Category: Technology

Twitter Inc said on Friday it has permanently suspended the account of David Duke, a former leader of the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan, as the social media company tries to curb the spread of hateful content on its website.Duke's account had been suspended for repeatedly violating Twitter's policy on hateful content and harmful links, the micro-blogging site said.Under Twitter's hateful conduct policy, any threats of attacks directed at people on the basis of their religion, race or ethnicity is prohibited on its website.Twitter has long been under pressure to clean up hateful content on its platform and has come under the scanner to control misinformation especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.The KKK is the oldest white supremacist group in the United States and its roots trace back to the…

The European Union on Thursday imposed travel and financial sanctions on a department of Russia's military intelligence service and on firms from North Korea and China over their suspected participation in major cyberattacks across the world.In its first-ever sanctions related to cybercrime, the EU targeted the department for special technologies of the Russian military intelligence service, known as Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, it said in a statement.The bloc accused the Russian service of having carried out two cyberattacks in June 2017, which hit several companies in Europe resulting in large financial losses. The service is also accused of two cyberattacks against Ukraine's power grid in 2015 and 2016.Four individuals working for the Russian military intelligence service were also sanctioned for…

Big Tech companies reported mixed quarterly earnings Thursday, a day after their top executives faced a tough congressional grilling over their market power and alleged monopolistic practices.The staggering economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic was reflected in reports released Thursday from Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google's corporate parent, Alphabet.Apple delivered surprisingly strong numbers with both its revenue and profit rising, defying analysts' lowered expectations. The iPhone maker's revenue rose 11% to nearly $60 billion while profit rose 12% to $11.3 billion.Alphabet, Google's holding company, reported its first-ever drop in quarterly revenue compared with the prior year. Although it was only a 2% decline, it was a telling sign of a downturn in the digital ad market while also serving as a reminder that the economy is struggling even more…

The U.S. has launched its next-generation Mars rover in search of potential signs of life on the red planet.NASA’s latest rover, Perseverance, launched at 11:50 GMT Thursday from Cape Canaveral in the southeastern state of Florida.The robotic explorer was propelled into space by an Atlas 5 rocket operated by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between private aerospace companies Boeing and Lockheed.The rocket has separated from the first stage and is being boosted to orbit by the Centaur second stage. @NASAPersevere is now preparing for a second burn that will put it on a trajectory towards Mars. #CountdownToMarspic.twitter.com/MBRqcxMTdw — NASA (@NASA) July 30, 2020The rover is scheduled to land on Mars in February at the bottom of a 250-meter crater that was a lake some 3.5 billion years ago.…

The U.S. has launched its next-generation Mars rover in search of potential signs of life on the red planet.NASA’s latest rover, Perseverance, launched at 11:50 GMT Thursday from Cape Canaveral in the southeastern state of Florida.The robotic explorer was propelled into space by an Atlas 5 rocket operated by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between private aerospace companies Boeing and Lockheed.The rocket has separated from the first stage and is being boosted to orbit by the Centaur second stage. @NASAPersevere is now preparing for a second burn that will put it on a trajectory towards Mars. #CountdownToMarspic.twitter.com/MBRqcxMTdw — NASA (@NASA) July 30, 2020The rover is scheduled to land on Mars in February at the bottom of a 250-meter crater that was a lake some 3.5 billion years ago.…

The summer's third and final mission to Mars — featuring NASA's most elaborate life-hunting rover — is on the verge of liftoff.The rover Perseverance will follow China's rover-orbiter combo and a United Arab Emirates orbiter, both launched last week. It will take the spacecraft seven months to reach Mars after traveling 300 million miles.Once on the surface, Perseverance will scrounge for evidence of past microscopic life in an ancient lakebed, and gather the most promising rock samples for future pickup. NASA is teaming up with the European Space Agency to return the samples to Earth around 2031.This unprecedented effort will involve multiple launches and spacecraft — and cost more than $8 billion."We don't know if life existed there or not. But we do know that Mars at one point in…

The Chinese-owned app TikTok is under a security review by the U.S. government, which will make a recommendation on the matter to President Donald Trump next week, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.Trump said Wednesday, “we are thinking about making a decision” about TikTok.The video-sharing social media app, is extremely popular in both the US. and around the world. It has already been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide and 165 million of those downloads were in the U.S.The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates and takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the upcoming U.S. presidential election.TikTok to Exit Hong Kong Market Over New National Security Law Decision by Chinese-based app follows decisions by Facebook, Google and Twitter to briefly suspend review of Beijing requests…

The New York Times Wednesday said the Vatican’s computer networks have been breached by Chinese hackers since May, in an apparent espionage effort before the start of sensitive talks between the Roman Catholic Church and Communist China. The Times says the attack, discovered by private U.S.-based cybersecurity and monitoring firm Recorded Future, appears to be the first time hackers have been publicly caught directly hacking into the Vatican and a Hong Kong-based group of de facto Vatican representatives who have negotiated with China over the Church’s status on the mainland.  The newspaper says cybersecurity experts at Recorded Future have presumed the hackers are working for the Chinese government.   The Vatican and China are expected to begin talks in September over renewal of a provisional agreement they reached in 2018 that gives the pope the final say…

They control the digital spaces where many around the world spend their time, shop, work, and talk to friends and family.  Together, the companies’ combined annual sales are roughly the same as the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, as Axios notes.Now the CEOs of four top U.S. technology companies -- Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google – are set to answer questions Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust about how they wield their considerable market power. Deposition for the world The hearing comes as federal and state regulators are looking into whether the tech giants, through their dominance in some markets, stifle competition.  The joint appearance of Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon is a sign of how high the stakes are for the future of their businesses, legal observers say. Critics, customers and regulators globally will…

Holocaust survivors around the world are lending their voices to a campaign launched Wednesday targeting Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to take action to remove denial of the Nazi genocide from the social media site. Coordinated by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the #NoDenyingIt campaign uses Facebook itself to make the survivors' entreaties to Zuckerberg heard, posting one video per day  urging him to remove Holocaust-denying groups, pages and posts as hate speech. Videos will also be posted on Facebook-owned Instagram, as well as Twitter. Zuckerberg raised the ire of the Claims Conference and others with comments in 2018 to the tech website Recode that posts denying the Nazi annihilation of 6 million Jews would not necessarily be removed. He said he did not…

The New York Times Wednesday said the Vatican’s computer networks have been breached by Chinese hackers since May, in an apparent espionage effort before the start of sensitive talks between the Roman Catholic Church and Communist China. The Times says the attack, discovered by private U.S.-based cybersecurity and monitoring firm Recorded Future, appears to be the first time hackers have been publicly caught directly hacking into the Vatican and a Hong Kong-based group of de facto Vatican representatives who have negotiated with China over the Church’s status on the mainland.  The newspaper says cybersecurity experts at Recorded Future have presumed the hackers are working for the Chinese government.   The Vatican and China are expected to begin talks in September over renewal of a provisional agreement they reached in 2018 that gives the pope the final say…

The coronavirus pandemic has forced small businesses around the world to come up with new ways to cope with the new reality – including using technology to stay afloat.   VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports. ...

Turkey is poised to introduce drastic measures to control social media platforms.  The proposed legislation is drawing growing international criticism with social media remaining one of the few venues for dissent.  FILE - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech at the Bestepe National Congress and Culture Center in Ankara, July 21, 2020.Infuriated by tweets mocking his son in law and daughter, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared this month, the "immoral [social media] platforms" would be "completely banned or controlled." Under new legislation set to pass before Eid holidays later this week, the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Tik Tok will be compelled to open offices in Turkey by requiring them to assign representatives who would be subject to Turkish laws, including tax regulations. "It builds upon and expands upon the current regime of controls," said Professor…

Twitter has limited Donald Trump Jr.’s account and deleted one of his tweets for violating Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policies.  The tweet, posted on Monday, had what Twitter termed a misleading video on the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.  An adviser to Trump Jr., Andrew Surabian, tweeted an angry response, in which he said that Trump Jr.’s account had been suspended, adding that “big tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America.”  He added in a statement to Business Insider that Twitter’s action is evidence that “the company is committing election interference to stifle Republican votes.”BREAKING: @Twitter & @jack have suspended @DonaldJTrumpJr for posting a viral video of medical doctors talking about Hydroxychloroquine.Big Tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America today & they're continuing to engage in open…

The coronavirus pandemic has forced small businesses around the world to come up with new ways to cope with the new reality – including using technology to stay afloat.   VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports. ...

Social media has become the target of a dueling attack ad campaign being waged online by the sitting president and his election rival. They're shooting the messenger while giving it lots of money. President Donald Trump has bought hundreds of messages on Facebook to accuse its competitor, Twitter, of trying to stifle his voice and influence the November election. Democratic challenger Joe Biden has spent thousands of dollars advertising on Facebook with a message of his own: In dozens of ads on the platform, he's asked supporters to sign a petition calling on Facebook to remove inaccurate statements, specifically those from Trump.   The major social media companies are navigating a political minefield as they try to minimize domestic misinformation and rein in foreign actors from manipulating their sites as…

Google employees will work from home until summer 2021 due to COVID-19 concerns, the company announced Monday.The decision affects almost 200,000 employees worldwide, including full-time and contract workers, making Google the first large U.S. company to keep its employees working remotely for over a year.The company stated earlier that most of its employees would work from home for the rest of 2020.The choice to extend remote work into next year could cause other businesses to announce similar plans.Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai made the choice after debating options with an internal group of executives. According to someone familiar with the situation, Pichai’s decision was influenced by employees with children, many of whom are facing the possibility of online school this year."To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we'll…

It’s going to be a record year for voting by mail in the U.S. election and that has raised security concerns about each step of the process.     But election officials say they have systems in place to make voting by mail a success even as health concerns about voting during the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing states to expand their current vote-by-mail options.   “Somewhere between 90 million and 105 million ballots might come through the mail,” said Eddie Perez, global director of technology development at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit election technology organization. “If what we're seeing in other primary elections is any guide, it's probably safe to estimate that somewhere between 65% and 75% of all ballots cast in the November election might come by mail.” “That's…

Australia's competition regulator has launched court proceedings against Alphabet's Google for allegedly misleading consumers about the expanded use of personal data for targeted advertising.The case by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in Federal Court said Google did not explicitly get consent nor properly inform consumers about a 2016 move to combine personal information in Google accounts with activities on non-Google websites that use its technology.The regulator said this practice allowed the Alphabet Inc unit to link the names and other ways to identify consumers with their behavior elsewhere on the internet.Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The move by the ACCC comes amid heightened attention in much of the world on data privacy. U.S. and European lawmakers have recently stepped up their focus on how…

The director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center has warned that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are meddling in U.S. political campaigns as the November 3 general election draws closer.“We see our adversaries seeking to compromise the private communications of U.S. political campaigns, candidates and other political targets,” William Evanina said Friday in a statement.Evanina said that while the United States “is primarily concerned with China, Russia and Iran,” other countries and “nonstate actors” could also try to “harm our electoral process.”US Cybersecurity Experts See Recent Spike in Chinese Digital Espionage The report said it was ‘one of the broadest campaigns by a Chinese cyber espionage actor we have observed in recent years" China is trying to influence the “policy environment” in the U.S. with the intent…

Following Britain’s decision to ban Chinese tech firm Huawei from its 5G telecom network, Germany is emerging as the next potential battleground to check China’s expansion of influence in world affairs, which is increasingly seen as a serious challenge to democratic institutions worldwide.Germany’s decision on whether to include Huawei equipment in its own network “is still up for grabs,” said Reinhard Buetikofer, a member of Germany’s opposition Green Party who chairs the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with the People’s Republic of China.Britain’s decision “may very well have an impact on the decision Germany is about to make,” Buetikofer said in a phone interview from Berlin.Buetikofer said Britain’s plan to include Huawei in its next-generation network – which was abruptly reversed in a dramatic announcement last week – had been…

Google’s former CEO is working with a former U.S. Defense Department official to create an online program that would train Americans to code for the government, as first reported by Former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, listens during a session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 28, 2011.Like other service academies, students would not pay tuition or room and board, but would be required to serve in the government after completing their degree.Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is NSCAI’s chairman. The commission was established in 2018 to advise the DOD on the development of artificial intelligence for use in the military.Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, who served Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in that position from 2014 to 2017, is vice chairman of NSCAI.“The…

A report by the U.K. National Cyber Security Centre this month accused hackers with links to Russian intelligence of attacking organizations developing a vaccine for COVID-19.  The report has raised diplomatic tensions and opened a window into the world of pharmaceutical intelligence. VOA's Tatiana Vorozhko has the story. ...

Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it would permanently suspend accounts that violate its policies while tweeting about QAnon, a fringe group that claims "deep-state" traitors are plotting against President Donald Trump. Twitter, which announced the change on its Twitter Safety page, said it would not serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in trends and recommendations, and would block URLs associated with the group from being shared on the platform. The suspension, which will be rolled out this week, is expected to impact about 150,000 accounts globally, Twitter said. It said that more than 7,000 accounts have been removed in the last several weeks for violating the company's rules against spam, platform manipulation and ban evasion. The suspensions will be applied to accounts "engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or…

Twitter says the hack that compromised the accounts of some of its most high-profile users targeted 130 people. The hackers were able to reset the passwords of 45 of those accounts.     The San Francisco-based company said in a blog post Saturday that for up to eight of these accounts the attackers also downloaded the account's information through the "Your Twitter Data" tool. None of the eight were verified accounts, Twitter said, adding that it is contacting the owners of the affected accounts.   "We're embarrassed, we're disappointed, and more than anything, we're sorry. We know that we must work to regain your trust, and we will support all efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice," Twitter said in the blog post.     The July 17 attack broke…

Google, the behemoth technology company that has become a verb for online search, is offering financial aid to students who take their certificate programs in data analysis, project management and user experience.Calling it “a digital jobs program to help America’s economic recovery,” the offering comes during record-high joblessness in the U.S. because of quarantines and shutdowns implemented to help stop the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.  “College degrees are out of reach for many Americans, and you shouldn’t need a college diploma to have economic security,” wrote Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs at Google, in a blogpost.In addition to workplaces, many college and university campuses shut down in March because of the coronavirus pandemic. While 60% of campuses say they will hold…

Hackers broke into the Twitter accounts of world leaders, celebrities and tech moguls on Wednesday in one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, highlighting a major flaw with the service millions of people have come to rely on as an essential communications tool. The intent of the hack appeared to be to steal money from unsuspecting cryptocurrency enthusiasts — in particular, by using the compromised high-follower accounts to scam people out of Bitcoin. But it also raises questions about Twitter's ability to secure its service against election interference and misinformation ahead of the U.S. presidential election.   Here are some questions and answers about the breach:What Happened — And How? On Wednesday afternoon, the Twitter accounts of famous figures began tweeting similar messages saying they were "feeling…

A person is in custody in connection with the killing of a 33-year-old tech entrepreneur found dismembered inside his luxury Manhattan condo. A law enforcement official said Friday the person in custody has been working as Fahim Saleh's personal assistant. Saleh was found at around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday inside his luxury seventh floor apartment on the Lower East Side.   He was found dead in a gruesome scene Tuesday afternoon. Saleh was the CEO of a ride-hailing motorcycle startup called Gokada that began operating in Nigeria in 2018. Authorities say a relative called police after going to check on Saleh and making the gruesome discovery. Investigators had recovered security video showing Saleh exiting an elevator that leads directly into the full-floor, two-bedroom apartment earlier Tuesday afternoon, closely followed by a…