Author: Loknath Das

Researchers at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) claim that over 400 of the world’s top 50,000 websites use ‘session replay scripts’ to track user behaviour. While this in itself may not be that disconcerting, the researchers add that these sites often do not strip personally identifiable user information from the behaviour data they glean, potentially giving hackers access to a trove of personal data sometimes even including passwords, should this data be exposed. Detailing their findings last week in the first of several posts about online privacy, CITP researchers Steve Englehart, Gunes Acar, and Arvind Narayan said they looked at…

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The European Union will take measures to tax US tech giants if the international community doesn’t agree to a new system early next year, a senior official said Tuesday. “Last month, the Commission launched a public consultation on how to tax the digital economy,” said Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s competition commissioner, at a conference organised by the French economy ministry in Paris. She said the EU would use the results of the consultation in negotiations being held under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the 35-nation club of industrialised nations. But Vestager warned that: “if there’s no…

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Xiaomi and Samsung are jointly the top smartphone brands in India, according to International Data Corporation latest report. The latest Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker by IDC for Q3 2017 reveals that Xiaomialong with Samsung captured 23.5 percent market share in the last quarter. Xiaomi almost tripled its shipments year-on-year and doubled quarter-on-quarter in last quarter. IDC adds that Xiaomi focus on the traditional channel for marketing its products has been a key strategy. The market research firm added Samsung had a “record breaking quarter” where it registered 39 percent sequential growth quarter-on-quarter and 23 percent year-on-year. According to the IDC report, some of Samsung’s bestselling models…

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Security Current, an information and collaboration company by CISOs for CISOs, today published a collection of insights from leading Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) on the use of open source software in their organizations. Eleven CISOs from across industries weighed in, with most saying that open source software generally has been well vetted for security vulnerabilities by the vast development communities that contribute software to the libraries. What’s more, they note that open source can provide more flexibility than commercial software products, which often must be heavily customized at great expense to the user organization. “Open source code is a…

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 IRYStec Software Inc., a leader in perceptual display processing technology, announced a number of initiatives that will significantly extend its ability to service customers. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at MONTREAL, Nov. 20, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — IRYStec Software Inc., a leader in perceptual display processing technology, announced a number of initiatives that will significantly extend its ability to service customers. To start, John Hartley joined IRYStec as Vice President of Sales. Mr. Hartley has 25 years of demonstrated success developing client relationships in international markets for semiconductor components and IP. This background fits well with IRYStec’s goal of…

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Vulture South last week spotted an oddity in this Cisco end of sale announcement for “Cisco Select UCS Server Accessories”. Way down the page are a couple of products bearing the name “Telstra” – that’s Telstra as in Australia’s dominant telco. The two products are called “Telstra Custom – 10 x (MapR-Conf-Hadoop, DB-AddOn, Spark-Ad)” and “Telstra Custom – 5 x MapR-Premium-36months” and the announcement stated that sales ended last week, on November 15th, 2017, that orders end next year and the service and support will expire on February 28, 2023. Rodney Hamill, Cisco’s director of data centre and cloud for Australia and…

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HIGHLIGHTS EA has removed micro-transactions from Star Wars Battlefront 2 This is temporary and not permanent EA fails to understand why this is a problem Star Wars Battlefront 2 is out now the world over. But hours before release, publisher EA has revealed that the game’s predatory and intrusive micro-transactions have been removed. What this means is, Star Wars Battlefront 2’s crystals, which is the game’s premium currency that can be bought with real money for in-game advantages has been removed for now. According to a statement on EA’s official Star Wars Twitter account attributed to Oskar Gabrielson, General Manager at Star Wars…

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It has been a great year for Nintendo fans, with the new Switch console as well as a throwback console based on the beloved Super Nintendo Entertainment System. But it has also been a hard one, if you’re actually trying to find these consoles in stores. With the holidays coming, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé said in an interview with The Washington Post that the company is working to have a regular supply of both consoles on store shelves for the rest of the year. Though, he said, it can be hard to predict what demand will be like. The research firm…

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HIGHLIGHTS Microsoft has announced Black Friday deals for the Xbox One At the moment, only Xbox Gold subscribers can partake in the sale It begins for everyone else on November 20 The Xbox Black Friday Sale 2017 sees a host of games for the Xbox One and Xbox One X going at a deep discount. These include the likes of recent releases such as Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, Destiny 2, and even FIFA 18. Right now, those with an Xbox Live Gold subscription can partake of the deals four days early. As always, these are digital deals not disc, so do check your bandwidth and…

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According to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, teen suicide rose from 2010-2015 – and some think it may have to do with an increase in social media use. “That’s becoming more prominent,” said David Miers, Mental Health Services Manager at Bryan Health. “More of a percentage of our connection is communicating to people through electronic means, and less so through that face-to-face connection.” While cyber bullying may seem the obvious culprit, some say websites like Instagram and Facebook portray people’s lives are being “perfect” which in turn causes some teens to feel like their own lives…

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