.1-inch OLED display. Both the devices are expected to run Android Pie with EMUI 9.1 custom skin on top. As for the internal hardware, the phones will likely have Huawei’s flagship Kirin 980 octa-core processor with dual NPU.
The Huawei P30 series will be in new color schemes. Both the devices will likely come in Midnight Black, Breathing Crystal (white), and Aurora (blue/green) color options. The high-end model P30 Pro might get an added color option Amber Sunrise.
Huawei P30 Pro is said to come with 8 GB RAM paired with 128, 256 or 512 GB storage options. While the Huawei P30 could offer single RAM/storage option 6 GB RAM/128 GB internal storage.
European Union has fined Google with a €1.49bn (£1.28bn) for blocking rival online search advertisers. It is the third EU fine for the Google in two years. The case accuses Google of abusing its market dominance by restricting third party rivals from displaying search adverts between 2006 and 2016.
In response, Google changed its AdSense contracts with large third parties, giving them more leeway to display competing search ads. Google owner Alphabet makes large amounts of money from advertising – pre-tax profits reached $30.7bn (£23bn) in 2018, up from $12.66bn in 2017.
“Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites. “This is illegal under EU antitrust rules,” said EC commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
NEW YORK: Google has launched a video-game streaming platform called Stadia. The platform will store a game-playing session in the cloud and lets players jump across devices operating on Google’s Chrome browser and Chrome OS, such as Pixel phones and Chromebooks. The Stadia will be available in late 2019.
Some industry watchers were expecting a streaming console, but Google’s platform centers squarely on the company’s cloud infrastructure.
“The new generation of gaming is not a box,” said Google Vice President Phil Harrison. “
Much like movies and music, the traditional video-game industry has been shifting from physical hardware and games to digital downloads and streaming. Video-game streaming typically requires a strong connection and more computing power than simply streaming video, since there is real-time interaction between player and game. Google says it is leveraging its data centers to power the system.
Google said playing video games will be as simple as pressing a “Play Now” button, with nothing to download or install. An optional dedicated Stadia controller will be available. The WiFi-enabled controller has a button that lets players launch a microphone and use Google Assistant to ask questions about the games being played. Another button lets users share gameplay directly to Google’s video streaming service, YouTube.
He said, “It won’t replace traditional games devices overnight”. “And we wouldn’t be here if not for the existing traditional platforms.”
The company said Stadia will be available in late 2019 in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and parts of Europe. Google showed demos of “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” and “Doom Eternal.” More information about games and pricing is due this summer.
That’s because the platform could bring in players not willing to spend the money upfront for a gaming PC or a console.
(Agencies)
NEW YORK: Tony Fernades, chief executive officer (CEO) of AirAsia , quit Facebook in protest over the video posts of New Zealand mosque attacks.
Fernandes, who had 670,000 followers, said in a series of tweets on Sunday morning that Facebook needs to “clean up” after videos of the New Zealand mosque attacks were uploaded onto the platform.
“The amount of hatred that goes on in social media sometimes outweighs the good,” he said in a tweet Sunday. “Facebook could have done more to stop some of this.”
As may as 49 people were killed and dozens injured in shootings at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch after a gunman opened fire on worshipers.
Closed down my Facebook account with 670 k followers. Just thinking about Twitter now. Weather to close or carry on. The amount of hate that goes on in social media sometimes outweighs the good. But on Twitter I think the battle for me goes on.
— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) March 17, 2019
Fernandes said he had been “a victim of so many fake bitcoin and other stories” and decided to close down his account.
Facebook could have done more to stop some of this. I myself have been a victim of so many fake bitcoin and other stories. 17 mins of a live stream of killing and hate!!!! Its need to clean up and not just think of financials.
— Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) March 17, 2019
Facebook needs to “clean up and not just think of financials,” he said. On Saturday, Facebook said that it removed 1.5 million videos of the attack. “We continue to work around the clock to remove violating content using a combination of technology and people…,” Mia Garlnick, spokesperson for Facebook New Zealand, said on Twitter.
Fernandes said he was also mulling to quit Twitter. “On Twitter, I think the battle for me goes on,” he tweeted.
Fernandes has nearly 1.3 million Twitter followers and has posted more than 20,000 tweets.
CALIFORNIA: Facebook Inc said it removed 1.5 million videos globally of the New Zealand mosque attack in the first 24 hours after the attack. “In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload…,” Facebook said in a tweet late Saturday.
In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload…
— Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 17, 2019
The company said it is also removing all edited versions of the video that do not show graphic content out of respect for the people affected by the mosque shooting and the concerns of local authorities.
The death toll in the New Zealand mosque shootings rose to 50 on Sunday. The gunman who attacked two mosques on Friday live-streamed the attacks on Facebook for 17 minutes using an app designed for extreme sports enthusiasts, with copies still being shared on social media hours later.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said she wants to discuss live streaming with Facebook.
Update from Mia Garlick, Facebook New Zealand: “We continue to work around the clock to remove violating content using a combination of technology and people…
— Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 17, 2019
Police alerted us to a video on Facebook shortly after the livestream commenced and we quickly removed both the shooter’s Facebook and Instagram accounts and the video. We are also removing any praise or support for the crime and the shooter or shooters as soon as we are aware.
— Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 15, 2019
(Agencies)
CALIFORNIA: Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox and Head of WhatsApp Chris Daniels have resigned from their posts, announced Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the social media giant, reported BBC.
The changes come shortly after Mr Zuckerberg outlined his plan to transform Facebook into a “privacy-focused platform.”
However, no explicit reason behind their departure has been mentioned.
Mr Cox joined in 2005, a year after Facebook was founded, while Mr Daniels took up his role only a year ago.
According to the report, Facebook is planning to merge WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger to revamp privacy controls.
Mr Cox, a confidante of Mr Zuckerberg, started as a software engineer at the firm and helped to build several key features including News Feed.
He also held several senior roles, heading up human resources and helping to launch Facebook’s business platform Workplace.
(Agencies)