Facebook has begun notifying any of those users whose data is known to have been harvested and shared with data mining firm Cambridge Analytica.

On Your News Feed

If you are one of the 87 million people whose data has been shared, 1 million of whom are in the UK, when you log into your Facebook account, you will see a detailed message beginning with the words “We understand the importance of keeping your data safe.”

It is now understood that the data of 2.2 billion Facebook users was actually shared by Facebook, and all of these users will be receiving a message entitled “Protecting Your Information”. This message will include a link which will allow them to see what apps they use, and what information they have shared with those apps. Users will also be given the option to stop sharing information with the apps or to stop any access to third-party apps altogether.

It should be noted, however, that Facebook stopped allowing third-party apps from gathering data about the likes, status updates and other information shared by users’ friends back in 2015. Also, Facebook has taken action recently to make information such as religious and political views out-of-bounds to apps.

If you don’t trust Facebook to notify you if your information has been shared with Cambridge Analytica, you can check for yourself by following this link: https://www.facebook.com/help/1873665312923476?helpref=search&sr=1&query=cambridge

What Happened?

This relates, of course, to revelations that Facebook shared the data of its users with London-based data mining firm Cambridge Analytica via a personality quiz app, called “You Are What You Like” (later replaced by the “Apply Magic Sauce” app), that had reportedly been developed for legitimate academic purposes. Revelations that the website from the original quiz re-directed uses to a new one with different terms and conditions, thereby enabling users data to be harvested and reportedly used for political purposes by Cambridge Analytica (the same company used by the Trump election campaign) and by Canadian data company AggregateIQ (AIQ) who were involved in the Vote Leave campaign in the UK referendum, have caused wide-scale outrage.

Facebook is also reported to have suspended a data analytics firm involved with targeted advertising and marketing called Cubeyou. Cubeyou is reported to have collected data for academic purposes, and allegedly used it commercially, as part of a partnership with Cambridge University in the UK (who have also found themselves implicated in the scandal).

Game Changer Says ICO Chief

The head of the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), Elizabeth Denham, has said that what happened with Facebook’s data sharing with Cambridge Analytica can be seen as a game-changer in data protection. The ICO has revealed that Facebook is now one of 30 organisations under wider investigation for the sharing and use of personal data and analytics with political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial organisations.

Denham has said that although the Facebook scandal has drawn attention to the ICO’s ‘Your data matters’ campaign, it is too early to say whether the changes the social networking firm is making are sufficient under the law.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

If you have been directly affected by Facebook’s data sharing you will have been informed in your Facebook account, and you can follow the link (given earlier in this article) to check for yourself.

As ICO Chief Elizabeth Denham has rightly said, this is an important time for privacy rights, particularly since the introduction of GDPR is little more than a month away. The widespread outrage and condemnation of Facebook’s data sharing with Cambridge Analytica highlights how important data protection and privacy rights are to us all. This should serve as a reminder to businesses and other organisations that as well as making sure that they comply with GDPR to avoid negative consequences, GDPR preparation is an opportunity to fully examine the important issue of how data is being used and stored, and where vulnerabilities are, and how simple improvements could be made that could protect and help the business as a whole.

The latest attacker behaviour industry report by automated threat management firm Vectra shows that UK higher education institutions are now prime targets for illicit cryptocurrency mining, also known as ‘cryptojacking’.

Cryptocurrency Mining

‘Cryptocurrency mining’ involves installing ‘mining script’ code such as Coin Hive into multiple web pages without the knowledge of the web page visitor or often the website owner. The scammer then gets multiple computers to join their networks so that the combined computing power will enable them to solve mathematical problems. Whichever scammer is first to solve these problems is then able to claim / generate cash in the form of crypto-currency – hence mining for crypto-currency.

Taking Coin Hive as an example, this crypto-currency mining software is written in Javascript, and sends any coins mined by the browser to the owner of the web site. If you visit a website where it is being used (embedded in the web page), you may notice that power consumption and CPU usage on your browser will increase, and your computer will start to lag and become unresponsive. These slowing, lagging symptoms will end when you leave the web page.

Why Target Universities?

According to Vectra report, the UK’s universities are being targeted by cryptojackers because they have high bandwidth capacity networks, and they host many students on their networks who are not protected. This makes them ideal cyber-crime campaign command and control operations centres.

This means that students who are using the bandwidth e.g. to watch movies online could unwittingly be giving cyber criminals access to computing resources in the background by using websites that host cryptojacking malware.

It is also believed to be possible that the relative anonymity and power of the computing resources at universities are enabling a small number of students to tap into them, and carry out illicit cryptocurrency mining activities of their own.

Other Targets

Higher education institutions are, of course, not the only main targets. The report highlights the entertainment and leisure sector (6%), financial services (3%), technology (3%) and healthcare (2%) as also being targets for cryptojackers. The effects of being targeted by cryptojackers can be increased power consumption and a reduction in hardware lifespans.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For higher education institutions, they can only issue notices to students they detect cryptomining, and / or issue a cease and desist order. They can also provide assistance in cleaning computers, and try to advise students on how to protect themselves and the university by installing operating system patches and creating awareness of phishing emails, suspicious websites and web ads. These measures, however, don’t go far enough to address the challenge of better detection, and / or stopping cryptomining from happening in the first place.

Businesses are also struggling to keep up with the increasingly sophisticated activities of cryptojackers and other cyber-criminals, particularly with a global shortage of skilled cyber-security professionals to handle detection and response. In the meantime, the answer for many enterprise organisations has been the deployment of artificial intelligence-based security analytics. Where cryptojacking is concerned, AI is proving to be essential to augmenting existing cyber-security teams to enable fast detection and a response to threats.

The increased CPU usage and slowing down of computers caused by mining scripts waste time and money for businesses. If using AI security techniques are beyond your current budget and level of technical expertise, you may be pleased to know that there are some more simple measures that your business can take to avoid being exploited as part of a cryptojacking scam.

If, for example, you are using an ad blocker on your computer, you can set it to block one specific JavaScript URL which is https://coinhive.com/lib/miner.min.js . This will stop the miner from running without stopping you from using any of the websites that you normally visit.

Also, a dedicated browser extension called ‘No Coin’ is available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera. This will stop the Coin Hive mining code being used through your browser. This extension comes with a white-list and an option to pause the extension should you wish to do so.

Coin Hive’s developers have also said that they would like people to report any malicious use of Coin Hive to them.
Maintaining vigilance for unusual computer symptoms, keeping security patches updated, and raising awareness within your company of current scams and what to do to prevent them, are just some of the ways that you could maintain a basic level of protection for your business.

In a bid to develop Siri and catch up with competitors in the digital assistant battle, Apple has hired Google’s top AI man, John Giannandrea.

Falling Behind

The battle to dominate the digital assistant market has been going on for some time now, but industry commentators have noted that Apple’s Siri, which was first introduced on the iPhone 4S in 2011, has fallen behind the competition i.e. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Siri Problems

The problems that have plagued Apple’s Siri since its early lead and subsequent falling behind in the market are thought to include:

1. Infighting and internal politics within the Siri team at Apple.
2. Too many attempts to reorganise the basic underpinning technology.
3. Press criticism of the poor AI in Apple’s HomePod – the company’s attempt to compete with Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home smart speakers.

Hiring

Apple has, therefore, sought to quickly boost its expertise in AI and machine learning through hiring-in the top talent.
John Giannandrea joined Google in 2010 and previously worked as Netscape’s chief technologist. Mr Giannandrea is widely credited as being responsible for rebuilding the technology that is now at the heart of Google’s landmark products, which include search, translation and voice recognition. He is also recognised as being the person responsible for putting Google on a par with Amazon for technological supremacy in the field of voice-controlled assistants.

As well as hiring Google’s top AI man, Apple is also reported to have posted adverts for 160 other openings for work related to improving Siri.

Other high profile hires by Apple in the AI field in recent times include Carnegie Mellon professor Russ Salakhutdinov who studied at the University of Toronto under Geoffrey Hinton, who helps to oversee the Google Brain lab.

Different Approach

One of the key challenges that Giannandrea and the other news recruits will have to address is how to dramatically improve the AI and machine learning performance of Siri while giving it less detailed data for its AI training. This is because Apple has decided to take a different approach to Amazon and Google in terms of trying to gather less personal data about its users.
Apple believes that it can still produce good AI personalisation results for Siri users with a smaller dataset, and hopes that customers will value its attempts to protect their privacy, and that this will add to the positive differentiation of Siri.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The big tech companies can see the future potential value of widening the range of services that can be offered via digital assistants. As well as being able to access them through our mobile devices, smart speakers are now commonplace in many UK homes, and there will soon be business-focused versions.

The hope is that we will use our digital assistants for almost all of our daily activities e.g. paying bills, purchasing, and calling friends and customers. This illustrates why it is so important for Apple to quickly catch up with competitors and to make sure that its digital assistant is at least as capable as Amazon and Google’s offerings in terms of key AI and machine learning.

Apple is in the fortunate position of being able to attract and pay for top Silicon Valley talent, and the hiring of Google’s top man will no doubt be seen as a small victory in itself in the ongoing battle of the digital personal assistants.

A report by OECD says that previous forecasts may have exaggerated the impact of automation on jobs because the forecasts relied on a broad grouping together of jobs with the same title.

Previous Forecasts

One of the most influential forecasts of the effects that automation could have on our jobs was the 2013 forecast by Oxford University. Its worrying conclusions at the time included the bleak prediction that 47% of jobs in the US in 2010 and 35% in the UK were at “high risk” of being automated over the following 20 years.

Another report by PwC from May 2017 also claimed that over 30% of UK jobs could be lost to automation by the year 2030. That report also said that 44% of jobs in manufacturing (where there are already many robots e.g. car manufacturing), especially those involving manual work, look likely to go to AI led software or robots.

Not That Bad

The new OECD report, however, paints a much more positive picture, and forecasts of the effects of automation on jobs are not as bad as in the original reports. For example, OECD figures suggest that only 12% rather than 35% of jobs are actually at high risk of being automated in the next 20 years

Why The Difference?

The OECD report forecasts a lesser impact by automation because, unlike the Oxford University report, it didn’t group together jobs with the same title, and, therefore, takes account of the differences between jobs with the same name.

Most And Least At Risk

The OECD report states that there is no measurable evidence that AI has been significantly impacting jobs requiring high levels of education and skill.

It is likely that lower-skilled jobs involving routine tasks are most at risk of automation, whereas jobs involving dealing with complex social relationships, using creativity and complex reasoning, and the physical manipulation of objects in a constantly changing work environment are least at risk of automation.

Geographical Difference

The report also pointed out that jobs in Anglo-Saxon, Nordic countries and the Netherlands are less likely to be automated than those in the south and east of Europe, Germany, Chile and Japan.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Most businesses are likely to be affected by some aspect of automation e.g. software or mechanical, in the near future, either themselves or through suppliers and stakeholders. There is an inevitability that AI and robotics will alter what jobs look like in the future, but it is also important to remember that they could provide huge advantages and opportunities for businesses in terms of reducing costs, and doing jobs cheaper and faster, while working day and night with no holiday.

As workers, we can try to insulate ourselves from the worst effects of automation by seeking more education / lifelong learning, and by trying to remain positive towards and adapting to changes, and by spotting and taking advantage of niches and other opportunities where we find them. Jobs which are highly varied, require specific human interaction, where people are required to have high levels of education, and where automation may be less acceptable e.g. education, could be less likely to be threatened by being replaced by AI and/or robots.

Exactly how many jobs will be lost to automation in what amount of time is virtually impossible to predict taking into account the advances in technology, together with the fact that AI bots learn, and get better at what they do as a result.

What kind of automation individual businesses adopt will, of course, depends upon a cost / benefit analysis compared to human workers, and whether automation is appropriate and is acceptable to their customers / users.

One interesting point that the new report highlighted was that young people may find it harder to find work in future because entry-level posts may have a higher risk of automation than jobs requiring more experience.

A survey by consumer watchdog ‘Which?’ has revealed that more than half of UK customers across 12 providers, are having problems with their broadband service or price.

Which Providers?

The survey looked at the experiences of 1,900 customers of providers that collectively serve about 90% of UK broadband customers. These providers include BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Zen Internet.

Price A Big Issue

The company that most respondents (47%) felt most dissatisfied with was Virgin Media. The key complaint with their service appeared to be last year’s price increases. As well as price, Virgin Media customers were also found by the survey to be the most likely to face router issues, and to be left with no internet at all for hours or even days at a time.

30% of respondents also complained about price rises by BT.

SSE – Connection Dropouts

The survey found that broadband provider SSE was the worst offender (25% of its customers) when it comes to the frustration of connection dropouts.

Automatic Compensation Now Available

Although we as customers can essentially do nothing at the time when our broadband goes wrong, or to protect ourselves from price increases (apart from switching providers), one thing that could help us to feel a little better after the event is to receive at least some compensation.

Back in November 2017, the good news was an Ofcom announcement that broadband and landline customers would automatically be able to get money back from their providers when things go wrong, without having to make a claim for it. It was predicted at the time that, under these new rules, the amounts paid in compensation to customers could be nine times higher, and customers could receive an estimated £142 million in payouts.

The bad news was, however, that automatic compensation won’t be available until early 2019.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Ofcom research shows that nine in ten adults report going online every day and three-quarters of internet users say it is important to their daily lives. Broadband is now an essential service for business, and many business owners may feel that it doesn’t take a survey for them to know that broadband services in the UK can sometimes be patchy, and often expensive.

Some commentators argue that instead of offering automatic compensation, customers would be better served if broadband providers invested more in making sure that their service was more reliable and offered greater value for money in the first place.

Nevertheless, since current levels of compensation are low, and don’t come close to reflecting the harm caused, when automatic compensation becomes available it will at least be some improvement, particularly for small businesses.
At the moment, better broadband services, particularly for businesses in rural locations, still seem a long way off as the reality is that the UK ranks only 31st in the world for average broadband speeds, and we may only actually have 7% full fibre coverage by 2020.