Tag: Skype

WhatsApp Users can now Call Without Internet thanks to Rwandan Made Prototype

Dianne Jacobs

It is easier for a WhatsApp user in diaspora to audio or video call or chat with his or her counterpart in Africa who has the same application than traditional telephone calls and text messages. The situation is the same for people who use Skype, Facebook Messenger, Viber and WeChat, to mention a few. But at the moment, the number of smartphone holders is very small in many developing countries especially in Africa. For instance, the number of smartphone holders in Rwanda is below 1.2 million. This challenges service providers…

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Cybersecurity firms greenlit to decrypt Viber, WhatsApp traffic

Russian cybersecurity companies have a greenlight to decrypt traffic of such popular communication tools as Viber, WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger, a popular business daily reports. The measure is connected to a recently-adopted anti-terrorism law. “We are going to look into the main messengers — WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Skype both for iOS and Android,” Kommersant cites a letter from an employee of Con Certeza, a company dealing with the development of tools necessary for enforcing law in the telecommunications field. The employee wrote that the company aims to make…

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BlackBerry finally cedes to Indian government monitoring its servers

Staff Writer

Blackberry appears to be losing an ongoing dispute with the Indian government over the state’s access to its data, as today an internal document from the state’s Department of Telecommunications stated “the lawful interception system for Blackberry Services is ready for use.” According to the Economic Times, after over two years of pushback, BlackBerry has finally ceded to the Indian government’s insistence that the Canadian phone maker provide the state with access to portions of data exchanged between any of its users. The company has provided a solution that allows…

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Tim Wu,The Father of Net Neutrality Returns to Do Battle With Comcast

Staff Writer

Tim Wu saw firsthand how people can mess with the internet. Fifteen years ago, he landed a marketing job with a network equipment maker called Riverstone Networks. Riverstone made network routers, among other things, and it sold many of these to Chinese internet service providers who then used them to block traffic on their networks. After about a year, he left Riverstone, disillusioned but wiser. And today, Wu says that the time he spent there helped cement the idea that has made him famous: net neutrality. First proposed in a…

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