Year: 2018

Facebook handed over 150 companies intrusive access to your data

Facebook gave over 150 companies almost unfetted intrusive access to users’ data than previously admitted, exempting them from its usual privacy rules, according to the New York Times. It has emerged that companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Spotify, and Yandex had special arrangements to retain access to users’ data (and data on their friends), despite platform changes in 2014 that restricted the practice. For example: — Netflix and Spotify were able to read users’ private messages — Microsoft had access to the names of virtually all users’ friends, without consent…

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Facebook Transparency Report reveals fewer user data requests by African Governments

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facebook

According to the recently released Facebook Transparency Report for the six months from January to June 2018, demands by African governments for information on Facebook users remain low compared to other countries, Globally over the six-month period there were 103 815 requests and in 74% of those requests Facebook produced some data. This was a 26.1% increase when compared to the last six months of 2017, when there were 82 341 requests. It is also an increase of 31.6% from the first half of last year, when there were 78…

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Wearable device sales to hit $42 billion in 2019 says Gartner

Dianne Jacobs

Gartner, Inc. forecasts that worldwide shipments of wearable devices will reach 225 million in 2019, an increase of 25.8 percent from 2018. End-user spending on wearable devices is forecast to reach $42 billion in 2019. Of that, $16.2 billion will be on smartwatches. “At the moment, the smartwatch market is bolstered by the relatively stable and higher average selling price (ASP) of the Apple Watch,” said Alan Antin. senior director at Gartner. “But the overall ASP of smartwatches is expected to slowly decline from $221.99 in 2018 to $210 in…

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The gift that keeps on taking, Bitcoin sinks again… below $4,000

banking security

The blood letting is not stopping soon as Bitcoin plunges once again over the weekend and is now trading for less than $4,000 for the first time since September 2017. The cryptocurrency fell to as low as $US3,519.94($4,874) on the Bitstamp platform, after earlier falling to a 14-month low of $3,462,57. It has lost 74 percent of its value so far this year, after hitting nearly $20,000 in December last year. Most other cryptocurrencies are faring just as poorly or worse, and in total, more than $700 billion in market…

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Nearly half of young users have deleted Facebook, Pew survey shows

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Pew surveyed more than 3,400 U.S. Facebook users in May and June, and found that a whopping 44 percent of those ages 18 to 29 say they’ve deleted the app from their phone in the last year. Some of them may have reinstalled it later. Significant shares of Facebook users have taken steps in the past year to reframe their relationship with the social media platform. Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according…

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Disruptive technology emerging markets in Africa could leverage to transform utilities

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The entire installed generation capacity of Africa’s 48 Sub-Saharan countries is just 68 gigawatts, no more than Spain; this is according to the Africa’s Infrastructure report conducted by the World Bank. Up to one-quarter of that capacity is unavailable because of aging plants and poor maintenance. In Sub-Saharan Africa, just one person in five has access to electricity. If current trends continue, fewer than 40% of Sub-Saharan African countries will reach universal access to electricity by 2050. Per capita consumption of electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) averages only…

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Facebook, Instagram hit by 13hr outage, Zuckerberg not stepping down as chairman

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Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were yesterday hit by a 13-hour outage that affected some users throughout the world, the company confirmed. The outage comes at a particularly sensitive time when businesses use Facebook and Instagram to promote pivotal Black Friday sales, some of which have already started. “Earlier today, a server configuration caused intermittent problems across all apps globally creating a degraded experience for users. The issue has since been resolved, we are back to 100 percent for everyone and we’re sorry for any inconvenience,” a Facebook spokesperson told ABC…

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Instagram is making a bold move on fake likes and follows

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fACEBOOK,INSTAGRAM,MESSANGER

Instagram is preparing for a huge purge on automated apps people use to leave spammy comments or follow then unfollow others in hopes of growing their audience. Any fake likes and follows from accounts that use third-party services to get more engagement are going to now be removed the company announced as part of policy change today. Instagram says, We’ve built machine learning tools to help identify accounts that use these services and remove the inauthentic activity. This type of behavior is bad for the community, and third-party apps that…

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Hackers Are Snatching High-Profile Instagram Accounts

olivia Craig
Instagram Fundraiser

In the Wild West of “influencer” marketing, there are few protections and plenty of easy marks. Hackers sometimes create their own fake brands to phish influencers, but often they pretend to be representatives from real companies, this is according to a new report by TheAtlantic “They’ll set up some sort of username that’s something that seems like it would be legit, like @LuluLemonAmbassadors,” he said. “They’ll use all the company logos, make it seem as legit as possible, make the bio seem normal. Use the company’s mission statement. It’s super…

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Founding DG of Kenya’s Vision 2030 secretariat Mugo Kibati, takes over at Telkom Kenya

artificial intelligence

Telecommunications company Telkom Kenya has appointed Mugo Kibati as its new chief executive officer, taking over from Mr Aldo Mareuse. Announcing the change, Telkom Kenya board chair Eddy Njoroge said the firm was grateful to Mr Mareuse for his successful leadership for the period he has been with the company. “Notable milestones achieved during his tenure include the expansion of the company’s network by over 50 per cent, successful rebranding of the company to Telkom and rolling out of a 4G network, resulting in the company becoming the data operator…

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