Tech Tip – Currency Converter In The Calculator
If you haven’t already spotted it, the Windows 10 Fall Creators update from last year means that a helpful currency converter is built into the calculator on a Windows 10 PC.
The calculator also now includes converters for time, power, and temperature, so you can easily and quickly convert e.g. from Fahrenheit to Celsius and back again. To use it:
- Open the Calculator.
- Click on the menu button on the left.
- Select what you’d like to convert.
Justice Too Slow With Data Requests Says ICO
The UK’s Secretary of State for Justice has been hit with an Enforcement notice by the Information Commissioner’s Office over backlogs and poor handling of requests for personal records made under data protection laws.
Subject Access Requests
In the UK, under the Data Protection Act 1998, anyone can make a request to any organisation (termed the ‘data controllers’) for copies of both paper and computer records and related information that the organisation is holding, using, or sharing about them. This is known as a ‘subject access request’ (SAR), and organisations usually charge a fee for providing the information e.g. up to £10 in normal circumstances. Under the DPA, organisations are required to answer data access requests within 40 days
The Backlog
The issuing of the Enforcement Notice by the ICO to the UK Ministry of Justice (technically the ‘data controllers in this case) on 21st December 2017 relates to the fact that ICO has received a large number requests for assessment by people whose subject access requests had not been dealt with quickly enough by the Ministry of Justice.
The Enforcement Notice highlighted the fact that there is a backlog of 919 SARs from individuals, some of which dated back to 2012.
Two Main Problems Highlighted
The two main problems highlighted by the Notice are that that the Justice Secretary (data controller) has contravened section 7 of the Data Protection Act for failing to act “without undue delay” and that the “data controller’s internal systems, procedures and policies for dealing with subject access requests made under the DPA were unlikely to achieve compliance with the provisions of the DPA”.
Plan To Clear Backlog
The ICO Enforcement Notice did, however, acknowledge that the Ministry of Justice has given the ICO a recovery plan which shows that it intends to clear the backlog by October 2018, and answer new requests without “undue delay” from January 2018.
According to the update and plan published in the Enforcement Notice, the Ministry of Justice believes that it has 793 requests that are over 40 days old, and that it planned to deal with 14 cases from 2O14 by 31 December 2017, 161 cases received from 2015 by 30 April 2018, 357 cases from 2016 by 31 August 2018, and 261 cases from 2O17 by 31 October 2018.
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
This is an embarrassment for the Ministry of Justice, and may be an indication of a wider problem faced by many businesses and organisations in the UK that are still not getting to grips with their responsibilities under the current Data Protection Act, let alone getting prepared for the introduction of the UK’s Data Protection Bill, and the EU’s GDPR will come into force on 25th May 2018.
Under GDPR for example, businesses and organisations will have to deal with requests even more quickly, may have to provide additional information, and won’t be able to charge a fee for complying with requests. There will also be the challenges of responding to an individual’s ‘right to be forgotten’, and the prospect of much greater penalties greater penalties for non-compliance than under the current Data Protection Act.
This story is a reminder that all businesses and organisations should take the opportunity now to ensure that their data practices are in order and likely to be compliant with GDPR, and also to consider that being GDPR compliant could actually provide commercial advantages as this will become a serious factor for consideration in trading relationships and alliances.
Extremism Tax
| UK Minister of State for Security, Ben Wallace, has said that Britain may impose new taxes on tech giants like Google and Facebook unless they do more to combat online extremism by taking down any material aimed at radicalizing people or helping them to prepare terror attacks.
Lack Of Co-operation In an interview with the Sunday Times, Security Secretary Wallace is reported as saying that tech giants appear to have been “less than co-operative”, and are placing too much of the responsibility and cost for tackling extremist material and influence on the UK government (i.e. the taxpayer). Mr Wallace is reported as saying that although the tech firms appear to be happy to sell people’s data, they seem less happy to give that data to the UK government, thereby forcing it to spend large amounts of money on de-radicalisation programs, surveillance and other counter-terrorism measures. Tax Threat Mr Wallace is reported as saying in his interview with the Sunday Times that the government was prepared to look at things like tax as a way of incentivising or compensating the tech giants for their “inaction”. Vulnerable Mr Wallace made the point that the UK is “more vulnerable than at any point in the last 100 years.” He highlighted how social media and encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp may be making things easier for attackers, and how taking down online extremist more quickly than is currently happening could save the millions of pounds that are being spent on de-radicalising people (who have been radicalised) rather than preventing radicalisation in the first place. Echoes of Amber Rudd Mr Wallace’s reported comments appear to echo many of those of interior minister Amber Rudd, who, just weeks after the second bridge attack, headed a very public campaign to stop the complete end-to-end encryption model used by some social media platforms, and allow ‘back doors’ to be built-in to such systems to allow the government to access them in the name of intercepting communications by extremists / terrorists. Critics have pointed out that a building in back doors would make the platforms vulnerable to hackers. Stereotyping Mr Wallace’s reported comments also included a description of tech company staff that appeared to stereotype them as people who “sit on beanbags in T-shirts”. He was quick to create a contrast between this more passive perceived public image, and his perceived reality that the tech giants are in fact “ruthless profiteers” who will “sell our details to loans and soft-porn companies”. What Does This Mean For Your Business? This appears to be another effort by the government to put pressure on the tech giants through negative publicity, and this time through threats of new taxation, to highlight what the government sees as their responsibility in playing a role in reducing the terror threat from extremists. Businesses and individuals are obviously likely to be unanimous in their wish for increased national security, the reduction of a terror threat, and in closing avenues which lead to radicalisation and recruitment for extremist / terror activities. There are, however, other influences and points of view at play here, including the powerful commercial interests and profits of the ‘tech giants’, the need to be seen to resist any forms of censorship and outside interference, and the need to be seen to protect users’ privacy and trust, diplomatic and trade interests and relationships e.g. with the U.S where the tech giants are mainly based, personal data and security implications (with stopping end-to-end encryption), and the influence of freedom and rights campaigners. The comments of Mr Wallace are likely to be followed by many more from the government in the near future as they attempt to exert some influence over many wealthy, overseas-based but very popular tech companies that play such an important part in the daily lives of many UK citizens. |
Amazon Accused In Birkenstock Misspelling Advert Row
German sandal maker Birkenstock has successfully brought an injunction against Amazon to prevent internet shoppers from being directed to the online marketplace with anything other than the correct spelling of the sandal brand name.
Why?
The reported motivation for the legal move by Birkenstock is to prevent unsuspecting shoppers from buying low-quality counterfeits through Amazon that would erode Birkenstock’s reputation.
The sandal company argued in a district court in Dusseldorf that Amazon booked variations of “Birkenstock” as keywords through Google AdWords, thereby potentially contributing to customers ending up with counterfeit versions of the sandals as a result of typing e.g. “Brikenstock”, “Birkenstok”, “Bierkenstock” or other variations into their Google searches for the product.
Ongoing
This move by Birkenstock appears to be part of an ongoing dispute with Amazon. A year ago, Birkenstock stopped dealing with Amazon in the United States, and has now said that it will end the sale of its products through Amazon in Europe after Amazon “failed to proactively prevent” the sale of counterfeit Birkenstock goods.
Misspelling Adverts Commonplace
One interesting aspect of this case is the fact that if the court’s final ruling (it’s still at a preliminary stage) goes in favour of the Birkenstock, this could have implications for all companies using the common practice of targeting PPC adverts at misspellings of brand / product names.
For example, in one widely publicised example from back in April 2013, confectionary brand Snickers based an online advertising campaign around misspellings of its brand name. The company worked with a London agency to build a list of the top 500 search terms, and by using an algorithm were able to generate a list of 25,381 different misspellings. The three-day campaign generated 558,589 ad impressions on those misspellings, and served as an example for what has now become a very widely used PPC tactic.
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
This case raises some interesting issues for online business advertising. Obviously, businesses would like to protect themselves from the actions of counterfeiters and those trying to circumvent trademark law and pass off fake goods as popular brands. In this case, however, some commentators have pointed out that Amazon’s role does not appear to be a parallel form of digital deception, and that the mainstream practice of targeting ads to misspelled search terms can actually help shoppers find what they’re looking for more easily.
Also, some commentators have made the point that counterfeit products sold on Amazon are unlikely to be using misspellings in their online or physical branding, but are more likely to simply be superficially exact copies that are listed as the real thing in Amazon’s network of third-party sellers. If, in this scenario, Amazon used misspellings to advertise Birkenstocks to shoppers, and those shoppers bought counterfeit products as a result, the problem is would be more likely to be Amazon’s supply-chain structure than its search tactics.
If the German court’s final ruling goes in favour of Birkenstock, it could have much wider effects for online advertisers, and may not be to the benefit of web users.
Lie Detector App
A UK company has developed a lie-detecting app that could be used interviews or other situations where high levels of honesty in (initially) completing forms is required.
Video Combined With Analytics
The London based company, called ‘Human’, founded by Yi Xu, a former investment banker and investment news TV presenter, has a team that includes a data scientist, a micro-expression coder and a psychologist. The company has developed a system that uses video from a mobile device (or CCTV camera) combined with analytics software that can examine a person’s face and thereby determine the most likely emotions being felt at that instant.
The company says that it is able to humanise technology to decipher emotion and characteristics and predict human behaviour. The machine learning aspect of the system is also thought to deliver a better and more accurate understanding of a human’s feelings, emotions, characteristics and personality, with minimum human bias.
How?
The system is able to use a phone video (for example) to capture 172,000 tiny points of an individual’s face, and to use those to read subliminal facial expressions live, and to convert them into a range of deeper emotions and specific characteristic traits in real time.
Why?
The obvious application is a kind of commercial lie-detection system and as a way of getting more from a person’s responses than what is actually said or written by them. The idea is that a person’s reactions to various questions could be more useful than what their answers are, particularly where understanding strengths, weaknesses, and true motivations are concerned. In short, the ‘Human’ system could help companies / organisations with anything from hiring staff to fraud detection to customer satisfaction analysis, and the technology can profile potential customers based on their personality, as analyzed by A.I.
According to ‘Human’, an app of this kind could have real-world applications in:
- Recruiting and employee retention – finding out about a candidate’s personality, screening candidates by emotional intelligence, and increasing diversity with minimum human bias.
- Financial fraud detection – insurance claims and loan applications fraud based on subliminal behaviour.
- Customer satisfaction analysis – getting beyond any financial motivation to customer engagement and getting a better understanding of customer experiences.
- Sales prediction – profiling customer characteristics and behaviour by personality, and predicting purchase behaviour.
- Security detection – although facial recognition in crowds is already being used, the ‘Human’ system could identify a face in a crowd and detect concerned emotions.
- Professional sports intelligence – detecting potential players’ characteristics and personality and predicting mental and emotional status before games.
- Dating EQ – quantify dating partner’s emotional intelligence, and profiling characteristics and personality with empathy level.
Not Just ‘Human’
The ‘Human’ company is not the only company working on new kinds of combined technologies focused on learning more about people. For Example:
- Utah-based company, Converus, has a product called EyeDetect, which monitors pupil dilation in the human eye to detect truths and lies. The system boasts 86% accuracy – better than a human expert.
- Researchers at the U.S. National Center for Border Security and Immigration at the University of Arizona and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are testing Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time (AVATAR) which is a kiosk based system where a virtual agent asks security questions, then alerts human agents when the kiosk detects lying.
- Back in July 2016, Toronto startup NuraLogix developed their Transdermal Optical Imaging app software which is able to read different blood flow patterns in the face to reveal different human emotions and thereby detect truth or lies.
AI -The Big Difference
The addition of AI into the technology mix is the element that could help these kinds of technologies to rapidly increase in capabilities and in real-world value e.g. lie detection connected to AI smart glasses or to a video-conferencing system, that can enable detection to take place without anyone but the user knowing about it.
Consent Issues
Capturingand using footage is however likely to present some potential issues based around consent e.g. with GDPR, as well as issues about how responsibly and legally they could be used and monitored in a commercial setting, not to mention issues around privacy and security (storage of profiling results and data used in the systems).
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
So much of the workings of business and the many relationships with all stakeholders is based around contracts (verbal and written), conversations and behaviour that have to rely upon a large element of trust and judgement, without having access to the full picture of true emotions, motivations, personalities, and likely outcomes. These new technologies, supercharged by AI could add value to many different areas of business that are based around decision-making and screening. The result of being able to use them in an affordable and convenient format e.g. apps and easy-to-operate systems, could deliver new insights that could translate into significant competitive advantages.
iPhone Deliberate Slowdown : Apple Apology
Tech giant Apple has apologised after it confirmed that long-held customer suspicions that it deliberately slowed down older iPhone models to encourage an upgrade turned to be true.
What Happened?
Some customers had been sharing their concerns online for some time that their iPhone’s performance had slowed with age but had sped up after a battery replacement. This led to a customer sharing comparative performance tests of different models of the iPhone 6S on Reddit, which appeared to support the customer suspicions.
Technology website Geeknebench also shared the results of its own tests of several iPhones running different versions of the iOS operating system where some showed slower performance than others.
After customers concerns mounted and received more press, Apple publicly admitted that it had made changes about a year ago in the iOS 10.2.1 software update that is likely to have been responsible for the slowdown that customers may have experienced in iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE.
Motivation Good
Some reports of customer suspicions, comments and speculation had focused on the idea that Apple’s motivation for causing the iPhone slowdown was purely commercial as part of a built-in obsolescence and motivated by profit. Apple, however, has pointed out that its motivations were based on a desire to prolong the life of customer devices by managing their ageing lithium-ion batteries, and to prevent the inconvenience of a sudden and unexpected shutdown.
The Problem With Lithium-Ion Batteries
According to Apple, Lithium-ion batteries need to be managed because they are incapable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, when they have a low battery charge or as they age. The discharging cycle of Lithium-ion batteries (the migration of lithium ions through the material forming the battery) means that they are known to degrade over time.
Regaining Trust
Apple’s admission that it has been slowing down some phones with ageing batteries, and its acknowledgement that customer trust may have been shaken by the episode have led to Apple announcing 3 measures to address customer concerns and regain trust, which are:
A reduction, from December 2017, in the price of out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacements by $50 from $79 to $29 for customers with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced. N.B. the $29 battery out-of-warranty replacements have been available since 30th December.
An iOS software update, in early 2018, to allow customers to see how their iPhone’s battery is affecting performance.
A pledge that Apple is working on ways to improve how they manage performance and avoid unexpected shutdowns as batteries age.
Legal Action
The announcement that Apple does slow down older phones has, of course, led to legal action being taken against the company by disgruntled customers. For example, Apple has been hit by a class action lawsuit, led by Stefan Bogdanovich and Dakota Speas, which cites “Breach of implied contract” and “Trespass to chattel” as the two complaints. More lawsuits are expected to follow.
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
The idea that Apple may have chosen to keep quiet about something that could be viewed (without an explanation) as secretly taking away performance that somebody has paid for, and only appearing to explain it when challenged by enough customers and tech commentators is likely to have caused some damage to the brand and to customer loyalty.
Some commentators have suggested that greater transparency and an early explanation of the apparently legitimate reasons (helping to mitigate the problem of the diminishing battery) for Apple’s actions may have been a better approach.
Apple is renowned for being able to engender fan-like behaviour in some customers, and for being able to maintain a good a loyal relationship with its customers. This story illustrates how managing customer relationships in an age where information is shared quickly and widely by customers via the Internet involves making smart decisions about transparency and being seen to be up-front with loyal customers.