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84844ecb65774675466f68a6ceffa07a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katejacksonk/2020/09/03/when-second-hand-doesnt-mean-second-best/?sh=36babfb95684 | When Second Hand Doesn’t Mean Second Best | When Second Hand Doesn’t Mean Second Best
Second hand treasures Photo by Nathan Shurr on Unsplash
Not so long ago, buying second hand was seen as a last resort. Charity shops were there for the people who really needed them - though there have always been bargain hunters who love seeking out gems amidst the faded tea sets and battered copies of The Da Vinci Code. The only time buying second hand had any sort of glamour attached to it was when you were ‘going vintage’ or shopping for antiques.
Things have changed. We’re now starting to see that buying second hand benefits more than just our wallets; it’s a way for us all to do our bit for the environment. Buying second hand means things get used for longer. There’s less production, and therefore less waste.
Looking at the clothing industry, “if it continues on its current path, by 2050, textiles production will use over 1/4 of the carbon budget for 2°C global warming,” comments Charlotte Morley, founder of children’s clothing rental company thelittleloop. “However, doubling average garment wears would reduce GHG emissions by 44%.”
As Morley points out, the UK’s annual cost to send textiles to landfill is around £82 million, while the global fashion industry could unlock $150 billion by encouraging the reuse of products at scale. Her vertical is childrenswear, which is ideally suited to the reuse model given the speed with which children outgrow their clothes (staggeringly, the average child grows out of over 1,000 items of clothing before they reach adulthood). Second hand clothing is particularly popular among parents, 30% of whom have simply thrown away children’s clothes.
Morley’s rental marketplace addresses the fact that second hand children’s clothing can be difficult to source, typically taking place at a local level in a limited capacity, such as on Facebook Marketplace or eBay. Instead, thelittleloop offers a subscription model that makes it possible to scale up second hand childrenswear into a viable business model.
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“Working on a share of revenue basis with the clothing brands, who are also provided with data on clothing performance, ensures they take responsibility for the durability and circular potential of their products,” explains Morley. “And a unique system for valuing garments by their age and condition means garments can be kept in circulation for as long as they are wearable.”
So this is second hand many times over (or third, fourth or fifth hand!) through rental, facilitated through careful management and centralised ownership.
Buying second hand increases the lifespan and the reuse of products - two big ticks for the circular economy (a system that aims to keep products in circulation for as long as possible and eliminate waste). As an operator in circular economy, it’s important to flag that it’s not about reducing consumerism in a blanket fashion; it’s human nature to covet new things, and that will never change. It’s about getting those things from the right kind of companies, so that those scaling wants are not a problem. Sustainable companies. Companies that operate in the circular economy.
Second hand business models that work
There are numerous companies out there proving that second hand works. Furniture company Vitsoe, for instance, provides spare parts to allow their furniture to be fixed free of charge, even to second, third or fourth owners - and they keep their high-quality pieces in play for years, so they remain current. This supports a second hand market that’s independent to their business, winning loyalty and love, although not adding directly to their bottom line.
In the fashion space, Nudie Jeans runs a take-back scheme for jeans for when you’re done with them or they need refurbishing, and also does popular second hand drops on their website. Denim is known for its second hand appeal anyway, but it also opens up the brand to a new market who perhaps can’t stretch to the price tag of a brand new pair.
Over in the tech vertical, pre-owned tech store Relove Technology tackles the issue of e-waste head on at a time when it’s generated at a rate equivalent to dumping 9,023 phones every second. Paul Crossman, founder of Relove Technology, comments: “As smartphone prices have continued to rise, eventually hitting and exceeding the £1,000 mark, behaviour has started to change. Secondhand sales, as a result, have started to take off, and it’s the fastest growing marketplace within mobile.”
Indeed, 10% of the 24 million smartphones sales in 2018 were secondhand devices, and that’s forecast to rise 7% year on year. But there’s a challenge: rapid growth has created issues around the questions of quality and trust. “Consumers have had varying experiences of buying second hand with no real accountability from the various vendors that have sprung up on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay,” Crossman told me. “Many items were either faulty, stolen, counterfeit or simply not as described.”
That’s the raison d’etre for Relove Technology: to be the trusted source for buying second hand and refurbished devices, each one of them data wiped, vetted and tested before being sold on with a fresh 12-month warranty and a 30-day no quibble guarantee.
“We are a socially responsible company and we actively reduce the impact of e-waste on our planet, but also reinvest our profits back into the community to drive social change,” Crossman says. “We want secondhand to be the new norm, where we extend the product lifecycle, encourage multiple ownership and get the manufacturers to support better support to extend end of life. This will dilute carbon emissions, reduce demand on valuable resources and reduce the growing problem of e-waste.”
A consumer perspective
Of course, it’s all very well companies having the right ideas about offering more sustainable choices in the form of second hand products, but these good intentions only have an impact if they’re in line with consumer behaviour. Second hand certainly raises questions. Can you trust the seller? Will it be as described? Will you be able to return it? I asked Antonia Timpany - founder of pre-loved luxury fashion company Timpanys, for an insight into the minds of her customers.
“Once you’ve dipped your toe in the second hand pool a few times, you’ll be wanting to swim in it forever,” she told me. “Welcome to guilt-free consumption as you reduce your personal impact on the earth and on your fellow humans. Whether it’s finding the perfect item at a price you think ‘that must be wrong’ or squeezing some extra equity out of an item that you haven’t used for a while, it is just fantastically, addictively, fun.”
So, from the raft of bricks and mortar second hand and vintage stores, to established sites like eBay and Gumtree, to the newer kids on the block - the companies operating in the circular economy - consumers do have options, whether they’re after clothes, tech, furniture or anything else. And initiatives to encourage second hand, such as Oxfam’s Second Hand September, also help to nudge things along.
As the outdated reputation of second hand being second best is gradually shed, relevant industries should rise to the challenge of supporting preloved sales and second hand markets for their products - and let’s embrace a new name too - “recommerce” sounds so much more appealing than second hand! And small details like the name may make all the difference in changing consumer mindsets (there is still a fair way to go). Ask yourself whether you would feel comfortable buying someone a gift that was second hand?
The Government should also do their bit, too. Scrapping the payment of VAT on second hand items (or should I say, on recommerce) would be an excellent first step, serving both to drive businesses into this area and to incentivise customers to buy second hand. In the future, I’d love to see them going even further and offering business grants and incentives to support businesses in this space. But one thing at a time…
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4842cc1ba86a4687dbcf2cb6371a4b48 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katejacksonk/2020/10/05/refill-please-the-rise-of-reuse-through-refilling/?sh=5c6667cb60d0 | Refill Please: The Rise Of Reuse Through Refilling | Refill Please: The Rise Of Reuse Through Refilling
It all started with the milkman Photo by Brian Suman on Unsplash
The thought first came to me as I scraped the remnants out of a pot of my favourite face cream! Making a mental note to myself to pop to the shops to get a new one as I put it in the bin at home, it struck me that the sturdy, durable plastic pot remained in the same perfect condition as when I bought it. Why couldn’t I just refill it at the shop I was going to, or at the very least have them take the pot back and reuse it?
This was a few years (and wrinkles) ago, and since then we’ve started to see the concept of refilling taking hold. While it’s still a bit of a novelty, and it tends to be concentrated in cities like London, it’s now possible to refill your plastic containers rather than binning them and replacing them with an exact replica. There’s a wave of companies developing concepts in this space, and they’re at the heart of the circular economy - that is, the idea of eliminating waste by keeping materials in use for as long as possible.
How does it work?
There are two key categories of company operating in the refills space:
The brands that produce the products that allow refilling The companies that handle the logistics of refills, such as bricks and mortar stores or door-to-door collection
There are two factors crucial to the success of these businesses: price and convenience. A brief tangent: there’s a third factor that’s not yet in play, and that’s legislation to gently nudge the right behaviours by consumers. It’s on the way, following in the footsteps of the 5p (soon to be 10p) carrier bag charge, now enshrined in law in the UK and the plastic straw ban that came into force last week. The UK will hopefully soon also take the same path as Kenya, New Zealand and Taiwan, who are among a growing number of nations to commit to various measures designed to eliminate single-use plastic in the coming years.
But back to the logistics of refills. First up, price. Personally, I’m prepared to pay a premium to know that my money lands in the hands of companies that operate in a way I believe in and support. In fact, I actively seek out these companies. I can’t quantify that premium - we all have a limit - but I believe that in many industries, the price we are used to paying and the margin companies are used to aiming for, is simply wrong. Generally speaking, products have historically been made in the cheapest possible way, to provide maximum margin at a competitive price. I’m not suggesting this strategy does not make pure business sense - but what if products were made in a more thoughtful and careful way, with a broader agenda than just delivering a return for shareholders? For example, choosing production methods and business models that had less impact on the planet, even if it pushed up costs? And from my experience of designing and developing furniture and home furnishings in this way, it does indeed push up costs! Perhaps it is time for companies to accept that margins are squeezed and for consumers to adjust expectations and pay more to allow companies to operate in this way. This feels right to me.
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But even with the right price, uptake isn’t likely to be successful if the offering isn’t convenient. We’re all rushed off our feet with busy lives, and there’s only so far most of us are willing (or able) to go in order to buy better. And let’s face it: picking up a bottle of washing up liquid in the supermarket is a whole lot easier than ordering a refill, cleaning out the old bottle and mixing the concentrate with water to make a new one - and paying a premium for the privilege. My reward for going to this effort is that I can feel good knowing that my actions mean one less plastic bottle is needed in the world, but being realistic, finding time to visit a physical store that wasn’t literally on my doorstep to do my refills would be a challenge for me.
Handily, many of the refill brands offer a postal option. I appreciate that this might not be as good for the environment as walking to a store and refilling in person. But of course, it might be. I know that post uses an established network happening anyway. I have no idea how the refill products make their way to bricks and mortar stores.
Blazing the eco-trail
So which circular economy companies are paving the way with refills and striking the right balance between price and convenience? One trailblazer is London-based charrli, which describes itself as “the milkman for British eco-brands”. Using e-bikes, it delivers toiletries and cleaning products such as shampoo and soap in refillable glass bottles.
With subscription and one-off purchase options, charrli is a platform where a premium would work - because it’s also a great place to discover eco-brands you didn’t know about, which means they’re adding value beyond simply replacing like-for-like. They claim that their service could help customers “save up to 40kg of household plastic waste every year from going to landfill.”
Another newcomer to the refill scene is Spruce, which has just launched with two vegan, cruelty-free cleaning products made from safe ingredients and packaged in refillable bottles. Spruce refills weigh just 4 grams, which is 125% less than a typical cleaning bottle filled with liquid content and hugely reduces their carbon footprint compared to alternative solutions.
The idea is that customers buy a refillable bottle just once, diluting super-concentrated refills in tap water. The refill packs can then be composted at home and will turn into fertile biomass within weeks. This compares incredibly favourably with plastic packaging, which has an average usage span of under 5 minutes but lives on for 500 years in our ecosystem. Spruce has gained traction on Kickstarter, which is already showing customer validation and raising awareness of the subject.
And the list of refill pioneers grows longer all the time. PITT BALM is the UK’s first refillable deodorant, which comes in aluminium and recycled cardboard packaging and can be refilled at participating stores. Splosh let you order refills of their personal care and cleaning products online, with a subscription service that means customers will never run out. They invite customers to send back their refill packages, which they make into new products, ensuring true circularity.
And then there are the big players - the ones with serious backing. Even those unfamiliar with eco-friendly product ranges will have heard of Ecover, which was among the first to manufacture cleaning products that are kinder to the environment. They’re currently “waging war on single-use plastic” and aiming to use recycled plastic for all their bottles by 2020.
Meanwhile, Loop, a partner of Tesco, launched in the UK in July to extensive press and influencer coverage. This platform allows consumers to shop for their favourite brands in reusable packaging, but they currently only have a limited range. This means customers would need to split their shop in two, which doesn’t quite deliver on the convenience point I talked about earlier. What’s more, Loop’s high onboarding costs of £25,000 are prohibitive to all but the most established (or well funded) brands.
This isn’t a new idea
Of course, the way I’ve been talking about all these refill pioneers, you’d think that the idea of refilling was a brand new idea. It isn’t. Remember the milkman, and those glass bottles you used to leave on the doorstep to be replaced with fresh milk each day? We had it right in the 1880s, when milk delivery in bottles began in the UK by horse-drawn cart. Before that, milk was poured from large containers into milk jugs at each house. And when technology caught up with the horse and cart in the 1930s, it was replaced by the eco-friendly electric van. It’s only relatively recently that we’ve lost our way. Surely it shouldn’t take too much to get ourselves back on track again?
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bfcc6fa5e2c7e7907ba5c3a1e85adf76 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katelee/2012/08/14/customers-are-people-too/ | Customers Are People, Too | Customers Are People, Too
A few months ago I had some questions about domain hosting, so I started a live chat with someone from a popular hosting company's support team. When the chat window popped up, the customer-service rep's name was there, and my name was "FIRST TIME SALE."
This kind of thing happens all the time, and it's no way to make a good impression. As the customer, I don't think of myself as a sale, a first-time sale, a potential sale, or any kind of sale. I think of myself as Kate, a busy woman who's looking for web hosting and wants to be treated like the human being I am. When customers take the time to chat, it usually means they need help with something. They might be frustrated about a problem, or on the fence about a product or service. If we want to make our customers happy, treating them like people is the least we can do. Referring to a customer as a ticket number is off-putting. Referring to a customer as a business opportunity is just plain rude. It's easy to ask for a first name before a support chat begins, and it makes the experience more human for everyone involved.
I wonder if anyone from this company's content or marketing team has thought about this interaction that happens every day. Customer-service content is often overlooked, but these little decisions say a lot about a company's personality and values. Here's how I recommend avoiding impersonal encounters like this one:
1. Is there content on your company's site that might not fall under the traditional content umbrella? Edit it for voice and tone.
2. Before publishing anything (even minor changes to support copy), ask yourself, "How will this make the reader feel?"
We can solve most voice and tone problems by putting ourselves in our readers' shoes. It's really that simple.
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e3fb00439e72d2c466a3134ce8a1fc64 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katematthams/2019/04/17/invest-in-armillions-diamond-set-payment-bracelet/ | Invest In: The Diamond-Set Wearable You Didn't Know You Needed | Invest In: The Diamond-Set Wearable You Didn't Know You Needed
The Armillion Admantos payment bracelet, that processes transactions up to £1 million. Armillion
It’s the wearable tech that High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) didn’t know they needed. The Swiss FinTech company Armillion has elevated its already ultra-luxe payment and multi-key bracelets, releasing a diamond-edged version that can make MasterCard-supported payments of up to £1 million ($1.3million).
Just ten of the high-tech bracelets have been made, a highly limited production run that according to the makers is “a tribute to the success” of the future owners. Functionalities like payment limits, personal ID information, and transaction history are managed by an app, admitting the wearer into what is surely one of the most exclusive clubs in the world.
Payments via wearable devices are expected to reach $500 billion by 2020, but until recently, consumers had to choose between smartwatches or much cheaper payment wristbands. Armillion represents a move to unite technology, engineering and style, and tap into the growth area of men’s jewelry, with one of the most exclusive wearables to hit the market.
Armillion's diamond-set payment bracelet. Armillion
The stylish water-resistant bracelets feature Zirconia advanced ceramic, precision-set into a white gold structure, before being polished for five days until the surface is ready to receive the intricate guilloche engraving. This latest edition is set with 252 brilliant-cut diamonds that weigh in at a total of 4.6 carats, a process that takes more than 30 hours. And if that isn’t luxe enough for you, the company also offers a bespoke design service.
Unlike other payment devices in the increasingly competitive wearables space facilitating a move away from keys and passwords, the Adamantos is battery-free and never needs charging, allowing the user to set it up once to unlock their home, security systems or car via RFID and NFC technology, and then not have to think about it again.
The Swiss company behind the bracelets, Armillion, is rooted in the international banking and watch-making city of Geneva and expertise from both of those industries is brought to bear in the final product. A team of security and FinTech experts devised the concept and technology, while Swiss watch-making techniques were used to produce the bracelets, notably in precision-setting the diamonds.
Inspired by the Roman warriors of the 2nd century BC, seven other models of the bracelet also exist, ranging from the 18k red gold Eastern Dream to the polished titanium HEXtasy, each with elegant forms and polished masculine appeal. The new release means that existing models will also see their payment limit raised to the magic £1 million figure.
Could the Adamantos bracelet be the ultimate solution for off-the-cuff property purchases?
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f2d1705f53ac4f10d9452c78c6fddc9d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katematthams/2020/06/17/maya-gemstones-olga-pekarevskaia-the-businesswoman-new-diamond-cut/ | The Businesswoman Who Invented Her Own Diamond Cut | The Businesswoman Who Invented Her Own Diamond Cut
An engagement ring with a Maya cut diamond solitaire. Maya Gemstones
When entrepreneur Olga Pekarevskaia was looking for a new way to innovate, a childhood memory brought her to the world of jewelry. The Russian businesswoman behind the Ginza luxury services group did her research and turned designer, bringing newness to the industry in the form of the Maya cut, a uniquely luminous triangular diamond cut that now forms the basis of her jewelry house, Maya Gemstones.
The journey to a new diamond cut
“My idea was to bring diversity to the jewelry market, by offering a new product, something entirely unique. And it was quite an experience!” she laughs. She became interested in how the architecture of different cuts can change the radiance of the gem and after a lot of analysis, she alighted on the triangle, a shape to which she felt drawn.
The trillion, an existing triangle cut, represents just 5% of the global market. Some occur in nature, but to cut them involves a lot of wastage and the result often lacks brilliance. Ever ready for a challenge, she set about finding a solution: a competitive new cut that could “compete with the more traditional cuts in terms of clarity and brilliance, with less loss of material.”
But the journey to a new cut was not without its dead ends. She bought stones, had 3D models made and worked with teams in two different countries, before she heard about a master craftsman working for an Alrosa subsidiary in Smolensk, Russia. He was eventually able to help her create a cut that surpassed the trillion in brilliance and clarity.
The 28-facet Maya Cut has now been patented worldwide and forms the foundation of all Maya Gemstones jewelry. To keep waste to a minimum, the team work with the rare 2% of naturally occurring triangular diamonds, cutting vivid gems in a modern new shape.
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Olga Pekarevskaia, founder and CEO of Maya Gemstones. Maya Gemstones
“When I grow up, there will be lots of diamonds in my life”
With five successful businesses to her name by the age of 35, Pekarevskaia thrives on finding her niche in new markets, but her entry into the jewelry business was different. Thinking about what inspired her took her back to her childhood: “I was six years old and saw two pieces of glasses shimmering under the summer sun. I took them home, washed them and stuck them to my ears, like diamond earrings,” she recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘when I grow up, there will be lots of diamonds in my life’.”
After spells working in the restaurant and events industries, she launched her first three businesses in 2010. Ginza Prime is now a mature a global concierge service, while Ginza Sky has become the biggest provider of exclusive on-board catering for business flights in St. Petersburg, and Ginza Laundry offers laundry and dry-cleaning services to time-poor clients. Three years ago, she broadened her portfolio with 5ht, a tailor-made experiential luxury business creating special moments and travel experiences.
But in the jewelry business, she is uniquely able to satisfy the entrepreneur’s need for newness with regular collections based around the innovative new cut. Inspired by fashion behemoth LVMH and Ambush, the independent jewelry house helmed by Dior Homme jewelry director Yoon Anh, Pekarevskaia is keen to move closer to the fashion industry.
The Saturn ring, gold and Maya-cut sapphire, by Maya Gemstones. Maya Gemstones
Never not inspired
She is nothing if not prolific. Since Maya Gemstones opened in 2018, she has launched five collections, each of which has the Maya cut at its heart. The launch collection, Cosmic, was inspired by the Russian space race, with pendants, rings and earrings representing technological progress and planetary themes. Nominated in the Innovative Design category at Couture Las Vegas in 2019, the Saturn ring from the collection opens to reveal a secret space, around which orbits a single, Maya-cut sapphire.
The collection was about honoring progress, technology and freedom, fitting for an energetic young entrepreneur. But rather than developing product for a certain market, one has the feeling that Maya Gemstones is a more creative business outlet for Pekarevskaia: “I try to focus on a collective mentality that unites the whole world. We’re all passionate about discovering new things.”
More recent work includes Out of Office, inspired by a paperclip bracelet made by her young daughter. “I thought how simple and cool it was and began to work with stationery with my co-designer. My process is very much design-led, I’m always looking for inspiration.” The whimsical collection includes gemstone-encrusted pieces based on pencils and rulers, as well as very wearable triangle paperclip earrings that can be linked and stacked, just like her daughter’s original bracelet.
The Paperclip earrings, in gold with rubies. Maya Gemstones
When you can’t plan for the future
With a fresh, neon-accented iteration for summer, the collection taps into the millennial obsession with elevating the everyday, as well as a nostalgia for the analog days of pencil and paper. “Maya is a product for a new generation, but as time goes by, the pieces become classic. Billie Eilish would look incredible in the new pieces, I love her style and ethics.”
But for someone who is always looking forwards, to the next collection and the next project, what have the past few months been like? “2020 has shown us that you can’t control everything. Getting along with the new reality is way more important,” she says. She wants to mark this strange and challenging period by creating a ring, inscribed “this too, shall pass”, a sentiment we could all do well to keep in mind during the current crisis. Even the little girl who grew up to have her diamonds.
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99a4e2f05f162d092cce0fb92c114209 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2018/05/17/five-final-checks-to-ensure-gdpr-compliance/ | Five Final Checks To Ensure GDPR Compliance | Five Final Checks To Ensure GDPR Compliance
It is just one week until the EU update to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance deadline of 25 May. The build-up to this date has already seen vendors offering a barrage of products and services, putting pressure on companies to throw large sums of cash at their GDPR efforts.
But this is not necessary. Free resources such as the ICO’s GDPR checklist are available to help firms of all sizes prepare for the update. It is also important to note that fines of up to 4% of turnover for organizations that suffer a breach of personal data will not be applied if firms can prove they have taken the correct steps to comply.
As the deadline approaches, five key checks will help to ensure GDPR compliance:
Remember employees are covered by GDPR. Therefore, firms should issue staff with a ‘Data Privacy Notice’ advising them that their personal data will be processed by the company under ‘legitimate interest’, according to Ardi Kolah, executive fellow and director, GDPR programme at Henley Business School and author of the GDPR Handbook.
“Explain in ordinary language which personal data will be processed, the purposes and duration for doing so, what rights they have and who they should contact if they have concerns. You should also outline what happens if they leave the organization and who else this personal data will be shared with.”
Crucially, Kolah says firms won’t be able to rely on consent as a lawful basis for processing employees’ personal data because “it will not be deemed to have been freely given”.
“Continuing to process personal data without lawful grounds is a serious breach of the GDPR,” he warns.
Ensure adequate breach response. As the deadline approaches, businesses’ breach response process must be watertight. “Dry run scenarios with your security team and make sure everyone knows what is expected of them,” advises Cath Goulding, head of information security at Nominet. “In addition, ensure you will be able to alert the relevant authorities within 72 hours. As everyone knows, humans can be a weakness in such situations - so a final reinforcement of responsibilities is important.”
GDPR awareness and training are essential. GDPR will be a familiar term to certain departments within the business, but everyone needs to know what the regulation means for them. “For companies operating security and data compliance teams across borders, it is also worth ensuring international teams are reminded of their responsibilities under GDPR now and on the day it goes live,” Goulding says. “It may not be as high-profile for teams in countries outside the EU, so this will be important especially in the early days.”
At the same time, firms must make sure they have introduced – or updated – information security and data protection policies and rolled them out, says Helen Goldberg, COO at LegalEdge. “Policies should explain what personal data is and why it’s important to keep it secure and protected. Everyone should be clear on what they can and cannot do with that data and must understand the consequences of non-compliance.”
In addition, Mark Thompson, global privacy lead at KPMG outlines the importance of raising awareness at board level. “The board needs to understand the implications of the GDPR and the need to make enhancements.”
Make sure the data protection officer doesn’t have any conflicts of interest. As most firms know, there is a requirement to employ a data protection officer (DPO) in certain circumstances. However, as a final check, companies should confirm their DPO doesn’t have other responsibilities that may result in a conflict of interest.
An example is someone who is both the IT manager and the DPO, says Rogelio Aguilar, a management consultant in cyber resilience, security and privacy at Sungard Availability Services. “The DPO ought to be an expert in data protection who operates independently.”
“It’s worth noting that the Bavarian data protection authority has already fined companies for a DPO’s lack of independence,” he adds.
Gain consent creatively – and prioritize. There have been many bleak warnings about fines, but businesses should reinforce the benefits provided by GDPR compliance, suggests Russell Marsh, MD at Accenture Digital UK. “Consumers have been deluged by privacy policy update emails in the past few weeks. The brands that will be successful in obtaining this consent are those that view the GDPR process as an opportunity to engage with people.”
Meanwhile, firms unable to be 100% compliant before the deadline can prioritize. Jason du Preez, CEO of Privitar advises organizations to “look at past complaints, published opinions and fines to see what regulators and data subjects care about most”.
“Make sure you’re clear on the legal basis for all processing, can deliver on data subjects’ rights and have a clear policy so your staff understand what happens if there is a data breach.”
BERLIN, GERMANY - JANUARY 12: Server racks in a server center on January 12, 2018, in Berlin,... [+] Germany. (Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)
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9961e651862c693f7745a0845ffe4220 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2018/09/20/how-the-british-airways-breach-will-reveal-the-true-cost-of-gdpr/ | How The British Airways Breach Will Reveal The True Cost Of GDPR | How The British Airways Breach Will Reveal The True Cost Of GDPR
The update to general data protection regulation (GDPR) stipulates that firms must report a breach within 72 hours. It took British Airways just one day to announce it had been hit by a cyber-attack between 21 August and 5 September. On 6 September, the airline informed its customers that details from around 380,000 booking transactions had been stolen, including bank card numbers, expiry dates and cvv codes.
Soon afterwards, it was discovered the details were taken via a script designed to steal financial information by 'skimming' the payment page before it was submitted. Security researchers now think the perpetrator is the same group that breached Ticketmaster in June this year, Magecart.
Despite BA’s quick reporting of the breach, experts think the airline could be hit by a huge fine under the GDPR, which came into place on May 25. Previously, the largest fine issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was £500,000.
But under GDPR, firms can be fined up to 4% of turnover: In BA’s case £500 million. If the airline’s parent group International Airlines Group (IAG) is held accountable instead, the number could be even higher.
And of course, the fines are in addition to any compensation BA needs to pay to customers who might have suffered financial fraud as a result of the breach. But the costs do not end there: BA has been threatened with a £500 million class-action lawsuit in a UK court by law firm SPG Law. It alleges BA is liable to compensate for non-material damage under the Data Protection Act 2018, the UK’s implementation of GDPR.
Indeed, the GDPR says: "Any person who has suffered material or non-material damage as a result of an infringement of this regulation shall have the right to receive compensation from the controller or processor for the damage suffered."
The airline has already pledged to cover any losses suffered by its customers, but SPG Law says that under GDPR, breach victims have a right to further compensation of £1,250 each.
It’s clear BA is becoming a test case for the fines under GDPR. But the breach of the airline is not as bad as some major recent hacks, says Ian Thornton-Trump, a cyber security industry veteran.
He points out that the 2017 Equifax breach saw 145 million victims in the US, UK and Canada have their “extremely sensitive information” stolen. This is many more than the BA data breach, where 380,000 credit card transactions were taken, he says.
“If the benchmark for the 4% of annual revenue fine is reserved for a mega-breach, the 380,000 credit cards is really small,” he says. “The ICO is in a tough spot on this. Certainly, the investigation and research will need to go on for a very long time before a fine is decided. If it is unreasonable, you can expect litigation and court challenges. Everyone wants the GDPR to have teeth so the ICO has to strike to right balance here.”
But GDPR comes at a time when cyber-attacks are exceedingly sophisticated. Thornton-Trump doesn’t think companies are failing at basic cyber security post-GDPR. “What we are seeing is the cyber-crime adversary becoming very good at stealing from companies.”
“BA got hit by elite bad guys and if they can prove that they had even basic security controls – which they should have – their fine will be less substantial and punitive,” he predicts.
In fact, he says, credit card and bank account numbers “are all easy to replace” and “money can always be refunded”.
“What you can't change – or is far more difficult to change – is your national insurance number or date of birth, so it's far more serious when that type of information is stolen. So, is it a test case? Absolutely. Will it result in a major fine? I don't think so.”
It doesn’t make sense to fine BA the maximum, given that it could put the company out of business, he points out. “Imagine if the ICO lost its mind and went for the big one – the whole 4% of annual turnover – and pushed BA to the point of insolvency? Massive lay-offs, job losses, no more new planes. That would be an unacceptable at government level outcome demanding a bail out.”
Thornton-Trump predicts a fine “in the £5 to 10 million range”. He says: “That's substantial but it does not put the company at risk and is not ‘too political’.”
In August, it was announced that data breach complaints to the ICO were up 160% since GDPR came into force. “One can imagine that many businesses are coming under scrutiny,” says Thornton-Trump.
So, what can firms do to avoid getting into a similar situation? In addition to cyber hygiene based on ISO 27001, Cyber Security Essentials, or CIS 20, Thornton-Trump thinks firms need breach insurance, well-trained PR, digital forensics and incident response.
“The reality is, a data breach is bad, but a poorly handled one is significantly worse and makes both customers and shareholders anxious and upset,” he says. “Investment in the capability to detect, respond and recover from a data breach will go a long way to assure all stakeholders that the impact of a cyber security event is reduced.”
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ffbd0abff35de8e1b407d1123461b78c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2018/10/09/google-plus-breach-what-happened-who-was-impacted-and-how-to-delete-your-account/ | Google+ Security Bug -- What Happened, Who Was Impacted And How To Delete Your Account | Google+ Security Bug -- What Happened, Who Was Impacted And How To Delete Your Account
Yesterday, Google became the latest tech giant to admit a leak of user data, after a software bug in the Google+ social network exposed user information.
Despite exposing data belonging to hundreds of thousands of users, Google chose not to reveal the details because it feared damage to its reputation, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.
So, what exactly happened?
Between 2015 and March 2018, outside developers would have been able to potentially access personal Google+ profile data due to a software glitch in the site. When the bug was discovered, Google decided not to notify the social network’s users. An internal memo warned that revealing the leak would result in “regulatory interest” and lead to comparisons to Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Users can grant access to their profile data to Google+ apps, via the API. The bug meant apps also had access to profile fields shared with the user, but not marked as public. Google says this data is limited to “static, optional Google+ profile fields” including name, email address, occupation, gender and age. The technology giant says: “It does not include any other data you may have posted or connected to Google+ or any other service, like Google+ posts, messages, Google account data, phone numbers or G Suite content.”
However, because Google keeps the API’s log data for only two weeks, it says it cannot confirm which users were impacted by this bug. After running a “detailed analysis” over the two weeks prior to patching the bug, Google thinks the profiles of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected.
Google claims it found “no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API,” adding: “We found no evidence that any profile data was misused”.
What should I do now?
Google+ is not a popular social network. However, many users created accounts to sit alongside their other Google products, such as Gmail. If you, like most people, have not been using the service, it won’t be a great loss to shut it down now.
You can find your account by logging into your Gmail. Once you have opened Google+, go to ‘settings’ on the left-hand side. If you scroll to the bottom, there’s an option to delete your account. You will then be prompted to sign in and will be again asked if you are sure you want to leave. Google will ask for the reason you are leaving. The final option is, interestingly, “I don’t know who can see my data”.
Is this issue fixed?
According to Google, yes. In March 2018, the glitch was fixed when it was discovered by internal investigators. However, it will degrade trust in Google at a time when big tech companies are already under scrutiny from both regulators and users.
Is the data leak impacted by GDPR?
Google’s reaction to this leak of user data shows the lengths companies will go to avoid public scrutiny, which in this case, has backfired. However, because the issue was discovered and fixed before March 2018, Google will not be liable for the fines under the EU update to data protection regulation (GDPR) of up to 4% of turnover.
It’s also worth noting the number of accounts possibly compromised – 500,000 – is dwarfed by the 50 million figure originally stated by Facebook. Google+ had few users, which in this case worked to its advantage.
What is Google doing now?
The company announced in a blog that it will be “sunsetting” Google+ for consumers and instead offering the service to business customers. It is also tightening up its security and privacy measures across the Google suite. It says: “In the coming months, we’ll roll out additional controls and update policies across more of our APIs. As we do so, we’ll work with our developer partners to give them appropriate time to adjust and update their apps and services.”
The firm is launching more granular Google account permissions that will show in individual dialog boxes. For example, it says: “When an app prompts you for access to your Google account data, we always require that you see what data it has asked for, and you must grant it explicit permission.”
The company adds: “Our goal is to support a wide range of useful apps, while ensuring that everyone is confident that their data is secure. By giving developers more explicit rules of the road, and helping users control your data, we can ensure that we keep doing just that.”
What does this tell us about how tech companies are using and protecting data?
After the Facebook hack was revealed only last month, trust is at an all-time low. Tech firms collect huge amounts of user data, yet their security measures are often woefully inadequate.
Technology is supposed to make people’s lives easier, but all too often, the companies that collect data are not being clear about how they use it and are failing to protect it from hackers.
PARIS, FRANCE - OCTOBER 08: In this photo illustration, the social medias applications logos,... [+] Twitter, Messenger, Telegram, Google, Google+, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are displayed on the screen of an Apple iPhone on October 08, 2018 in Paris, France. Google has decided to close its Google+ social network after discovering a security vulnerability that has affected the data of at least 500,000 users. (Photo Illustration by Chesnot/Getty Images)
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ecc8ab4109fb8525d9509700924bc8b6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/01/02/hacking-group-the-dark-overlord-threatens-to-leak-sensitive-911-documents/ | Who Is The Dark Overlord Threatening To Leak Sensitive 9/11 Documents? | Who Is The Dark Overlord Threatening To Leak Sensitive 9/11 Documents?
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre warns that all large organizations are at risk of being... [+] targeted by hacking group The Dark Overlord. This is a close-up of code on a computer screen for the Apache Struts framework, which was exploited by computer hackers using a Remote Code Execution exploit in order to allegedly steal the personal information of millions of people from credit bureau Equifax, October 2, 2017. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) Getty
Notorious hacking group The Dark Overlord is threatening to leak what it claims are highly-sensitive documents relating to the 2001 September 11 attacks. It says it will publish the material capitalizing on various conspiracy theories around the 9/11 attacks unless its ransom demands are met.
According to Motherboard, the group is claiming to have breached several insurers and legal firms, including Hiscox Syndicates Ltd, Lloyds of London and Silverstein Properties.
The Dark Overlord says in an announcement published on PasteBin: “When major incidents like the WTC 911 incident happen, part of the litigation must involve SSI (Sensitive Security Information) and SCI (Special Compartment Information) [sic] from the likes of the FBI, CIA, TSA, FAA, DOD, and others being introduced into evidence.
“But of course this can't become public, for fear of compromising a nation's security, so they temporarily release these materials to the solicitor firms involved in the litigation with the strict demand they're destroyed after their use and that they remain highly protected and confidential to only be used behind closed doors.”
“However, humans aren't perfect and many of these documents don't become destroyed, and when thedarkoverlord comes along hacking all these solicitor firms, investment banks, and global insurers, we stumble upon the juiciest secrets a government has to offer.”
The group says it will be leaking “the first few documents as proof of our trove on the famous dark web hacker forum KickAss” and invited terrorist groups and nations such as China and Russia to make a purchase.
Who is the Dark Overlord and what are its tactics?
In the beginning, the hacker group stole data which it offered for sale, but its attacks soon turned to extortion. Then the Dark Overlord made a habit of hacking high profile organisations and demanding cash in exchange for not leaking information into the public domain. As appears to be the case in this latest “announcement”, the group tends to leak snippets to the media to pressure the victim to pay up.
Previously, the group has targeted health institutions, schools and media production companies including a London-based plastic surgery clinic and a Hollywood production studio – and the group also leaked an entire season of Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black.
Another attempted extortion was LA-based investment bank WestPark Capital. When this was unsuccessful the group leaked information including non-disclosure agreements, reports and contracts. This data was confirmed as legitimate.
According to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), any organization that deals with sensitive personal information – such as medical institutions and law firms – is at a higher risk of being targeted by The Dark Overlord. It says such an organization “owes a particular duty of care to its clients because of the risk of severe emotional distress if client data is made public”.
However, it points out that while evidence of the stolen data is often provided by this group, “the volume and sensitivity of the data may be exaggerated to maximise impact”.
The latest breach
It is therefore probable that the volume and sensitivity of the data stolen in this latest hack has been exaggerated. The objective of the PasteBin post, as is typical of this group, is extortion. The Dark Overlord is encouraging “dozens of solicitor firms” and others to contact its e-mail and request documents and materials are withdrawn from public release. “However, you'll be paying us,” the post says.
Experts agree the material the Dark Overlord claims to have is not as game-changing as it seems. Ian Thornton-Trump, head of cyber security at Amtrust International says this latest incident sounds like “cyber-criminal bravado”.
“The fact that the firms are named makes me want to believe they have refused to pay the ransoms, so this is a pressure tactic by The Dark Overlord to force the ransom issue.”
Thornton-Trump also questions whether the group has oversold the "sensitive nature" of the documents, saying: “So many years later after the events of 9/11, the items in question may have their security clearance expire in the next six years anyway. A lot of it has been already disclosed by journalists and authors.”
He adds: “This really underscores the importance of security controls. Ultimately this a great example of a threat actor for blue teams to learn from and red teams to emulate.”
At the same time, says Jake Moore, cyber security expert at ESET UK: “The problem with digital ransom is that it’s virtually impossible for the payee to know if the ransom call has any substance – unless of course you know you have been breached or are concerned about the level of security protecting your most delicate assets.”
He advises firms to never pay the ransom. “They may or may not hand over the goods, they may or may not have a copy and indeed could have already sold it or given it away. Meanwhile, because of the nature of digital theft, they may not even be the original owner of the stolen data.”
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e55a72a13ab9b0718a77edee921cc5f9 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/01/17/collection-1-breach-how-to-find-out-if-your-password-has-been-stolen/ | Collection 1 Breach -- How To Find Out If Your Password Has Been Stolen | Collection 1 Breach -- How To Find Out If Your Password Has Been Stolen
Collection #1 is comprised of more than 12,000 files weighing in at 87 gigabytes that hackers could... [+] use to compromise user services. Getty
Yesterday, it emerged that more than a billion unique email address and password combinations had been posted to a hacking forum for anyone to see in a mega-breach dubbed Collection #1.
The breach was revealed by security researcher Troy Hunt, who runs the service allowing users to see if they’ve been hacked called Have I been Pwned. He has now loaded the unique email addresses totalling 772,904,991 onto the site.
The data includes more than a billion unique email and password combinations – which hackers can use over a range of sites to compromise your services. They will do so by utilizing so-called credential stuffing attacks, seeing bots automatically testing millions of email and password combinations on a whole range of website login pages.
The data originally appeared briefly on cloud service MEGA and was later posted to a popular hacking forum. The Collection #1 folder is comprised of more than 12,000 files weighing in at 87 gigabytes.
Most concerningly, the protective hashing of the stolen passwords had been cracked. This means they are easy to use because they are available in plain text rather than being cryptographically hashed as they often are when sites are breached.
Should I be worried?
In a word: Yes. It’s a massive concern, not least because scale of this breach is huge: Yahoo’s breaches saw 1 billion and 3 billion users affected but the stolen data hasn’t actually resurfaced yet.
And unlike other huge hacks such as Yahoo and Equifax, this breach cannot be tied down to one site. Instead it appears to comprise multiple breaches across a number of services including 2,000 databases.
Hunt says there are many legitimate breaches in the directory listing, but he cannot yet verify this further. “This number makes it the single largest breach ever to be loaded into HIBP,” he adds in a blog.
What’s more, his own personal data is in there “and it's accurate”, he says. “Right email address and a password I used many years ago. Like many of you reading this, I've been in multiple data breaches before which have resulted in my email addresses and yes, my passwords, circulating in public.”
Finding out if you’re affected
If you are one of the 2.2 million people that already use the Have I Been Pwned site, you should have received a notification: Nearly half of the site's users – or 768,000 – are caught up in this breach.
If you aren’t already a member, you need to visit Have I Been Pwned now. Once on the site, you simply need to type in your email address and search, then scroll down to the bottom of the page. The site will let you know if your email address is affected by this breach – and while you are there, you can see if your details were stolen in any others too.
To find out if your password has been compromised, you separately need to check Pwned Passwords– a feature built into the site recently. This feature also helps you to use strong passwords: if yours is on there, it’s safe to assume others are using it and your accounts could be easily breached.
What if my details are there?
Hunt says in his blog: “Whilst I can't tell you precisely what password was against your own record in the breach, I can tell you if any password you're interested in has appeared in previous breaches Pwned Passwords has indexed. If one of yours shows up there, you really want to stop using it on any service you care about.”
If you have a bunch of passwords, checking all of them could be time-consuming. In this case, Hunt suggests 1Password's Watchtower feature which can take all your stored passwords and check them against Pwned Passwords in one go.
Most importantly, if your password is on the list, do not ignore it as it can be used in credential stuffing attacks mentioned earlier. Hunt says: “People take lists like these that contain our email addresses and passwords then they attempt to see where else they work. The success of this approach is predicated on the fact that people reuse the same credentials on multiple services.”
More generally, as the number of breaches and their sheer scale increases, it’s time to clean up your password practices. In addition to using two-factor authentication, passwords should be complex – such as a phrase from a favourite book or a line from a song. At the same time, security experts don’t rule out analogue books containing your password – as long as these are not stored on your device or with it.
If you take these measures into account you should be able to avoid using the same password across multiple sites. Ideally, start using a password manager to ensure you can remember these.
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488abcc9bcea0cc35a58b162519f412a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/02/18/china-facial-recognition-database-leak-sparks-fears-over-mass-data-collection/ | China Facial Recognition Database Leak Sparks Fears Over Mass Data Collection | China Facial Recognition Database Leak Sparks Fears Over Mass Data Collection
A company that operates facial recognition systems in China has exposed the personal information of... [+] 2.5 million people after leaving a database unprotected. Facial recognition system showing a blue interface with a human head and biometrics data, with a grid of relevant points connected to facial features: used for survellaince, privacy control and identity tracking (Big Brother). Getty
A company that operates facial recognition systems in China has exposed the personal information of 2.5 million people after leaving a database unprotected, it has emerged.
It was discovered by Dutch cybersecurity researcher Victor Gevers, who works for the GDI Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to reporting security issues. He tweeted: “There is this company in China named SenseNets. They make artificial intelligence-based security software systems for face recognition, crowd analysis, and personal verification. And their business IP and millions of records of people tracking data is fully accessible to anyone.”
The database contained the ID card number, tracking location data of the last 24 hours, sex, nationality, address, passphoto, birthday, and even employer. Gevers had apparently first reported the issue to SenseNets in July.
SenseNets has now protected the database by placing it behind a firewall. But the action was too little, too late: the information had already leaked.
Why it matters
The news is a concern – and not just for the millions affected in China. Chinese surveillance isn’t like anything we have seen in the Western World: the country has a social credit score system and it’s using facial recognition for everything from policing to tracking people’s movements to predict crime, as seen in the film Minority Report.
And although China is an extreme example, the UK and US are also starting to use facial recognition to identify criminals.
The technology is being trialled by police forces in the UK - even after it was found to have high error rates. In December last year, it was used to scan the faces of Christmas shoppers in London and it was also used at Notting Hill Carnival in 2016 and 2017.
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift’s security team deployed facial recognition during her Reputation tour to root out stalkers.
At the same time, Amazon investors are urging the company to halt sales of its facial-recognition software to government agencies over fears the technology could be used to violate people's rights.
Sensitive data
Concerns centre around the fact that facial recognition data is sensitive and must be secured accordingly. In the UK and Europe, it’s covered by the EU Update to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In other words, companies that store this data must adequately protect it, or they’ll face huge fines.
There is a duty of care for any organization using software that collects this type of data, says Patrick Hunter, sales engineering director at One Identity. As he points out, in Europe, GDPR means that organizations cannot be lax on their security. In the China case, he says, the most worrying loss is the location data. “Due to GDPR, companies would never be permitted to retain this sort of data.”
As Paul Ducklin, senior technologist at Sophos points out, modern-day surveillance generates enormous quantities of data – which must be secured. “If your government insists that third parties should routinely and by law collect identification data – as the UK does, for example, when you check into a hotel or try to rent a property – then it's not enough just to trust the government to not to draw inappropriate conclusions from the data it's collecting,” he says.
The China incident highlights the risks associated with storing sensitive information, adds Javvad Malik, security advocate at AlienVault. Indeed, this is even worse when it’s something that can’t be changed, like your face.
“We see password databases getting breached on a regular basis, but whereas these can be changed relatively easily, changing a face, or other form of biometric isn't quite as straightforward,” Malik says.
He says companies responsible for storing such data must look at embedding security and privacy controls along every step of the process: “From development, to deployment, at the endpoint, the network and through to the servers.”
As governments and companies continue to collect large amounts of data – and facial recognition trials are happening on the streets and at concerts – users need to be wary. But it’s really down to those implementing facial recognition programmes, for whatever reason, to ensure the company processing that data is secure. If not, the consequences will be far-reaching and potentially devastating.
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cf9647762e712c43e70a547d04be1b18 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/05/03/this-windows-malware-is-evolving-to-catch-out-firms-with-poor-cybersecurity/ | This Windows Malware Is Evolving To Catch Out Firms With Poor Cybersecurity | This Windows Malware Is Evolving To Catch Out Firms With Poor Cybersecurity
Well-known banking trojan Qakbot is evolving new ways of remaining hidden, according to researchers. Getty
Well-known banking trojan Qakbot is evolving new ways of remaining hidden, according to researchers at Cisco Talos. The malware, which has been around since 2008, targets Microsoft Windows systems so it can steal login credentials and eventually gain access to firms’ bank accounts.
But recently, Qakbot campaigns are utilizing an updated persistence mechanism that can make it harder for users to detect and remove the trojan, Ashlee Benge and Nick Randolph say in a blog post.
What’s changed?
Victims of this malware are typically infected via a dropper. Once this has taken hold, an infected machine will create a scheduled task, which executes a JavaScript downloader that makes a request to one of several hijacked domains.
According to the researchers, the command line string that creates this task is:
C:\Windows\system32\schtasks.exe /create /tn {guid} /tr cmd.exe /C "start /MIN C:\Windows\system32\cscript.exe /E:javascript "C:\Users\USERNAME\ymwoyf.wpl" /sc WEEKLY /D TUE,WED,THU /ST 12:00:00 /F
This downloader is executed using the command:
cmd.exe /C start /MIN C:\Windows\system32\cscript.exe /E:javascript C:\ProgramData\\puigje.wpl"
C:\Windows\system32\cscript.exe /E:javascript C:\ProgramData\puigje.wpl
Cisco Talos first observed a spike in requests to these hijacked domains on April 2 2019 straight after several changes were made in March.
The downloader always requests the URI "/datacollectionservice[.]php3." from these hijacked domains, the researchers say. The domains used by the downloader for this request are XOR encrypted at the beginning of the JavaScript.
But the response to this request is obfuscated data that will be saved as (randalpha)_1.zzz and (randalpha)_2.zzz. The first 1,000 bytes of data are saved to the first .zzz file, while the remainder goes to the second file. The data in these files is decrypted with the code contained in the JavaScript downloader.
“This code serves to reassemble the malicious Qakbot executable from the two .zzz files, using the type command,” the researchers say. “The two .zzz files are then deleted after the reassembled executable is run. The functionality of the Qakbot malware remains the same.”
It means the malware is better hidden: the change in the infection chain of Qakbot makes it more difficult for traditional anti-virus software to detect, the researchers say. “This may allow the download of the malware to go undetected, as it is obfuscated when it is downloaded and saved in two separate files.
“These files are then decrypted and reassembled using the type command. Detection that is focused on seeing the full transfer of the malicious executable would likely miss this updated version of Qakbot.”
What to do
So how serious is the risk? Not very, if you are following basic cybersecurity practices, according to Ian Thornton-Trump, security head at AmTrust Europe. “Although the research suggests the malware is difficult to detect, it is amateurish to use scheduled tasks for persistence. The research did not suggest there was a privilege escalation component so the creation of a scheduled task seems to indicate that a user needs elevated privileges (admin) for the malware to infect."
He advises: “Perhaps the whole kill chain here is making sure creation of scheduled tasks by users isn't possible. For more advanced organizations, a binary that lands on an endpoint and executes this mechanism would be very noisy and a SIEM or EDR solution should immediately alert or block it.”
But attackers are constantly looking for new ways to stay hidden, and businesses should watch out for this risk, Jake Moore, cybersecurity expert at ESET says. “Obfuscation of malware is always the goal for attackers and techniques such as this are becoming more and more widespread. Sadly, not all anti-virus can detect these newer strands which inevitably causes a headache for IT staff.
“This attack is still able to enter an organization via a cleverly worded email, which points to victims falling for genuine looking phishing emails. However, if such malware were to enter a network, one work-around for a keylogger wanting banking details would be to implement password managers: Passwords could be copied and pasted into the targeted fields rather than typed straight into the attacker’s database.”
“This is an example of why organizations need to deploy a defense-in-depth approach of multiple layers of security protection,” Martin Lee, manager, Talos Outreach EMEA and Asia at Cisco told me. “Despite the threat actors’ attempts to disguise their malware, our data mining and analysis of DNS telemetry allowed us to track and block the domains hijacked by the attacker.
“Although traditional anti-virus software may struggle with malware such as this, more modern advanced malware protection techniques can detect the presence and activity of the malware in order to neutralize the threat.”
So avoiding the risk comes down to following basic cybersecurity hygiene, which of course all firms should be doing. “This does not look particularly sophisticated and is not, it seems, stealthy at all,” Thornton-Trump says. “My view is: if you’re getting infected by this type of malware with this mechanism, your organization is lacking some basic cyber hygiene and it’s time to revisit your security controls.”
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0221983c2a75a731ef8caa0fc73c3a64 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/06/13/netflix-and-spotify-users-are-the-most-likely-to-be-hacked/ | Netflix And Spotify Users Are The Most Likely To Be Hacked -- Here's What To Do | Netflix And Spotify Users Are The Most Likely To Be Hacked -- Here's What To Do
London, UK - August 01, 2018: The buttons of Netflix, Spotify, Podcasts, WhatsApp and Music on the... [+] screen of an iPhone. Getty
As any cybersecurity aficionado knows, it’s no longer a matter of if you are attacked, but when. Now, a survey has demonstrated that you are also more likely to be hacked if you are using certain services—namely, Netflix, EA, Xbox, Sony Entertainment and Spotify.
The survey was carried out by cybersecurity company Dynarisk, which used data obtained from the dark web and hacker communities.
The firm outlines how this data is shared among criminal communities as they seek ways to abuse or monetize the stolen records. This data is often combined with other information in an attempt to form a picture of individuals for identity theft.
The most attacked brands
So, which are the most attacked sites? The results aren’t surprising, given that these brands also have a large number of users. Some of the companies named collect large amounts of data (looking at you, Facebook) or have suffered known data breaches in the past (Facebook and Yahoo, for example).
“Unfortunately, the ugly truth is that the more prolific a brand, the more attractive it is to cyber criminals,” DynaRisk said in a press release. “Hackers will target bigger brands to not only steal valuable information, but also to demonstrate their skills to peers within the criminal community.
“There are also monetary benefits; Netflix and Spotify are the perfect target for criminals who can resell stolen credentials to willing customers who want an account a fraction of the retail cost.”
Here’s the list in full:
Rank Top targeted brands 1. Riotgames.com 2. Netflix 3. Spotify.com 4. Origin.com 5. Ea.com 6. Sonyentertainmentnetwork.com 7. Live.com 8. Crackingcore.com 9. Realitykings.com 10. Xbox.com 8. Amazon.com 12. Adobe.com 13. Wwe.com 14. Steampowered.com 15. Deezer.com 16. Facebook.com 17. Beatsmusic.com 18. Yahoo.com 19. Rapidgator.net 20. Hitleap.com
The most hacked industries
DynaRisk also investigated the most hacked industries and discovered that hackers consistently target pornography sites “possibly to cash in on the sensitive nature of the content.”
Here is the full list of targeted industries:
Row labels % Non-standard content 31.7% Technology & computing 22.1% Adult and niche 13.9% Hobbies & Interests 9.4% Arts & Entertainment 4.1% Shopping 1.3% Illegal Content 2.5% Business 2.2% Personal finance 1.9% Sports 1.4% Society 1.3% Food & Drink 1.2% Education 0.7% Travel 0.6% Style & Fashion 0.6% Law 0.4% News/Weather/Information 0.4% VPNs/Proxies & Filter 0.3% Automotive 0.3% Home & Garden 0.1% Couponing 0.1% Unmoderated UGC/Message board 0.1% Pets 0.1% Careers 0.1% Science 0.1% Mac support 0.1% Health & Fitness 0.1% Antivirus Software 0.1% TV & Video 0.1% Web design/HTML 0.1%
The risks
The folks at Dynarisk point out that huge caches of stolen data can be utilized for account takeovers–where hackers will attempt to log into legitimate user accounts using username and password combinations obtained from data breaches.
Andrew Martin, DynaRisk’s CEO, thinks people need to be more concerned about the way in which big brands are handling their data. “Consumers’ number one concern might not be the security of their personal data when they are enjoying the content offered by their favorite digital entertainment brands–but they shouldn’t assume that brands are taking care of their information.
“Recent high-profile data concerns on social media platforms has likely alerted consumers to the ease with which data and personal information can be stolen or misused by third parties. However they might not have the same awareness of the risks to accounts on services like Netflix being attacked.”
What to do now
I have said it before and I will repeat it again (until people listen): Password security is integral. If a password has been breached once, it can be used again by attackers who will throw credentials at other services in so-called credential stuffing attacks.
That is why you should always have strong, unique passwords across services. The best way to do this is to use a password manager such as LastPass or 1Password. You can also find out if your email address or password has been caught up in a breach by using the highly esteemed HaveIBeenPwned service–which has done so well, it is currently up for sale.
At the same time, use 2-factor authentication where possible and make sure your software is up to date. Breaches continue to happen every day and they take advantage of weak security. Being aware of this and taking small simple steps to secure yourself can make all the difference.
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7b1cf82f2245e4dc458b210a623c997e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/07/04/youtube-hacking-video-ban-sparks-outrage/ | YouTube Hacking Video Ban Sparks Outrage | YouTube Hacking Video Ban Sparks Outrage
YouTube App icon channel on iPhone XR Getty
YouTube has sparked outrage after wrongly removing legitimate educational cybersecurity videos as a result of a new written policy.
According to tech site The Register, the written policy first appeared in the Internet Wayback Machine's archive in an April 5, 2019 snapshot.
The policy specifically bans: "Instructional hacking and phishing: Showing users how to bypass secure computer systems or steal user credentials and personal data."
But the infosec community says this policy is broken, because it’s seeing viable educational content also being removed. This content has been used by security professionals and businesses for many years to hone their skills and learn about new threats.
The issues with YouTube’s written policy on hacking videos became clear when security researcher Kody Kinzie complained to The Register after his video created for the U.S. July 4 holiday–which showed launching fireworks over Wi-Fi–couldn't be uploaded. He claimed he has also had issues with other content he had tried to post to YouTube's Null Byte channel.
YouTube’s response
Kinzie tweeted on July 3: “We made a video about launching fireworks over Wi-Fi for the 4th of July only to find out @YouTube gave us a strike because we teach about hacking, so we can't upload it.”
YouTube has now reinstated the video. It responded to Kinzie on Twitter, saying: “Our policy team reviewed the flagged video and determined that it was taken down by mistake. We have gone ahead and reinstated the video and resolved the strike on your channel. We hope you can upload the 4th of July fireworks video now!”
YouTube also sent a statement via email. A spokesperson says: “With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. We have an appeals process in place for users, and when it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”
It is thought Kinzie’s video was banned because it was mistaken for “hacking” content: something that provides reproducible steps to gain unauthorized access to a secure system, where the victim is a large institution for example.
YouTube has been accused of wrongly taking down valid content before. In the past, it has come under fire for wrongly flagging content showing war crimes as violent or extremist, to the frustration of human rights activists.
As far as cybersecurity videos are concerned, YouTube often removed them previously if enough users complained–or if they were found to have violated Google’s video site’s written policies.
YouTube: Infosec community response
The video that sparked the debate is now available again, but the issue has raised concern among infosec professionals, who question the clarity of the policy overall. “It is concerning that the Harmful and Dangerous Community Content Policy is quite broad in its definition which means legit videos may be taken down as a result–especially when said policy uses the word ‘hacking’ in a derogatory way,” says security researcher Chrissy Morgan.
At the same time, it is not clear exactly how YouTube is flagging these videos for removal. It removes extremist content via a machine learning algorithm which will auto-flag videos that violate YouTube policies. It is thought a human also views content flagged by the machine learning algorithm.
Morgan says social media moderation teams “already have a hard enough time” meeting requirements, asking: “I wonder how they will perform under something which may fall down to technicalities.”
“While I do see perhaps their reasoning, providing a blanket ban is affecting those who use these videos legitimately,” agrees security researcher Sean Wright. He says Google should revisit this policy “since it is simply too broad.”
“These videos provide a great opportunity to many who otherwise could not afford the training to help them get into the industry and better their careers–as well as helping secure their organizations."
Wright also wonders what the cause is for this "sudden" policy change. “What will be Google's next move? Ban search results on 'hacking' books?”
YouTube policy in the long term
What the policy means for educational security videos on YouTube in the long term is still unknown. But the security community agrees that if legitimate videos continue to be taken down, it will cause major issues. “It would be a big loss of free online training content,” says security researcher John Opdenakker. “I don’t get why they do it to be honest. Even black hat hacking videos are beneficial to defenders. Blocking all hacking videos to me is a really poor decision.”
“YouTube needs to state clearly what is acceptable and how legitimate videos can continue to be shared online within this area,” says Morgan. “Are publicly disclosed and patched vulnerabilities going to be an issue to give coverage to? Are adaptions and modifications, any tampering to serve a greater good but against TOS or EULAs going to be taken down?”
Morgan also expresses concern for smaller providers, who she says could find themselves silenced. “We may lose these resources as a result.”
But some experts think this could be an opportunity for other online video platforms: “A lot of people will be not amused by this–and previous recent actions from Google,” Opdenakker says.
“Online learning has taken away many barriers for people, and people will adapt,” agrees Morgan. “If YouTube will not host it, someone else will.”
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2fbc26d9620a598503074b4c0e6b9368 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/08/01/warning-issued-over-google-chrome-ad-blocking-plans/ | New Warning Issued Over Google's Chrome Ad-Blocking Plans | New Warning Issued Over Google's Chrome Ad-Blocking Plans
Google is still defending its plans to limit ad blockers in Chrome. But digital rights group the EFF... [+] just warned that Manifest V3 will curtail innovation and hurt the privacy and security of up to 2 billion Chrome users. Getty
Google’s plans to limit ad blockers in Chrome have already led many users to consider switching browsers. People’s anger was made worse by the confirmation that the only people who will avoid the changes to the way ad blockers work in Chrome will be Google’s enterprise users. Advertising is at the heart of Google’s business model and so unsurprisingly, users have been questioning the software giant’s motives.
And now, another prominent voice has entered the debate. Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says the move will not help security and in fact, will probably hinder it.
The plans, dubbed Manifest V3, represent a major transformation to Chrome extensions including a revamp of the permissions system. As a result, modern ad blockers such as uBlock Origin—which uses Chrome’s webRequest API to block ads before they’re downloaded–won’t work. This is because Manifest V3 sees Google halt the webRequest API’s ability to block a particular request before it’s loaded. The plans are earmarked for release into the Google Canary channel around now.
Google argues its ad blocking plans will increase security, and the software firm has written several blogs outlining how. On June 12 Devlin Cronin on the Chrome extensions team wrote: “No, Chrome isn’t killing ad blockers–we’re making them safer.”
But the EFF argues: “The next time Google claims that Manifest V3 will be better for user privacy and security, don’t believe their hype. Manifest V3 will curtail innovation and hurt the privacy and security of Chrome users.”
Google’s Manifest V3 and the rogue extension problem
In July, it emerged that eight browser extensions used by around 4 million Firefox and Chrome users were harvesting data.
The discovery was made by security researcher Sam Jadali, who told me at the time that Google’s Manifest V3 does not solve this specific problem: “It has some improvements however it explicitly states that server communication (potentially changing extension behavior) will still be allowed. This doesn't really solve the issue.”
The EFF uses this discovery as the launch point for its post warning users about the dangers of Google’s Manifest V3. “To start with, the Manifest V3 proposal won't do much about evil extensions extracting people’s browsing histories and sending them off to questionable data aggregators,” Alexei Miagkov, Jeremy Gillula and Bennett Cyphers said.
This because Manifest V3 doesn’t change the observational APIs available to extensions. “Manifest V3 will still allow extensions to observe the same data as before, including what URLs users visit and the contents of pages users visit. Privacy Badger and other extensions rely on these observational APIs,” the EFF post said.
Additionally, Manifest V3 won’t change the way “content scripts” work–the pieces of Javascript that allow extensions to interact with the contents of web pages. This allows extensions to deliver useful functionality and is another way to extract user browsing data.
In fact, the EFF said the only part of Manifest V3 that goes directly to the heart of stopping this type of abuse is banning remotely hosted code.
Google sent a statement over email, which reads: "The EFF's report on Manifest V3 is focused on our plans for remote script blocking, but fails to account for the proposed changes to how permissions work. It is the combination of these two changes, along with others included in the proposal, that would have prevented or significantly mitigated incidents such as this one."
But EFF technology projects director Jeremy Gillula says: "We agree that Google isn't killing ad-blockers. But they are killing a wide range of security and privacy enhancing extensions, and so far they haven't justified why that's necessary."
Google Chrome and the Manifest V3 fallout: What to do
There are some benefits to Manifest V3, says security researcher Sean Wright: “From what I can determine, the V3 changes primarily focus around tightening up how extensions can modify the content or actions of a page. This may help from a security point of view, depending on what the extension is trying to do.”
However he says: “It appears to do little to prevent rogue extensions from obtaining information from loaded sites, which is certainly a privacy issue and it looks as if the V3 changes don't help.”
The changes outlined by Google’s Manifest V3 are certainly unpopular, but the EFF warning amplifies this further. So, what can be done? “Better review of extensions in Chrome Web Store would promote informed choice far better than limiting the capabilities of powerful, legitimate extensions,” the EFF said adding that Google could have banned remote code execution “a long time ago.”
No doubt this will cause more users to question whether Chrome is the right browser for them. Many people are already switching to Firefox, which has made a big deal about its focus on security and privacy. Or course, there are also Chromium-based browsers such as Brave, which have confirmed they will not take on the Manifest V3 changes.
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a42040d9ccca5382cac77547fd2a35d2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/08/06/8chan-should-the-far-right-website-be-kicked-offline-forever/ | 8Chan: Should The Far-Right Website Be Kicked Offline Forever? | 8Chan: Should The Far-Right Website Be Kicked Offline Forever?
8chan was kicked offline after the site hosted the manifesto posted by the El Paso shooter. Photo... [+] credit: MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images Getty
8chan is in trouble. After being kicked offline on August 4 when internet infrastructure company Cloudflare dropped it as a customer, the firm was yesterday scrambling to get itself back up and running.
At first, it succeeded. On August 5, 8chan confirmed it would be using another service provider for online protection: Epik.com. The reasons for choosing Epik.com were clear: The firm says it’s a “non-discriminatory provider” and has “a proven commitment to liberty." In other words: It doesn’t care about the content you host.
And Epik’s background is extremely shady. The firm recently bought BitMitigate, the security company that neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer now uses after being dropped by Cloudflare in 2017. Epik is also the registrar for Gab.com–the site dumped by GoDaddy after it was used by the terrorist who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October last year.
But choosing Epik didn’t keep the 8chan site up for long. Epik itself relies on an infrastructure provider called Voxility–which has cut ties with the firm after learning about its new dubious customer. 8chan is currently offline.
Also yesterday, Tucows, the internet services company, said it will no longer register the domain of extreme forum 8chan after a gunman posted a hate-filled manifesto on the site just minutes before killing 22 people in El Paso on Saturday.
It is a difficult call: Should infrastructure providers be deciding which sites are and are not allowed to exist online? But at the same time, firms have their reputations to consider. As Ian Thornton Trump, security head at AmTrust International told me yesterday, content delivery networks like Cloudflare “have a responsibility to society.” Meanwhile, a brand can be damaged “by association to distasteful and inappropriate content.”
At the same time, the content hosted by 8chan is so despicable that even its creator Fredrick Brennan wants the site shut down due to the way it’s being run by its current administrators.
“Shut the site down,” Brennan told the New York Times. “It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too. They just don’t realize it.”
8chan: Onto the dark web
If 8chan doesn’t find a provider to replace Cloudflare and Epik, it’s possible that it will be kicked offline permanently–at least on the so-called “clear web,” which is hacker speak for the “normal” internet.
Benjamin T Decker, CEO of the digital investigations consultancy Memetica told U.K. news site the Guardian that his research showed a discussion among followers of 8chan of moving the platform to the dark web.
The right to free speech versus protection against hate is certainly a difficult subject to approach, says Lisa Forte, partner at Red Goat Cyber Security: “Shutting down forums like 8chan is likely to drive the problem underground onto the wild west that is the dark web.”
However, she also thinks society should be protected from inappropriate and hateful content. She adds: “I believe that anonymity plays a huge part in our online behavior–people feel free to say anything when their identity is hidden. Perhaps the platforms need to start requiring proof of identity to start an account.
“Perhaps people would be more responsible if they thought their hurtful and dangerous comments could be traced back to them. It is hard to defend forums that permit such dangerous discussions but it does make you question just how ‘free’ we actually want free speech to be.”
Of course, forcing 8chan underground would make it more difficult for the average user to stumble on this content. But it could also mean hateful sites are able to proliferate further and are more difficult to monitor. It could make the issue a whole lot worse.
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8fa60c7e87bc05660166e77a14260092 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/08/07/apple-just-dealt-a-major-blow-to-facebook-with-this-new-ios-feature/ | Apple Just Dealt A Major Blow To Facebook With This New IOS Feature | Apple Just Dealt A Major Blow To Facebook With This New IOS Feature
IPhone maker Apple has just announced a new feature in its upcoming iOS 13 that could pose major issues for messaging and calling apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp. In the interest of privacy, Apple’s updated version of its operating system will not let apps run voice over internet protocol (VoIP) in the background when programs are not actively in use, according to news site The Information.
And many apps offering these sorts of services do run in the background so, they claim, they can connect calls quickly. But this also means the apps can collect information on what people are doing on their devices.
Because it will no longer allow apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp to do this on devices such as iPhones and iPads, the move will mark a major change in how they are run. In fact, they will need to be rewritten in order to comply with Apple’s new rules by the time iOS 13 comes out this September.
App developers have until April 2020 to comply with the new rules. Facebook told The Information that it was in talks on how it would proceed following the change.
Apple has been focusing on user privacy as it looks to differentiate itself from rivals such as Google and Facebook. This saw it run a billboard advert earlier this year which read: “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.”
However, it also came under fire last month after it emerged that Apple contractors were listening in to Siri calls.
Apple’s iOS 13: A serious privacy improvement
IOS 13 reflects Apple’s increasing focus on user privacy. It features one-time location sharing, while the "Sign in with Apple" feature has been praised by many–although it was also criticized by one organization.
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The latest change marks another blow in an ongoing rivalry between Apple and Facebook. In January, Apple removed Facebook’s certificate for its Enterprise Developer Program after it was found to be distributing apps that monitored people’s activity.
Ethical hacker John Opdenakker says because users will be able to see when an app is running, it will be “a serious privacy improvement.”
Independent security researcher Sean Wright agrees. “It’s encouraging to see some companies at least focus on their users’ privacy.
“Hopefully this change will also apply pressure on companies who have previously not paid much attention to user privacy, getting them to now start doing so. I’m hoping that Google takes heed and does something similar on Android.”
Given that Apple is a pioneer in the industry, cybersecurity expert at ESET Jake Moore says the move “makes it far easier to roll out these security and privacy changes in other companies.”
It’s true that Apple is often a first mover in the technology space. Let’s hope other companies will follow suit to help users take greater control of their security and privacy.
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c2e4496c76eb15f6c333d3885302de84 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/08/14/did-facebook-just-give-13-billion-users-a-reason-to-delete-their-account/ | Facebook Just Gave 1.3 Billion Messenger Users A Reason To Delete Their Accounts | Facebook Just Gave 1.3 Billion Messenger Users A Reason To Delete Their Accounts
Facebook has hired contractors to listen in to users taking advantage of the audio to text ... [+] functionality in its Messenger service. AFP/Getty Images
Facebook has just become the latest big tech firm to confirm that external contractors are listening to audio of users’ private conversations. According to a Bloomberg report, Facebook has hired the contractors to listen in to users taking advantage of the audio to text functionality in its Messenger service.
The affected users had opted into having their Messenger chats transcribed, the firm said. However, Facebook Messenger users might not have known this was going to be done by humans–who were tasked with transcribing conversations to assess the accuracy of the tool.
Facebook policies are not explicit, simply stating: “We collect the content, communications and other information you provide when you use our products, including when you sign up for an account, create or share content and message or communicate with others.”
Thankfully, Facebook said it had paused the practice over a week ago, after finding out Google and Apple had stopped their use of human reviewers.
A Facebook spokesperson says: “Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago.”
Facebook is listening: Why it matters
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As of 2018 there were 1.3 billion users of Facebook Messenger, and it will add to concerns about the upcoming merging of this app with WhatsApp. It’s difficult to gauge how many people actually used the transcription functionality and what proportion of these were being listened to. But the audio snippets were apparently anonymized to mask people’s identities.
Facebook has “time and time again shown little regard for users' privacy,” says security researcher Sean Wright. “While I understand there could be a legitimate need to have a human review the recordings from time to time, this should be made absolutely explicit to the user.”
It’s therefore a major concern that seemingly private Facebook Messenger conversations were listened to by a human being. It also adds fuel to the fire for the tin foil hat wearing Facebook users out there. There’s long been a (unproven) conspiracy that Facebook is somehow listening to people’s conversations via their phone mic, and serving them relevant advertising as a result.
It also sees Facebook become the fourth company to confirm that human contractors are listening to people’s private conversations. In July, it emerged that Apple contractors were listening to Siri conversations.
Earlier in July, it was revealed that Google was doing the same with its Home Assistant interactions. Back in April, it emerged that the Amazon assistant Alexa was recording sometimes private conversations.
This month, Vice’s Motherboard revealed that some Skype calls were also being listened to by Microsoft contractors.
Facebook eavesdropping: What to do
So, what should you do? Facebook users should really know by now that using Messenger for private conversations isn’t very secure. “Facebook already admits to scanning Messenger content such as text, images and links for many reasons so transcribing audio or video content is really just an add on to what they are already doing,” points out Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET.
“Micro targeted advertising is their multimillion-dollar business so naturally there may be data within this audio which will add to people’s profile,” says Moore. “However, where this becomes a privacy matter or even grey area is, people wrongly tend to assume that this content is private from all eyes and ears.”
Personally, I don’t use Facebook Messenger at all: Services such as Signal are so much more secure for your daily communication. But is it time to delete Facebook entirely? Perhaps: After numerous hacks and privacy breaches, the Silicon Valley giant has done nothing to show it’s taking good care of your data.
If deleting your account entirely is too much, you could start with the app. Apple has already made a change that stops apps such as Facebook from collecting data in the background as it moves to try and improve user privacy.
If you care about your privacy, ethical hacker John Opdenakker recommends uninstalling the app. “If you still want to use Facebook and Messenger on your phone, at least check the app permissions and switch off access to the microphone if it’s enabled.”
You carry your phone around everywhere and that gives apps such as Facebook access to a lot of data. If you are concerned about that, why not just use it on your desktop instead?
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1a88cae9d6d475c706808744beb073ed | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/08/22/google-android-spyware-warning-as-devious-app-hits-the-play-store-twice/ | Google Android Warning As Devious Spyware Hits The Play Store | Google Android Warning As Devious Spyware Hits The Play Store
Google Android users are being warned to be vigilant after a spyware app made it onto the official ... [+] Play store, twice. Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto
Google Android users are being warned to be vigilant after security researchers at ESET discovered a rogue spyware app has hit the official Play store, twice. It comes after researchers at Trend Micro warned last weekend that adware-ridden apps had been downloaded by 8 million Play Store users.
The spyware-containing app, called Radio Balouch or RB Music, is based on the open source espionage tool called AhMyth. Its malicious intentions are cleverly hidden. The app offers fully working streaming radio for Balouchi music enthusiasts–but it also steals your personal data.
It’s not the first time malicious apps based on AhMyth have appeared since it was made publicly available in late 2017. However, Radio Balouch is the first to make it onto the official Google Play store. And the researchers say its spying capabilities could easily be attached to another app.
Android spyware on the Play Store: What happened and what does the app do?
The spyware-ridden app was removed after it was initially discovered and reported to Google by the ESET researchers. However, it wasn’t long before the attackers put the app back up on Google Play, when it was once again found by ESET and removed by Google.
Lukas Stefanko, the malware researcher at ESET who conducted the investigation, said the fact that Google let the same developer post “this evident malware” to the store repeatedly is “disturbing.”
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The malware, which ESET detected as Android/Spy.Agent.AOX, was available on alternative app stores in addition to Google Play. It has also been promoted on a dedicated website, via Instagram, and YouTube. ESET has reported this but is yet to receive a response.
The malicious Radio Balouch app appeared twice on Google Play. ESET
The data-stealing capabilities of Radio Balouch are pretty disturbing. The malicious functionality enables the app to steal contacts, harvest files and send SMS messages from the affected device.
But luckily, the malicious app hadn’t netted too many installs by the time it was removed: ESET detected just over 100.
A wake-up call for Google’s Play store?
The install numbers aren’t huge, but the fact spyware was able to make it onto Google’s play store is concerning, because it means it could easily happen again. “The repeated appearance of the Radio Balouch malware on the Google Play store should serve as a wake-up call to both the Google security team and Android users,” Stefanko said. “Unless Google improves its safeguarding capabilities, a new clone of Radio Balouch or any other derivative of AhMyth may appear on Google Play.”
It's a significant and well-known problem–and it appears that Google is finding it increasingly difficult to police its Play store. “Apple seems to be stricter when it comes to reviewing apps, as well as placing some security limitations on developers,” says independent security researcher Sean Wright. “Google is a lot more open, allowing developers to potentially introduce security flaws in their apps.”
“Google should really do a better job at vetting apps and blocking malicious ones from its play store,” says ethical hacker John Opdenakker. “They should improve their malware detection algorithms.”
He says it's “unbelievable” that so many malicious apps make it to the Google Play store and concerning that this was allowed to happen multiple times.
Spyware on Google Play: What to do
In general, there are a few things you can do to avoid becoming a victim in the future. It’s important to keep your Android device up-to-date and use anti-virus to protect it. In addition, be cautious about the permissions an app requests, and make sure you read the reviews.
“Before downloading, people need to do their own due diligence on apps,” says Jake Moore, cybersecurity expert at ESET. “They need to start by researching the developer and reading reviews on the app and others they may have created.
“If you choose to download, you need to take a good look at the app permissions they are trying to request from your device too. The Play store may seem like a minefield, but Google tends to trust users to do their own research, plus they are very quick to act if an app is shown to be malicious.”
People should always pay attention to the permissions required by the app, agrees Wright: “If it is a flashlight app, it should not need to access your contacts.”
Issues with the Play store are really starting to grate on Android users. If Google doesn’t do something about it soon, it’s possible that some people may even choose to give up on the operating system altogether.
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7913aa75292706e5fd7ea8937f69e607 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/08/22/heres-why-you-cant-trust-facebooks-new-privacy-feature/ | Facebook's New Privacy Tool Comes With A Crucial Caveat | Facebook's New Privacy Tool Comes With A Crucial Caveat
“Off-Facebook Activity” shows a summary of the apps and websites sending information to Facebook and ... [+] provides the option to clear it. picture alliance via Getty Images
Ever been served a Facebook ad showing some headphones you were just looking at online? It’s not a conspiracy, there’s a good reason: The sites you were browsing previously will often send your activity to Facebook.
It’s pretty intrusive to say the least, and in light of increasing realization that this is happening, Facebook is launching a new feature, "Off-Facebook Activity," which it says will allow you to see and control the data that apps and websites share with the social networking site.
The new feature shows a summary of the apps and websites sending information to Facebook and provides the option to clear it, Facebook’s chief privacy officer Erin Egan and director of product management David Baser said in a blog post.
The feature was promised by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg back in 2018 following the fall out from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Off-Facebook activity: What does it do?
According to Facebook, the new feature will allow you to see a summary of the information other apps and websites have sent the social networking site through a tool called Facebook Pixel or the Facebook Login service.
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You will then have the option to disconnect this information from your account if you want to. In addition, you can choose to disconnect future off-Facebook activity from your account. This can apparently cover all your off-Facebook activity, or just specific apps and websites.
Off-Facebook Activity will first be made available to people in Ireland, South Korea and Spain, before being rolled out globally.
So is it a good thing? Jake Moore, cybersecurity expert at ESET sees the move as “a step forward in being more open about tracking and sharing internet habits online.”
Off-Facebook Activity: Not a privacy tool
But unfortunately, as is often the case with Facebook, the new tool is not all it seems.
If you clear your off-Facebook activity, the social network says it will “remove your identifying information from the data that apps and websites choose to send us.”
However, as Wired points out, even after you turn off the ability for Facebook to collect your data to be used for ads, the social network will carry on collecting the information. The data will still remain connected to your account for two days.
In a Help Center post, Facebook admits: “Your future off-Facebook activity will be disconnected within 48 hours from when it's received. During this time, it may be used for measurement purposes and to make improvements to our ads systems.”
And your Off-Facebook Activity won’t be deleted from the social network’s servers. Instead, it just decouples this from your personal information and it will still show up in aggregated form.
With firms such as Apple making a big deal about privacy, Facebook knows it has to catch up. But experts question whether it’s doing so in the right way. “I wouldn't trust Facebook more now,” says ethical hacker John Opdenakker. “The reason that they do this is not because they care so much about their users’ privacy all of a sudden, but because they have no choice after the scandals like Cambridge Analytica.”
What to do
Facebook has a reputation for collecting data when users might not be 100% aware. It came under fire recently when it emerged the social network was hiring contractors to listen in to conversations made via its Messenger voice to text service.
I said at the time that it was a good time to consider deleting Facebook–or at least to consider removing the app from your phone.
“If you are worried about your privacy, avoid using Facebook,” says independent security researcher Sean Wright. “If you still have to, use a separate browser to your ordinary browser,” he says. “Or there are some fantastic browser extensions which allow you to create isolated session containers to prevent sites from viewing one another.”
Another way to prevent tracking is to use a VPN service. Moore advises: “If people are concerned with their data being shared between sites and social networks, I would recommend they use private browsing with a VPN for all online shopping to keep their data private and contained.”
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be9acf97283e096e0beedf59d5008759 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/09/30/warning-as-apple-ios-13-touch-id-bug-hits-millions-of-iphone-users/?ss=consumertech | Apple iOS 13 Touch ID Warning Issued To Millions Of iPhone Users | Apple iOS 13 Touch ID Warning Issued To Millions Of iPhone Users
Another iOS 13 bug has emerged, affecting Touch ID as a method of logging into certain apps. AFP/Getty Images
Apple’s iOS 13 is suffering from a number of bugs and security problems. And 9to5Mac has found another bug affecting older iPhones with Touch ID, which impacts apps that offer this method as a form of authentication–such as banking apps.
To the frustration of millions of Apple users, it’s not always possible to log in using Touch ID or Face ID because the alert dialog will not show on the screen.
Any app that allows you to use Face ID or Touch ID to log in will be affected by the bug. As well as banking apps such as Chase and Barclays, the issue impacts password managers such as 1Password.
It does not impact Face ID but affects older phones using Touch ID such as the iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. The issue is present on iOS 13 and the updated versions iOS13.1 and iOS 13.1.1.
It’s certainly not the first bug in iOS 13. After initial reports of multiple bugs, I reported a location privacy issue last week, and a third party keyboard security issue has just been fixed in iOS 13.1.1.
This is in addition to a security problem that could potentially allow an attacker to bypass lock screen protection.
Apple iOS 13 Touch ID bug: The fix
Thankfully, there is a fix for this annoying issue. Despite the fact that you can’t see it, the Touch ID dialog prompt hasn’t disappeared completely–it is, in fact, still there. So, if you just put your finger on the iPhone’s home button, your fingerprint should be authorized to allow you to continue logging in. Apparently, some users are able to make the alert dialog appear by shaking their device–so there’s another option to try.
The issue is annoying, but some experts think it could cause more serious problems too. “This is a bit of a concern: I have no doubt that attackers might use this bug to their advantage to get the user to use their biometrics to authenticate malicious requests,” says security researcher Sean Wright.
Updating to iOS 13
Many people put off updating to new operating systems until bugs and security issues have been ironed out. So, if you haven’t already, should you upgrade to iOS 13? “There is always a slight dilemma of choosing when is a good time to update an operating system,” says Jake Moore, cybersecurity expert at ESET. “Updating is without doubt an important part of owning an Apple device but it can sometimes have a negative effect when not all apps are able to then talk to the new iOS. Developers are given plenty of time to iron out any bugs, but usually your best testing is when it goes live.”
IOS 13 is certainly one of Apple’s more exciting releases, including multiple privacy and security features that could be a real blow to data gathering apps such as Facebook and Google. For those that haven’t updated yet, many experts think you should install the latest version of Apple’s iOS.
Ethical hacker John Opdenakker points out that keeping iOS up to date is recommended best practice in order to be as secure as possible. “When an iOS update introduces vulnerabilities, Apple is known to be quick with releasing new updates that solve these problems,” he points out.
If you have already updated to iOS 13, make sure you are as current as possible and have installed iOS 13.1.1. Apple may be suffering from bugs, but it’s fixing issues quickly and it’s likely you won’t be waiting for long.
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be4cdee109aceb4e9ca979a9bafcc420 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/10/18/the-google-pixel-4s-flawed-face-unlock-creates-an-apple-advantage/ | Google’s Pixel 4 Face Unlock Suffers From This Fatal Flaw | Google’s Pixel 4 Face Unlock Suffers From This Fatal Flaw
Google's Pixel 4 Face Unlock works when a person is asleep, raising security concerns. Getty Images
Google’s Pixel 4 is the phone that wants to take on Apple’s iPhone for privacy and security credentials. At the Pixel 4’s launch on Tuesday in New York, Google talked about privacy and security measures such as the ability to manage activity data on the device.
But at a time when security matters more than ever to users, Google’s Pixel 4 suffers from a fatal flaw. The Face Unlock feature works even if you have your eyes closed, according to the BBC, which tested the phone on a number of people.
Google has confirmed this on its own site, which reads: “Your phone can be unlocked by someone else if it’s held up to your face, even if your eyes are closed.”
The risk is, of course, that someone could open your phone when you are asleep. Worse still, Google axed the fingerprint scanner on the Pixel 4, so Face Unlock is the only form of biometric defense.
“It’s strange that the Pixel doesn't use fingerprint biometrics anymore, which is likely to be more secure than their current facial recognition implementation,” ethical hacker John Opdenakker says.
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“The fact that a phone can be unlocked even with your eyes closed makes me wonder if there are any other flaws in their facial recognition implementation.”
Google sent me a statement, which reads: “There's always a chance that another person could unlock your phone if their appearance is very similar to yours, such as with identical twins. Pixel 4 meets the requirements to be a strong biometric. But it is also resilient against unlock attempts via other means, like with masks for example.”
It also said it will improve the feature over time.
Apple’s Face ID versus the Google Pixel 4’s Face Unlock
Apple’s Face ID is considered one of the best in the market, as it is able to test if a person is aware and looking at the camera before it unlocks.
But facial recognition as a smartphone security feature can often be easily fooled. A few months back, Forbes’ Thomas Brewster tricked a number of Android phones using a 3D printed version of his own head.
Other biometric issues also surfaced this week, when it emerged that the Samsung Galaxy S10 fingerprint scanner could be bypassed. Commenting on this vulnerability, Twitter security expert @SwiftOnSecurity said: “Apple really does treat biometrics as a trustworthy computing layer, whereas other companies in the mobile space reliably treat biometrics as proof-of-concept sales pitches for their whitelabel component business.
“It’s frankly ridiculous how well Face ID worked in their first deployment of it. Same thing with fingerprint scanners. They were years behind, but then they were years ahead.”
And it seems that some smartphone makers are keen to rush out features before they are perhaps ready. Opdenakker thinks that Google “still has some work to do to improve the face unlock feature.”
Google Pixel 4: The Face Unlock risk
However, the Face Unlock issue is not necessarily a massive risk to a person using the Pixel 4. Given the physical access needed to use face unlock when you’re asleep, the perpetrator would probably need to be your partner or your kids. Not great if you have something to hide, but otherwise, some experts don’t see it as a concern.
“Sure, it’s better to have detection that the user is alert to unlock the phone, but personally I don’t see it as much of an issue,” says independent security researcher Sean Wright. “You need the phone and need to be in close proximity to the user–that’s already an extremely powerful position to be in.”
Meanwhile, Google itself actually has a solution to the Pixel 4 Face Unlock problem: A feature called “Lockdown” which allows you to turn off notifications, fingerprint or face recognition unlocking, and Smart Lock while on your lock screen.
Biometrics are a nice idea and great when they work, but they are not the best way to secure your phone on their own. A strong passcode is much more secure than any biometric–at least for now.
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20b8b30252dca38366861f91bdfd4cf3 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/10/21/nsa-and-ncsc-warning-russian-hackers-disguised-as-iranian-spies-hacked-35-countries/ | Russian Hackers Disguised As Iranian Spies Attacked 35 Countries | Russian Hackers Disguised As Iranian Spies Attacked 35 Countries
Russian cyber actors disguised themselves as Iranian spies so they could stealthily orchestrate ... [+] attacks on countries across the world, the U.S.'s NSA and U.K.'s NCSC said. picture alliance via Getty Images
Russian cyber actors disguised themselves as Iranian spies so they could stealthily orchestrate attacks on countries across the world, the U.S. and U.K. said today ( October 21) in a joint statement.
The so-called Turla group, which is also known as Snake or Uroburos, hid in plain sight by acquiring Iranian tools and infrastructure to perform their attacks, the U.K.’s Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and U.S. National Security Agency said.
In total, 35 countries were attacked, including the U.K. and U.S., with a “large cluster” of victims based in the Middle East. Victims included military establishments, government departments, scientific organisations and universities.
Turla used implants derived from Iranian hackers’ previous campaigns, “Neuron” and “Nautilus”–which they obtained through compromising the Iran based hackers themselves.
“Identifying those responsible for attacks can be very difficult, but the weight of evidence points towards the Turla group being behind this campaign,” said Paul Chichester, the NCSC’s director of operations.
In a defiant statement, he sent a warning to attackers that “even when cyber actors seek to mask their identity,” it’s possible for intelligence agencies to identify them.
The NCSC added that in some instances, it appeared that the implant had first been deployed by an IP address associated with an Iranian APT group, which was later accessed from infrastructure associated with the Russian group Turla. This suggests Turla effectively took control of victims previously compromised by a different actor, the NCSC said.
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Russian group Turla targets government, military, technology, energy and commercial organizations. The NCSC published two advisories on the use of Neuron and Nautilus tools by Turla in late 2017 and early 2018.
NSA and NCSC warning and the Russia plausible deniability problem
Russia is one of the most sophisticated cyber actors in the world, so it’s no surprise that the country’s hackers are finding new ways to confuse and stay hidden.
Plausible deniability is an ongoing issue in the increasing complex cyber warfare environment. “Cyberspace is not regulated in the same way as land, maritime, air or space when it comes to international actions relating to war with an equivalent of the Geneva Conventions and Protocols or an Outer Space Treaty,” says Philip Ingram, MBE, a former colonel in British military intelligence. “To avoid political embarrassment and the possibility of political repercussions, the use of a plausibly deniable outlet is key: Without substantive proof, there can never be substantive repercussions.”
Meanwhile, the Russians have a doctrine called маскировка (maskirovka) which encourages “masking” or deception. “This is central to all they do; it allows them to interfere overseas but be able to deny it. We saw this with the attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury last year,” Ingram says.
Ingram also points out that Iran is “a closed country with little access to western academia and training” yet apparently it appears to be able to “mount some of the most sophisticated cyber incidents.”
“We hear the same of North Korea, who should have zero access to technology, academia, and extremely controlled access to the internet,” Ingram adds.
Could it be that Russia is behind more incidents than people think? “A smudge of what could be a Russian fingerprint sits over many incidents,” says Ingram. “Not enough for real proof, but something that always seems to be there.”
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42154a727657f3a707b85b5ac4d39fe7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/11/06/apple-issues-new-blow-to-facebook-and-google-with-this-privacy-move/ | Apple Issues New Blow To Facebook And Google With This Bold Privacy Move | Apple Issues New Blow To Facebook And Google With This Bold Privacy Move
Apple just hit out at rivals Facebook and Google with a move sure to entice people concerned about ... [+] their security and privacy. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Apple wants to be the company of choice for people concerned about their security and privacy. The iPhone maker has made its intentions clear since the roll out of its updated operating system iOS 13, which adds a host of new features that take a direct hit at its rivals Facebook and Google.
For example, Apple’s iOS 13 doesn’t allow VoIP apps to run in the background when not in use, so they aren’t able to collect your data without you knowing.
Today, Apple announced another move to lock people into its ecosystem and see it selected over Google and Facebook. The firm has updated its privacy website to read in a similar way to its product pages.
The visual and easy to read section of Apple’s site includes no new policies. But many security and privacy features have already been added in iOS 13–such as sign in with Apple and the ability to have more control over whether apps can track you.
The updated site also pushes the firm as the company for anyone who cares about the way their data is used. Laying it on pretty thick, it reads: “Privacy is a fundamental human right. At Apple, it’s also one of our core values. Your devices are important to so many parts of your life. What you share from those experiences, and who you share it with, should be up to you.”
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Apple is also offering whitepapers giving more technical users the option to deep dive into its privacy and security strategy. Services covered include the Safari web browser, FaceID and location services.
Apple and the privacy battle
As the number of breaches increases, and as people become more aware about just how much data companies such as Google and Facebook collect, privacy is now an important differentiator.
Apple has so far been pretty successful in building its reputation in the area, despite a number of security incidents and heavy criticism of bugs and issues in iOS 13. The company isn’t shy of calling out its rivals either: It even placed billboard ads stating, “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.”
Recently, Apple even managed to turn around a Siri voice assistant scandal by bringing in crucial new security and privacy features that give users more control in iOS 13.2.
So could Apple’s move spark a major industry change? It’s first important to note that Apple’s business model is different from many others. “While the likes of Google and Facebook make a significant amount of their revenue from advertising (which goes against privacy), Apple instead makes money from sales of hardware,” says security researcher Sean Wright, adding: “But we are starting to see a shift in some other companies, such as Google with its Pixel devices and Facebook’s webcam.”
However, it ups the stakes between the competitive firms. Jake Moore, cybersecurity expert at ESET points out: “When Apple updates a policy or even drastically changes an area of business, it usually doesn’t take long for other influential companies to follow suit and make similar adjustments.
“Apple doesn’t have a notable privacy scandal in its history which has helped build on customers’ trust, so it will just fuel this already positive alliance.”
And compared to the other major players, says ethical hacker John Opdenakker, Apple seems to be the company that takes people's privacy the most seriously. “I think this is a clever strategy as more users start caring about their online privacy," he says.
Apple is certainly playing its privacy hand, and often. Who knows, the move may tempt some Android users into buying an iPhone following a number of major issues with apps in the Google Play Store.
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f9ae3aa839c3c9dd19ba3428c89e24d1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/11/12/facebook-ios-13-bug-opens-your-camera-while-you-scroll-your-feed/ | Facebook iOS 13 ‘Bug’ Opens Your Camera While You Scroll Your Feed | Facebook iOS 13 ‘Bug’ Opens Your Camera While You Scroll Your Feed
Apple iPhone users are being warned about a Facebook app issue that apparently allows the app to ... [+] activate your camera as you scroll your feed. Getty Images
Apple iPhone users are being warned about a Facebook issue that apparently allows the app to activate your camera as you scroll your feed.
The iOS issue, which appears to be a bug in the iOS 13.2.2 version of the app, was posted to Twitter by a user called Joshua Maddux. His post reads: “Found a @facebook #security & #privacy issue. When the app is open it actively uses the camera. I found a bug in the app that lets you see the camera open behind your feed. Note that I had the camera pointed at the carpet.”
Maddux also posted a video showing how the iPhone’s camera opens when scrolling down on your feed. He discovered the issue was present on five devices running iOS 13.2.2, but not on iOS 12. Meanwhile, tech site The Next Web claimed the problem did not affect iOS 13.1.3 either.
But the good news is, revoking Facebook’s camera access seems to resolve the issue.
Facebook’s VP of integrity Guy Rosen has responded via Twitter, saying: “Thanks for flagging this. This sounds like a bug, we are looking into it.”
It’s easy to assume that the problem is intentional, and that Facebook is using your iPhone’s camera to spy on you. However, it’s much more likely a bug; something that’s been fairly common in many app versions for Apple’s latest operating system version iOS 13.
A Facebook spokesperson said the issue was being addressed and sent me a statement via email, which reads: "We recently discovered that version 244 of the Facebook iOS app would incorrectly launch in landscape mode.
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“In fixing that issue last week in v246 (launched on November 8) we inadvertently introduced a bug that caused the app to partially navigate to the camera screen adjacent to News Feed when users tapped on photos.
“We have seen no evidence of photos or videos being uploaded due to this bug. We’re submitting the fix for this to Apple today."
But the problem does not look great for Facebook, says security researcher Sean Wright. “They appear to be going from one mishap to another. Given their past they are now under the spotlight more than ever, so issues that might have not been too severe some time ago have now suddenly become a big thing.”
He thinks users should delete their Facebook app, or at least revoke camera access straight away.
Ethical hacker John Opdenakker agrees: “This proves that you shouldn’t give access to your camera, unless that's one of the core functionalities and thus the reason you installed the app in the first place.”
For now, it’s important to note: The Facebook iOS 13.2.2 issue is a bug, but it’s still a privacy problem that you need to address until it’s fixed. If you really can’t face deleting your app from your phone, at least revoke the iPhone’s camera access.
Updated November 12 at 15:13 ET with Facebook’s statement.
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88903545e795b2246679b6faa969f6dc | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/12/03/fbi-faceapp-investigation-confirms-threat-from-apps-developed-in-russia/ | The FBI Investigated FaceApp. Here’s What It Found | The FBI Investigated FaceApp. Here’s What It Found
The FBI has just confirmed that viral app FaceApp and other Russian made apps may pose a threat to ... [+] people’s privacy. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mobile apps developed in Russia such as the viral face-editing app FaceApp are a threat to security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed. The FBI warning came on December 2, calling FaceApp and other apps developed in Russia a “potential counterintelligence threat.”
It comes after the National Democratic Committee warned its 2020 presidential candidates not to use FaceApp. In July, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic U.S. Senate minority leader, called for national security reviews from the FBI and Federal Trade Commission in a letter.
Schumer published the FBI’s letter on Twitter. He wrote: “A warning to share with your family & friends: This year when millions were downloading #FaceApp, I asked the FBI if the app was safe.
“Well, the FBI just responded. And they told me any app or product developed in Russia like FaceApp is a potential counterintelligence threat.”
There is no solid evidence that FaceApp gives people’s data to the Russian government. However, the FBI said in its response to Schumer’s letter that the risk stems from the fact that Moscow can access communications directly via internet service providers.
FBI FaceApp warning: Should you be concerned?
It’s certainly a scary warning, especially since concerns about FaceApp were already raised before. Should you be worried?
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In July and as the FaceApp ageing app went viral for a second time, Forbes’ Thomas Brewster wrote: “No, FaceApp isn’t taking photos of your face and taking them back to Russia for some nefarious project. At least that’s what current evidence suggests.”
At the time, 100 million people had downloaded the app from Google Play. But FaceApp said when asked that it doesn’t “sell or share any user data with third parties.”
I have asked the firm to comment on this story and will update it if it responds.
Concerns are only really valid if you are a high-profile name, a company that holds sensitive IP, or someone who works in the intelligence services, says Ian Thornton-Trump, CompTIA faculty member.
“Russia would very much appreciate and encourage the use of FaceApp by anyone with a security clearance and their immediate family,” he says. However, in general he concedes that “of course there are national security considerations with any data being held in an adversarial or politically non-aligned country.”
He also points to “the really apparent problem”–the lack of any effective controls on commercial enterprises which may have espionage potential.
A FaceApp warning, but what about U.S. tech firms?
However, Thornton-Trump also believes people need to take the FBI warning with a pinch of salt: “I feel like this is a political opportunity to stoke the narrative of ‘tech company in Russia is bad; tech company in USA is good.’ It looks and smells like political pandering to an election base.”
And of course, U.S. based companies are also collecting vast amounts of user data: Look at Google, Facebook, and Apple, which are also under investigation by U.S. lawmakers.
It’s important that people are cautious about any app they download, regardless of where the company is based. In fact, Thornton-Trump says: “The data collection practices of firms such as Google and Facebook make this look even more out of touch with the reality on the ground.”
FaceApp responds
FaceApp’s founder Yaroslav Goncharo sent me an email explaining how the firm uses third-party cloud providers–specifically Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services–to process and edit photographs.
“For Amazon Web Services, we specify the U.S. as the data storage location. For the Google Cloud Platform, we specify data storage at a location closest to you when you use the app,” he says, highlighting FaceApp’s updated privacy policy, which was revised following recent media attention to describe only the company’s current privacy practices.
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Update December 4 at 10:45 ET
Updated with FaceApp’s response and privacy policy.
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0d421ce2815669a424126e6cc9982ddc | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/12/04/apple-iphone-12-could-come-with-3d-fingerprint-reader/?ss=consumertech | Apple iPhone 12 Could Come With Turbo-Charged Touch ID | Apple iPhone 12 Could Come With Turbo-Charged Touch ID
The Apple iPhone 12 rumour mill is in action, and the return of the TouchID fingerprint scanner ... [+] looks increasingly likely. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Apple’s latest iPhones come without the Touch ID fingerprint scanner, instead using Face ID for an extra layer of security. Personally, I prefer Face ID to Touch ID–which I found inaccurate, often forcing me to try several attempts to access my iPhone.
Of course now the iPhone 11 has launched, the iPhone 12 rumour mill is in full force, and it seems Touch ID could be back, but in a slightly different form. According to the Economic Daily News, a Taiwanese site that often covers Apple-related stories, the iPhone maker has arranged to meet with GIS, a Taiwanese manufacturer, to discuss the possibility of a smartphone with an under-display fingerprint scanner.
Due to appear in an iPhone released in 2020 or 2021, the fingerprint scanner in question is Qualcomm’s ultrasonic sensor and GIS would supply components.
The Qualcomm ultrasonic sensor is used in Samsung’s Galaxy S10 range, however, it was recently found to be suffering from a flaw, sparking rumours that it would be discontinued altogether on Galaxy S11 devices.
However, an upcoming version of Qualcomm’s ultrasonic sensor will apparently be larger, which should prevent the issues suffered by the Samsung Galaxy S range.
Qualcomm revealed its new 3D Sonic Max fingerprint scanner on December 3, measuring 20mm by 30mm–much larger than the 4mm by 9mm reader currently on the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10. In fact, it’s 17 times bigger, and can read two fingerprints at once, according to Engadget.
In September, Bloomberg reported that Touch ID might be returning to the 2020 version of Apple’s iPhone and this new report adds to the evidence.
Apple iPhone 12 fingerprint reader: Great for security
It’s a great move for iPhone security–biometrics are the perfect extra layer, especially if Apple gives users the option to have both Face ID and Touch ID.
Security researcher Sean Wright points out that providing users with choices can help in terms of security, as long as the options presented are rock solid. “I’m also hopeful that Apple performs refinement–which they are well known for–to prevent the significant issues we have seen in the past such as the problem with the embedded fingerprint reader on Samsung devices.
“Biometrics offer a viable alternative to passwords, and are one of the rare scenarios when improved usability doesn’t mean a sacrifice in security.”
ESET cybersecurity expert Jake Moore agrees: When it works, extra authentication is always going to be a good thing. “To most people, authentication can be an inconvenience which can cause them to bypass it, making accounts vulnerable. However, when it is designed correctly, it can have a huge impact on protection.”
Apple is certainly doing the right thing by considering a fingerprint reader on the iPhone 12. If it works, an extra layer of authentication is always going to make people more secure, even if they do choose to use Face ID instead.
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a94836fc944103d2b1b63878ee1cfa67 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/01/03/will-iran-respond-to-general-qassem-soleimani-killing-with-a-cyber-attack/?ss=cybersecurity | After Soleimani’s Killing, Will Iran Launch A Cyberattack Against The U.S.? | After Soleimani’s Killing, Will Iran Launch A Cyberattack Against The U.S.?
03 January 2020, Iraq, Baghdad: Supporters of the predominantly Shia Muslim Popular Mobilization ... [+] Forces (PMF) shout slogans during an anti-US protest after the US airstrike in Baghdad that killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force, and PMF deputy head Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Photo: Ameer Al Mohmmedaw/dpa (Photo by Ameer Al Mohmmedaw/picture alliance via Getty Images) dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
Qassem Soleimani, head of Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, was killed on January 3 in a U.S. airstrike, it has been confirmed. International leaders are now calling for restraint as Iran-U.S. tensions escalate.
Indeed, many fear a physical response from Iran after the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the U.S. of "harsh retaliation.”
Could part of Iran’s response include a cyberattack? It will be an option, but not initially, says Philip Ingram, MBE, a former colonel in military intelligence. He says a cyberattack is “not aggressive enough” and predicts physical retaliation.
“They will want real blood–in addition Iran is probably more cyber vulnerable than capable but it will play a part of their longer term response, possibly as a voluntary proxy for Russia.”
As Forbes contributor Zak Doffman writes, cyberattacks on restricted targets don’t make compelling TV news. They are largely unseen and difficult to fact check and attribute.
Soleimani killing: Layers of retaliation
Ingram thinks there will be several layers of retaliation. He wrote in a blog: “The immediate will be to show strength and will probably happen just after the three days of mourning.
“It will be a decisive act to send a clear message to the U.S. that Iran will not stand back and do nothing and is likely to be spectacular in nature.”
He then raises the possibly of “a massive increase in proxy terror using AQ, ISIS and other organizations, often without their direct knowledge, as plausibly deniable outlets targeting terror at the U.S. and its allies across the globe.”
Alongside this, Ingram predicts “greater cooperation with the Russians and increasing activity in the proxy wars across the region including in Yemen.”
CompTIA global faculty member Ian Thornton Trump points out that “Iran is already cyber-attacking; it's not like they ever stopped.”
He says this could possibly ramp up as the result of the U.S. action. “But I think we need to understand the politics of the situation first. There are a lot of layers to the attack and most of them have a domestic, regional and international aspect.”
“Iran may make a lot of noise and kick off some proxy terrorist operations and cyberattacks. But my belief is the Iranians are not stupid, they don't want a fight with the four major powers in the region: USA, Iraq, Saudi and Israel.”
Iran and cyber warfare: An interchangeable battlefield tool
As Doffman wrote in July last year, with cyber warfare an interchangeable battlefield tool, an attack in one domain can lead to retaliation in another.
He wrote: "Iran understands that retaliation against the U.S. military in the cyber domain might be akin to throwing rocks at a tank, but it can hit the vast and under-protected U.S. corporate sector at will.”
At the time an Iranian-led hack was targeting millions of unpatched Microsoft Outlook systems. It came weeks after the U.S. Cyber Command hit Iran's command and control structure in the aftermath of the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone.
Iran has already been known to target commercial and industrial firms to great effect. Cybersecurity firm FireEye says it is “anticipating an elevated threat” from Iranian actors following the airstrike on Qassem Soleimani.
The company predicts “an uptick in espionage, primarily focused on government systems, as Iranian actors seek to gather intelligence and better understand the dynamic geopolitical environment.”
Iranian attacks against the private sector
FireEye also anticipates disruptive and destructive cyberattacks against the private sector. “Prior to JCPOA, Iran carried out such attacks against the U.S. financial sector as well as other businesses and probed other critical infrastructure,” says John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis, FireEye.
“Since the agreement and despite the erosion of relations between Iran and the US, Iran has restrained similar activity to the Middle East. In light of these developments, resolve to target the U.S. private sector could supplant previous restraint.”
Iran often boasts about its own cyber-capabilities to intimidate its enemies. Last month, I reported that Iran was claiming to have thwarted a cyberattack on government servers, just days after allegedly foiling another cyber assault on its electronic infrastructure.
Three months ago, Iran was blamed for physical attacks on Saudi oil refineries. Meanwhile, the U.S. launched a cyber assault on Iranian military systems in June last year.
But last month, it emerged that Iranian hackers are also targeting critical infrastructure–industrial control systems used by power grids, manufacturing and oil refineries.
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e39ebc7ae8f7bd2ff5f17d13c067b356 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/01/18/apple-ios-1331-important-new-iphone-privacy-feature-confirmed/ | Apple iOS 13.3.1: Important New iPhone Privacy Control Confirmed | Apple iOS 13.3.1: Important New iPhone Privacy Control Confirmed
Apple iOS 13.3.1 is about to launch with an important new location privacy control, following an ... [+] iPhone 11 issue that allowed location tracking even when a user had turned it off. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Apple iOS 13.3.1 is about to launch with a new location privacy feature, following an iPhone 11 issue that allowed location tracking even when a user had turned it off. Discovered as part of the iOS 13.3.1 beta, Apple has added a toggle for the UWB chip that causes the problem.
Found by KrebsonSecurity, the issue with the iPhone 11 Pro saw the device tracking people’s locations even when the function was switched off. After at first dismissing the issue, Apple admitted that because its newer iPhone’s UWB chip isn’t approved everywhere in the world, the iPhone 11 has to use location services to confirm whether UWB can be used.
Apple promised last month that it would add the ability to turn off the location tracking, and this is happening in soon-to-launch iOS 13.3.1. The new feature was first seen by journalist and YouTuber Brandon Butch who said via Twitter that the second iOS 13.3.1 beta “does have a new toggle to disable ultra wideband.”
How do I get the new iOS 13.3.1 privacy control?
If you own an iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro and you want to use the new toggle–which I recommend you should to keep your iPhone locked down as much as possible–you’ll need to wait for iOS 13.3.1 to officially launch. Keep checking the web, and my page, and I’ll update you once it’s here.
In your Privacy Settings, go to Location Services and System Services and the new control comes under Networking and Wireless.
While you are there, why not check your other security and privacy features? Apple now gives you the ability to stop your voice data being sent to Siri, and I’ve written a guide on how to use this. In addition, I’ve also written a how-to on securing all your apps in iOS 13, including Apple’s.
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And if you are really interested in locking down your iPhone, iOS 13.3 has also added the ability to use security keys in Safari. I tried out the feature, and it’s very cool: you can see how it works in a video.
Apple’s iPhone 11 privacy move: Good for users?
In iOS 13, Apple has added a host of new security and privacy features that stop apps as such as Facebook and Google collecting your data in the background when you aren’t using them. But Apple has come under scrutiny for not adding the same controls to its own apps.
In this case Apple denied there was an issue at first, but it’s good that it’s doing something about the problem now.
“It’s good to see that Apple will give people the option to switch off ultra wideband,” says security professional John Opdenakker. “Even though Apple claimed they don’t collect user location data when this feature is turned on, iPhone 11 users must have a choice of whether to use it or not.”
However, he also asks whether the toggle will be switched to “on” by default. “I hope to see that this feature is turned off by default because then, turning it on is an informed decision.”
It’s a crucial point. As security and privacy become increasingly important in people’s lives, it’s essential they can make controlled choices about their data.
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a71d726f8f1e128c5926d60a83ee0fe7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/02/18/apple-iphone-se2-security-features-heres-what-to-expect/ | Apple iPhone SE2 Launch: These Are The Security Features You Should Know About | Apple iPhone SE2 Launch: These Are The Security Features You Should Know About
According to a new report, the iPhone SE2–AKA the iPhone 9–will launch at an event on March 31. Getty Images
After being discontinued in 2019, Apple’s cheaper smartphone model the iPhone SE has been much missed. But it looks like the budget iPhone will soon be back–it’s due to launch at an event at the end of March and could hit the shops on April 3, according to a new report.
The previous iPhone SE was a great phone, especially as a starter smartphone for an older user. Also known as the iPhone 9, the new model should also be easy to navigate and use, cheap, and will come with a fantastic set of intuitive security features.
However, the rumoured launch date is not certain, or confirmed by Apple. In addition, MacRumours reports that delays may occur due to the impact of the Wuhan Coronavirus on production.
However, the iPhone maker has a history of March events, so the predicted window looks possible. In fact, Forbes’ David Phelan predicts the iPhone SE2 event could come on Monday 23 March.
Whenever it does appear, here are some important security features you can expect from Apple’s iPhone SE2/iPhone 9.
Touch ID will form the biometric security layer
Although biometric face scanner Face ID was rumoured for this new Apple smartphone, the latest reports state that the Touch ID fingerprint reader will feature on the iPhone SE2.
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Reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts the design of the new iPhone will be similar to the iPhone 8 with a 4.7 inch screen, which means the iPhone SE2 still features the home button of the older models with Touch ID as a layer of biometric authentication.
Touch ID is also coming back to the higher end iPhone models due to launch this fall, integrated into the display along with Face ID.
The iPhone SE2/iPhone 9 will run iOS 13, with multiple powerful security and privacy features
If you have an older iPhone, you might not have been able to upgrade to Apple’s very cool iOS 13 operating system (OS). Making you more secure by default, the updated OS comes with multiple new security and privacy controls. For example, when using iOS 13 on the iPhone SE2/iPhone 9, you will have the ability to limit the data that apps such as Google and Facebook collect.
It’s also likely Apple will launch a major update to iOS 13, iOS 13.4 at the March event–which allows you to potentially use your iPhone or Apple Watch as a car key. Very cool indeed, as long as it’s secured by biometrics of course.
You can now consider FIDO compliant security keys such as the Yubico Yubikey–or your device itself
Again, if you currently own an older iPhone model, you might not have the update with iOS 13.3 that allows you to use security keys in Apple’s Safari browser. The ability to use keys such as the Yubico YubiKey on the iPhone SE2/iPhone 9 could really be lifechanging for your security, as it allows you to physically authenticate yourself on sites such as Facebook and Twitter by simply plugging in the key once you have authenticated yourself with biometrics.
Physical keys add a strong layer of security, which is something Apple is striving to make even better in the future, having just joined the FIDO Alliance–an organization dedicated to improving authentication and reducing reliance on passwords.
There’s also another cool way you can use security keys: Your device itself. Yes that’s right, Google has now given iPhone users the ability to use their smartphone as a security key to access its services via the secure enclave on Apple’s Series A chips. It is one of the aims of FIDO, so expect to see more of this in the future.
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e7e0419c759909652cd4e87b416e1a11 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/02/22/whatsapp-users-beware-heres-how-chats-are-available-to-anyone-via-google/ | WhatsApp Users Beware: Here’s How Chats Are Available To Anyone Via Google | WhatsApp Users Beware: Here’s How Chats Are Available To Anyone Via Google
WhatsApp group chats can be easily found via a Google search, because the search engine is indexing ... [+] links to conversations intended to be private. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
People use WhatsApp to chat to their friends and family because it’s easy to use and private. But the encrypted app might not be as private as you think.
WhatsApp group chats can be easily found via a Google search, because the search engine is indexing links to conversations intended to be private.
All it takes is a quick Google search and anyone can join a range of WhatsApp chats, including those meant to be private, according to esteemed tech site Vice which first broke the story.
Private WhatsApp conversations are usually only accessible via an invite code handed out to group members by the chat moderator. But this code is simply a string of text and a URL, and it seems that at least some of these are being indexed so they are findable by anyone via Google.
You can see if any of your private chats are visible by typing in chat.whatsapp.com and then adding in some detail relating to the group chat.
What happened?
On Twitter yesterday (February 21), a multimedia journalist for the German outlet Deutsche Welle, Jordan Wildon issued a warning: “Your WhatsApp groups may not be as secure as you think they are.”
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He detailed how the "Invite to Group via Link" feature “allows groups to be indexed by Google” and “they are generally available across the internet.”
In other words, Wildon explained: “Any group link that is shared it outside of secure, private messaging can relatively easily be found and joined.”
And it gets worse: even if you haven't shared the link, he said “it's possible, but difficult, to run a kind of brute-force method to get access to a URL that corresponds to an active group chat.”
Renowned ethical hacker Jane Manchun Wong confirmed this in a later tweet, adding that 470,000 search results can be found on Google for the term “chat.whatsapp.com”–a section of the URL used for WhatsApp group invites.
Many of the links lead to sensitive subjects such as porn, Vice found. A cursory search by this writer found some similar links easily available.
Although it’s true some of the links are meant to be open to the public, Vice also found chats that exposed the phone numbers of 48 participants in a WhatsApp group conversation between what appeared to be non-governmental organizations accredited by the United Nations.
I have contacted WhatsApp’s owner Facebook and Google for a comment and will update this story if they respond.
Why is this happening?
Soon after the issue was raised, Google’s public search liaison Danny Sullivan explained what was happening. “Search engines like Google and others list pages from the open web. That’s what’s happening here. It’s no different than any case where a site allows URLs to be publicly listed.”
But ethical hacker @HackrzVijay said he had reported the issue to WhatsApp owner Facebook back in November, and Facebook had not done anything about it. In fact, it’s an “intentional product decision”, Facebook said, and group admins “can invalidate the link if so desired.”
In addition, although Facebook admitted it was “surprised” that the links are indexed by Google, it said cannot control what Google indexes.
But this is bad, right?
It’s certainly not ideal, especially if you use WhatsApp for sensitive conversations. Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET says the ability to find chats so easily is “utterly horrifying.”
“I can’t see a beneficial reason as to why any party would see this as a good idea. If anything, it just makes WhatsApp appear less secure. It may be encrypted in the middle, but if you are accepted into a group chat, you have the encryption key to read on.”
Although Moore didn’t find any of his own chats, he searched for “The Girls”–the name of a group his wife was a member of–and found numerous other groups with the same name including porn-related conversations.
What to do
WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, but it is now owned by Facebook, which is integrating Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp at the back end.
After a slew of data scandals, privacy issues and breaches, many people don’t trust Facebook, so it might make sense to try something else. ESET’s Moore recommends using Signal or Telegram chat apps which, he says, “focus more heavily on user security and privacy.”
Security researcher Sean Wright agrees. He says anyone concerned about privacy should try Signal “as it doesn’t look like Facebook or Google are going to do much about this.”
Personally, I favor Signal, which is adding a number of consumer-friendly features and is super-secure and easy to use. It comes down to what you can persuade your friends and family to do. Perhaps show them this story and agree on the best app for all of you.
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Update 23 February at 03:20 ET
The issue now seems to be fixed on Google, which I am told could be due to a quiet change made by WhatsApp owner Facebook. I have contacted both firms again for comment and will provide more updates as I hear them.
However, the problem is still there when using other major search engines, and WhatsApp group moderators should be very careful. Jordan Wildon recommends going into group settings, tapping “Invite to Group via Link” then “Reset link”.
This doesn’t turn the link off: it generates a new one, he demonstrated in a tweet.
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649eecf6a4b929701e518fc49e4f65f8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/02/26/new-amazon-apple-google-eavesdropping-threat-should-you-quit-your-smart-speaker/ | Amazon, Apple, Google Eavesdropping: Should You Ditch Your Smart Speaker? | Amazon, Apple, Google Eavesdropping: Should You Ditch Your Smart Speaker?
New research has detailed how the Google Home, Amazon Echo and Apple HomePod are mistakenly ... [+] activated up to 19 times a day. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod are already in millions of homes. And people continue to buy the devices despite scandals affecting multiple voice assistants, seeing contractors listening to recordings of private conversations.
But new data is amplifying the smart speaker privacy risk further. Voice assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant are being falsely activated up to 19 times a day, according to researchers from Northeastern University and Imperial College London.
The researchers found smart speaker devices are often mistakenly hearing the “wake word” such as “Hey Google” when people are talking and therefore recording potentially private conversations.
How the researchers tested smart speaker devices
Rather than speaking from a script to try and “wake” the smart speakers, the researchers simply played Netflix for 125 hours. Shows included Gilmore Girls, The Office, The Big Bang Theory and Narcos.
Then, to be able to detect when the devices were recording audio, the researchers used video feeds to see when lights were activated; they monitored network traffic to see when data was being sent to the cloud; and self-reported recordings available from smart speakers’ cloud services. They used the closed caption text from the shows to see which words had caused the false activations.
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When the actual wake word was used in a TV show, the activation incident was removed.
The researchers tested the following devices:
Google Home Mini 1st generation (wake word: OK/Hey/Hi Google) Apple Homepod 1st generation (wake word: Hey, Siri) Harman Kardon Invoke by Microsoft (wake word: Cortana) 2 Amazon Echo Dot 2nd generation (wake words: Alexa, Amazon, Echo, Computer) 2 Amazon Echo Dot 3rd generation (wake up words: Alexa, Amazon, Echo, Computer)
Are smart speakers always listening? The Key findings
One question those concerned about their privacy when using smart speakers will ask is: Are Alexa, Siri, Cortana and the Google Assistant constantly recording conversations?
According to the researchers, the answer is no. “In short, we found no evidence to support this. The devices do wake up frequently, but often for short intervals, with some exceptions,” they say.
But they found the devices were activating without the wake word being uttered between 1.5 and a whopping 19 times a day. That’s potentially a lot of recordings of conversations that might be very private. They found the HomePod and Cortana devices activated the most, followed by Echo Dot series 2, Google Home Mini, and Echo Dot series 3.
Worse, the researchers discovered that the devices can be recording for quite a long time, allowing them to pick up conversations–the Echo Dot 2nd Generation and Invoke devices had the longest activations of 20 to 43 seconds. However, the HomePod and the majority of Echo devices saw activations lasting six seconds or more.
The Google Home Mini was often mistakenly activated when words were spoken that rhymed with “hey” such as “they”, followed by something beginning with the letter “G” or something that contains “ol” such as “cold.” The researchers discovered that “I can spare” and “I don’t like the cold” both set off Google’s device.
Meanwhile, Apple’s HomePod was often activated when words rhymed with “hi” or “hey” followed by something starting with “S”, or when the syllable rhymed with “ri.” For example “and seriously”, “I see”, “I’m sorry”, “they say.”
Amazon devices were activated when words contained a “K” sound and were similar to “Alexa”–for example “exclamation”, “Kevin’s car”, “congresswoman.” Lastly, Microsoft’s Invoke was activated with words starting with “co”, such as “Colorado”, “consider”, “coming up.”
Should you quit your smart speaker device?
The level of false activations is certainly concerning, especially if these are being recorded and sent to the cloud. The researchers themselves are worried, and say they have more questions such as, how many activations lead to audio recordings being sent to the cloud vs. processed only on the smart speaker? And do cloud providers correctly show all cases of audio recording to users? They will try to answer these questions in a wider study that this first iteration is part of.
In the meantime, there are ways of securing your smart speaker and preventing contractors from listening to your conversations, depending on your device. Apple’s Siri, for example, is now opt in only for voice recordings–something that really should have been the case from the start.
If you’ve read any of my articles, you probably already know what I think of smart speakers: They are a privacy and security nightmare. That’s why I chose long ago to put my Google Home in the trash.
If that’s a step too far for you, you can take the advice of an Amazon exec, who when interviewed recently, said he always switches off his Echo if he’s having a conversation he wouldn’t want others to hear. In addition, check your privacy settings and make sure you aren’t sharing more data than you are comfortable with.
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6ec29ea77ac4ed3c35850ebb723122a1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/04/03/apples-2020-ipad-pro-will-come-with-this-epic-new-security-feature/ | Apple’s 2020 iPad Pro Comes With This Epic New Security Feature | Apple’s 2020 iPad Pro Comes With This Epic New Security Feature
A new feature added to Apple’s 2020 iPad model ensures the microphone hardware is disabled when your ... [+] device is closed in its case. Getty Images
Are you an Apple user who cares about your privacy and security? If so, you might have a reason to upgrade to the 2020 iPad Pro. A new feature added to Apple’s 2020 iPad model ensures the microphone hardware is disabled when your device is closed in its case.
The anti-eavesdropping feature–which is already available in the 2018 MacBooks via the T2 security chip–was first spotted by the ever-reliable 9to5Mac as part of an update to Apple’s Platform Security document. It’s simple to use, you just need a MFi compliant accessory along with your 2020 iPad Pro model.
The new iPad Pro feature is important at a time when hackers are looking to compromise Apple devices across the board, including their cameras and mics. If your microphone is shut off, this won’t be able to happen–at least when you are not using your iPad. And of course, there is no need to shut off the camera when your iPad is closed, because the case would obscure it.
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The Apple document states that iPad models beginning in 2020 will “feature the hardware microphone disconnect.”
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Apple explains: “When an MFI compliant case (including those sold by Apple) is attached to the iPad and closed, the microphone is disconnected in hardware, preventing microphone audio data being made available to any software—even with root or kernel privileges in iPadOS or in case the firmware is compromised.”
Apple security updates, ahoy
The iPad Pro feature is not the only major Apple security update this week. Yesterday, it was revealed that this year’s updated operating system iOS 14 could arrive with updates to Apple’s password manager keychain to make it more useable and secure.
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It comes as Apple continues its focus on privacy and security to please a new generation of users. It’s so far worked well for Apple–which has already taken swipes at rivals such as Google by limiting data collection in the iOS 13 operating system. Unlike the iOS 13 updates, this is a new hardware feature, and it’s bound to raise interest among security-conscious Apple users.
It’s an exciting move, but enough to consider upgrading your iPad for? It depends which model you already have, but I’d certainly consider it.
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24284f0252944bc1463806e6b7a6b983 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/04/04/new-zoom-user-blow-this-is-how-thousands-of-video-chats-are-available-for-anyone-to-view-online/ | New Zoom User Blow: This Is How ‘Thousands’ Of Video Chats Are Available For Anyone To View Online | New Zoom User Blow: This Is How ‘Thousands’ Of Video Chats Are Available For Anyone To View Online
After two weeks of privacy scandals, news of “Zoom bombing” and user data being sent to China, it’s ... [+] now emerged that thousands of Zoom videos are available online for anyone to see. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
It’s easy to feel sorry for Zoom. After two weeks of privacy scandals, news of “Zoom bombing” and user data being sent to China, it’s now emerged that thousands of Zoom videos are available online for anyone to see.
The videos include sensitive chats such as business meetings and sessions with therapists–and even nudity, the Washington Post reported. It’s a shocking revelation, so how on earth has this happened?
Unsecured cloud storage left Zoom videos exposed
It appears the Zoom videos, which were recorded through the app’s software, were saved to a storage space that wasn’t protected by a password. The recorded videos can be found by anyone searching online due to the way they were named by Zoom. The security researcher who found the issue, Patrick Jackson, found 15,000 examples when he scanned the unsecured cloud storage.
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Zoom allows users who pay for the service to record meetings and save them to its own cloud service. These aren’t affected–rather, it’s videos saved to a person’s computer and then uploaded to a non-Zoom cloud service. When these services are left open, anyone can download the meetings–which themselves are easily searchable because they all have the same file name.
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Now, you might think that Zoom isn’t at fault for this–surely it can’t help what people are doing when not using its own cloud service? Not exactly: Part of the problem is caused by the fact that Zoom does not force you to create a unique file name when saving videos. This is an issue that needs to be sorted out pretty quickly.
A Zoom spokesperson emailed me a statement, which reads: “Zoom notifies participants when a host chooses to record a meeting, and provides a safe and secure way for hosts to store recordings. Zoom meetings are only recorded at the host’s choice either locally on the host’s machine or in the Zoom cloud.
“Should hosts later choose to upload their meeting recordings anywhere else, we urge them to use extreme caution and be transparent with meeting participants, giving careful consideration to whether the meeting contains sensitive information and to participants' reasonable expectations.”
What Zoom users should do
So, after this latest security snafu, what should Zoom users do? It’s a difficult question, and unfortunately one that doesn’t have a straight answer. Lots of people need to use Zoom–it’s a highly functional platform–and if your boss, teacher or therapist uses it, you are at their mercy.
That’s why I wrote an article about how to secure Zoom as much as possible.
I wouldn’t recommend Zoom for sensitive chats, it’s better to use a more secure alternative such as Signal, or FaceTime.
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“If you are using a video conferencing platform for anything sensitive such as therapy, privacy and security should be your first thought,” says ESET cybersecurity specialist Jake Moore.
He points out that Zoom has recently added many such features and the password function is now enabled default.
Zoom has seen a surge in user numbers over the past few months as COVID-19 left half the world working from home. The firm is trying to do better, but it’s important to try and take control of your own security and privacy too.
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0023e3d4a66ad59beebfe8bc84512876 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/05/15/facebooks-new-messenger-rooms-launches-why-you-should-think-before-using-it/ | Facebook Just Launched Messenger Rooms—What You Should Know Before Using It | Facebook Just Launched Messenger Rooms—What You Should Know Before Using It
Facebook’s video chat feature Messenger Rooms is now available to use, but is it secure and private?
Facebook has just made its new video chat feature Messenger Rooms available to use, starting in ... [+] North America before rolling out globally. Facebook
Facebook has just made its new video chat feature Messenger Rooms available to use, starting in North America before rolling out globally. Facebook’s video chat service—which allows you to host a conversation with up to 50 people—is slated as a highly functional Zoom alternative, but is it safe?
When Facebook first announced its Messenger Rooms function, the social network made a huge deal about how secure and private the service is. To its credit, Facebook’s video chat service has some good security features, such as the ability to lock your Room and control who can access it.
Facebook’s all too aware that Zoom has come under fire for failing to control incidents of Zoom bombing, and it wants to get off to a good start by avoiding the negative publicity that comes with invited guests crashing people’s chats.
In addition, you don’t have to have a Facebook account to use Messenger Rooms—although you do need to have one if you are the host of the group chat.
Facebook Messenger Rooms lacks end-to-end encryption
So sure, these security features will help, but they aren’t as good as they could be and don’t match the level of many competitors. Facebook Messenger Rooms doesn’t have the end-to-end encryption that make Apple’s FaceTime and Signal a truly secure video chat option. End-to-end encryption means no one has the keys to access your video chat, including the company who owns the service (and therefore law enforcement).
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Another important thing to note is, Facebook-owned WhatsApp is a secure option for your video chat for its end-to-end encryption, but only for groups of up to eight people. Once it goes beyond that, WhatsApp users will be directed to Facebook Messenger Rooms, losing that important layer of security.
It’s also worth pointing out that Facebook has a weird definition of “privacy” in Messenger Rooms—it defines this as the ability to block and report people and lock Rooms. Meanwhile, Facebook says that whether you are joining the video chat through your Facebook account or joining as a guest, the social network doesn’t “watch or listen to audio calls.”
It says audio and video from Rooms won’t be used to inform ads that it doesn’t sell any of your information to “anyone,” and “never will.”
Do you trust Facebook?
But do people really trust Facebook, which was last year found to be using external contractors to listen to users’ private conversations—and has suffered numerous data scandals and breaches?
Facebook also says about Messenger Rooms: “Across our services we work with outside vendors that help us do things like reviewing and addressing the issues reported by users and may share information with these partners like the name of the room, and who’s in it, in order to do this work.”
Plus, it says it does collect some data from people joining without an account “to provide the service and improve the product experience.”
Hmm.
Messenger Rooms uses the same privacy policy as Facebook, so treat it in the same way. I still have an account, but I don’t use it very often and I deleted the app from my phone to reduce data collection.
Services are free for a reason, and Facebook makes use of that by collecting your data and sharing it with third parties—that’s its entire business model. So by all means, use Messenger Rooms if you want to try it out, or if a friend is hosting a chat on there. But I would recommend you stay well away from Facebook Messenger Rooms if you are choosing the platform, and if you’re having a private chat. Try FaceTime or Signal instead.
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3b5e43295e47e4ebd7ce47a810c98cef | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/05/16/facebook-just-gave-700-million-giphy-users-a-reason-to-quit/ | What Is Facebook Going To Do With 700 Million Giphy Users’ Data? | What Is Facebook Going To Do With 700 Million Giphy Users’ Data?
Facebook has bought Giphy, co-founded by Alex Chung, for $400 million. Sportsfile via Getty Images
When Facebook announced yesterday (May 15) that it’s buying GIF maker Giphy for $400 million, many people were concerned. Rightly so, Facebook does not have the privacy and security credentials that most of Giphy’s 700 million daily users expect.
The firm has suffered numerous data breaches and scandals over the years, and its privacy policy is frankly concerning. Facebook collects and shares your data with third parties—its whole business model is based around your information.
And as users become aware of the sheer amount of data that many “free” services such as Facebook and Google collect, people care a whole lot more about privacy. It’s led many to boycott the two firms and delete their Facebook accounts.
It’s therefore no surprise that soon after Facebook confirmed the acquisition, Giphy users were talking about deleting their app. Many have probably already done so.
But Giphy, is built into many messaging services—so how private is it now it is owned by Facebook?
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What is Facebook going to do with Giphy data?
At the moment, we don’t really know what Facebook’s going to do with Giphy. The social network said in its announcement that it plans to “further integrate [Giphy’s] GIF library into Instagram and [its] other apps.”
But an article by Medium’s One Zero offers a scary picture of what could come: “The acquisition will likely also benefit all of Facebook’s products—from Messenger to WhatsApp— by, among other things, giving Facebook access to vast data about how GIFs are used across thousands of apps.”
As One Zero points out: Giphy already gets 50% of its traffic from Facebook’s apps, and bringing it in-house “provides a way to peek inside a vast swath of apps and websites beyond its own.”
“That means Facebook will be able to better understand user behavior in its own apps, and beyond, ultimately enhancing its ad-tracking capabilities further,” the article reads.
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Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET agrees that the Giphy purchase will provide even more access to data: “Facebook has habitually wanted the upper hand over its rivals and now it has an impressive access to even more rich data. They will also have even better insight into the behavior on how people use GIFs.”
Bloomberg reporter Sarah Frier said in a tweet that Facebook would know where its images are being used. “Facebook tells me they would know what GIFs are being used on what apps at what frequency (bulk anonymous data, not personally identifiable).”
I contacted Facebook for a comment and will update this article when the social network responds.
How to avoid Giphy
So how do you avoid Giphy?
If you have a Giphy account and don’t want the Facebook empire to own your personal details Moore suggests “deleting your account before the transition is made.”
If you’re an iPhone user, Apple includes its own iMessage GIF search app and according to 9to5Mac, it’s powered by Microsoft-owned Bing. But there is a catch: “Technically, Bing can still source GIFs through Giphy via Apple’s native iMessage search, but it’s not directly powered by Giphy,” 9to5Mac says.
For iPhone and iPad users, 9to5Mac included a great list of alternatives that you can look up.
Secure messaging app Signal, meanwhile, is using Giphy, but it uses its own privacy-preserving proxy.
Facebook’s purchase of Giphy is certainly cause for concern. I’d advise you to delete the app if you have it, and try to avoid it where you can.
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133de0dbb25debdc549845ff6627dfe6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/06/02/apple-issues-ios-1351-critical-iphone-update-with-important-security-fix/ | Apple Issues iOS 13.5.1: Critical iPhone Update With Important Security Fix | Apple Issues iOS 13.5.1: Critical iPhone Update With Important Security Fix
Apple has just dropped iOS 13.5.1—a critical update with an important security fix you’ll want to apply to your iPhone right now.
Apple has just dropped iOS 13.5.1—a critical update with an important security fix you’ll want to ... [+] apply to your iPhone right now. NurPhoto via Getty Images
It’s less than two weeks since Apple released iOS 13.5, but the iPhone maker has just dropped iOS 13.5.1. It’s a critical update with an important security fix, so you’ll want to apply it your phone right now.
The reason Apple has dropped an iOS update so soon after the last one is due to a major security vulnerability present in all iPhones running up to iOS 13.5. The “zero day” kernel vulnerability patched in iOS 13.5.1 has already been exploited by the “unc0ver” jailbreakers to produce a working jailbreak in iPhones and iPads running iOS 11 onwards.
Because the jailbreakers didn’t alert Apple to the security vulnerability, it was thought fixing the issue could take weeks—so kudos to Apple for acting so quickly in this case.
Jailbreaking is a popular tool for Apple users who want to be able to customize their phones. However, jailbreaking isn’t safe if you don’t know exactly what you are doing, because it takes advantage of weaknesses in your iPhone and leaves you vulnerable to multiple security risks.
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MORE FROM FORBESApple iOS 13.5: Vital New iPhone Feature Will Drop Any Minute NowBy Kate O'Flaherty
Why should you update to iOS 13.5.1?
Detailing iOS 13.5.1, Apple confirmed the patch on its support page where it explained how the security vulnerability could allow an application “to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges.”
Specifically, it cites “CVE-2020-9859: unc0ver.”
Apple’s iOS 13.5.1 is available for iPhone 6s and later, iPad Air 2 and later, iPad mini 4 and later, and iPod touch 7th generation.
So why should you update to iOS 13.5.1? It’s true that Apple doesn’t want you to break out of its walled garden by jailbreaking your iPhone, but this is still an important security update that you should apply right now.
Apple iOS 13.5.1 contains an important security update. Apple iPhone software
ESET cybersecurity specialist Jake Moore says updating to iOS 13.5.1 is “vital,” warning that “once a phone is jailbroken, it is void of any protection should there be a future problem with the device.”
The security fix comes at an often chaotic time for iPhone users. The latest issue follows a frustrating bug that rendered multiple iPhone apps useless. There was then further mayhem as hundreds of iOS apps suddenly started updating as Apple appeared to fix the bug.
It’s easy to check for the iOS 13.5.1 update—simply visit your Settings > General > Software Update. Download and Install now if you can, rather than waiting until your iPhone or iPad updates later tonight.
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21d65bb3ee1cdaba0801685eb6c72de3 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/06/11/bot-or-not-challenge-can-you-tell-the-difference/ | Bot Or Not Challenge: Can You Tell The Difference? | Bot Or Not Challenge: Can You Tell The Difference?
A cool new quiz challenges you to distinguish between a bot and a human. You might be surprised how difficult it is.
The Bot or Not quiz challenges you to distinguish between a bot and a human. Getty
I have a confession to make—I failed the Bot or Not quiz. But I bet I’m not the only person who can’t tell the difference between a human and a bot.
By 2020, the average person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse, according to recent Gartner industry report. Bots are appearing everywhere—there are Russian bots on Twitter; bots are writing news stories, and they’re appearing on social media and shopping sites.
As technology improves, bots are becoming increasingly convincing. Sure, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and the Google Assistant aren’t quite there yet, but they will be someday.
This is the ethos behind the Bot or Not quiz, say its creators Foreign Objects, who launched the project as part of the Mozilla Foundation’s Creative Media Awards to reveal more about the dangers of AI.
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Bot or Not quiz: Can you tell the difference? Mozilla
In fact, Bot or Not’s creators say it’s a “kind of Turing test," named after the computer scientist Alan Turing, who planted the seed of the modern chatbot in 1950.
“Turing asked a simple question: can machines think? Or, to put it more mundanely, could a machine convince a human, through conversation, that it was actually human?”
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The dangers of bots
The spread of bots is intended to increase efficiency, but there are dangers too. Google and Microsoft’s "duplex" chatbots can speak and listen at the same time, meaning they can easily trick you into thinking they are human and elicit your emotional responses. This helps them to gather your data and make sales.
"Bots are slowly becoming a bigger part of daily life,” says ESET cybersecurity specialist Jake Moore. But he warns: “Chatbots are data hungry so the more we use them, the more they will sound like humans as they learn how we write. The more data they are fed, the more productive and efficient they become."
Moore took the quiz and like me, he failed to tell the difference between a human and a bot. Like I said, it’s easy to be tricked.
So, what are you waiting for? Why don’t you take the Bot or Not quiz and find out whether you can tell the difference.
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b65c179de85ae2a95d5feb0730ed5d5d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/06/13/microsoft-knocks-zoom-out-of-the-park-with-new-features-you-need-now/ | Microsoft Knocks Zoom Out Of The Park With New Features | Microsoft Knocks Zoom Out Of The Park With New Features
Microsoft has just launched a bunch of new Teams features as it aims to knock Zoom out of the park.
Microsoft has just launched new Teams features as it aims to knock Zoom out of the park. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Over the last few months, Microsoft has been launching new Teams features to challenge Zoom’s dominance as many people work from home. Now, Microsoft has just made its Teams video conferencing service even better with new features for free users that could knock Zoom right out of the park.
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The first new Teams feature is the opportunity to use your own logo or picture as a background, or to use one of the multiple custom backgrounds Microsoft has created. Teams already had the ability to blur your background so people can’t see that messy home office when you are on a work call.
The second feature is the ability to schedule meetings and send out invitations in advance in the free Teams version. Previously you could only use the ability to Meet Now.
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Meeting schedulers have the option of either copying the meeting link to send directly to other participants or sending an invite via Outlook or Google calendar, Microsoft said in an announcement.
It’s being rolled out to current users first and will be launched “soon” for new Teams users. In addition, there is no time limit on meetings in the free version of Teams.
With the ability to schedule meetings too, the free Microsoft Teams option beats Zoom because the latter only offers free video chats for up to 45 minutes. While some people may be grateful of this for work calls, it means those who teach over Zoom have to open a paying account if they need to be online for more than 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, those using Zoom to chat to friends will often have to call back in after 45 minutes—annoying to say the least.
Another new Teams feature is the ability to turn on live captions during calls and meetings.
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Microsoft takes advantage of Zoom’s security woes
During the coronavirus crisis, Zoom has seen a surge in users and with that, security and privacy issues have emerged. Zoom has been working to try and improve its reputation and make its service safer, but for some people it’s not enough.
This has led to attempts by Zoom’s rivals to try and grab a slice of its share as video conferencing services continue to be a lifeline for people working from home.
Over the last few months, Microsoft has been taking advantage of Zoom’s misfortunes by promoting the security and privacy credentials of its Teams video conferencing platform.
Possibly the last and most important feature Microsoft Teams needs to really beat Zoom is the ability to display more than nine participants on a call. Microsoft says this crucial feature is coming to Teams very soon, but we don’t know exactly when yet.
Even so, this latest move is certainly a new reason to try out Teams for a work call or video chat with friends, especially if you are becoming wary of Zoom.
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96377701f30a4d1f54e79221df4cb315 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/06/16/microsoft-confirms-launch-date-for-ultimate-new-zoom-beating-feature/ | Microsoft Confirms Crucial New Zoom-Beating Teams Feature | Microsoft Confirms Crucial New Zoom-Beating Teams Feature
Microsoft Teams has just confirmed a launch date for the missing feature that could allow it to beat Zoom.
Microsoft Teams has just confirmed a launch date for the missing feature that could allow it to beat ... [+] Zoom. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Microsoft Teams is growing in popularity as an increasing number of security conscious users look for an alternative to Zoom. But Zoom has remained the first choice from a feature perspective—until now.
That’s because Microsoft Teams has just confirmed in a blog that its ultimate Zoom-beating feature—the ability to view up to 49 participants on a call—will launch in preview by the end of this month and to everyone this Fall.
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The new Microsoft Teams feature was already in high demand. When I wrote earlier this month that the Teams gallery view was going to expand to fit 49 people, readers were keen to know exactly when that would happen. At the time, Microsoft simply said it would be here “soon.”
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Currently, you can only view up to nine meeting participants at once on a Teams call, while you can see 49 in the gallery view on Zoom. Seeing nine people is fine if you meeting is small or if it’s simply a broadcast event.
However, with a huge number of people using video conferencing apps for exercise classes, school classes and large business meetings, this number needed to be bigger for Teams to even try to beat Zoom. The new Teams feature will be here just in time for the start of the new school year in September.
Microsoft Teams as A Zoom alternative
Microsoft knows what it is doing. The new Teams feature comes at a time when many people are wary about Zoom. The latter has faced security vulnerabilities and privacy issues, as well as problems with Zoom bombing. And recently, it came under fire for bowing down to the Chinese government’s demands.
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Microsoft has been promoting the security and privacy credentials of its rival video conferencing platform. However, although there are a lot of secure Zoom alternatives, no other app has the same level of functionality as Zoom.
Microsoft has some features that bring it on a par with Zoom. You can now customize your background, and you can schedule meetings and send out invitations in advance in the free Teams version. Previously you could only use the ability to Meet Now.
But so far, the ultimate benefit of Teams compared with Zoom is the fact that it offers unlimited time on a video call for free, while Zoom users have to pay for calls of over 45 minutes.
So this latest new Microsoft Teams feature really is a big deal for those looking to conduct school lessons or other big meetings over video conferencing. It could be the key to Microsoft Teams really starting to beat Zoom for business, educational and leisure activities.
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8e3bafeeed2d2b3ee89ee0326b8f7117 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/06/17/how-an-iphone-shortcut-can-record-if-you-are-stopped-by-the-cops/ | Powerful iPhone Shortcut Can Record If You Are Stopped By The Cops—Here’s How | Powerful iPhone Shortcut Can Record If You Are Stopped By The Cops—Here’s How
As protests continue across the world, people have started sharing an iPhone shortcut that can ... [+] record what happens if you get stopped by the cops. NurPhoto via Getty Images
As protests continue across the world over the death of George Floyd, people have started sharing an iPhone shortcut that can record what happens if you get stopped by the cops.
First revealed on Reddit in 2018 by Robert Peterson, the shortcut allows you to trigger a series of actions using Apple’s voice assistant Siri. So if you are about to get stopped by law enforcement, you can say “hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over,” to activate the program on your iPhone.
This will also stop any music, turn down the brightness on your smartphone screen and put your iPhone on Do Not Disturb.
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If you want it to, the iPhone shortcut can also send a text message out to one of your contacts to let them know you’ve been pulled over and send your location. After the recording has finished, Apple can then send a recording of the incident to that contact and back it up to iCloud so you still have a record—even if your iPhone is taken away.
How to use the iPhone shortcut
Be careful to use the right shortcut—Peterson has posted a new link to the shortcut on Twitter.
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To use it, you’ll need to first download the Shortcuts app, and then activate your first shortcut. You can do so by tapping on the Gallery button at the bottom of the iPhone screen and selecting the shortcut.
You also need to go to Settings > Shortcuts > Allow Untrusted Shortcuts to make sure the feature works. Then you download the shortcut in your Safari browser and add it to your app.
It comes as citizens are using their phones to record incidents of Police brutality during protests across the globe. Some technology companies are helping, with secure messaging app Signal recently launching a feature to help people remain anonymous by blurring their photos.
Using the iPhone shortcut is certainly a good idea, and one that can increase accountability and make you safer at a time of hugely heightened tensions. “It’s increasingly more important to document any interaction with law enforcement and this seems a very unobtrusive way to go about it,” says ESET cybersecurity specialist Jake Moore.
But he also warns Apple users: “It must be noted that once a phone is seized by the police, it will be turned off, bagged and tagged as evidence at the scene if anyone is arrested and therefore the recording will be stopped.”
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c7b7d2fada59fbcf4ed1e223eac7cabb | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/06/28/microsoft-scores-stunning-strikeout-against-zoom-with-major-new-feature/ | Microsoft Scores Stunning Strike Against Zoom With Major New Feature | Microsoft Scores Stunning Strike Against Zoom With Major New Feature
Microsoft has just scored a stunning strike against its biggest rival Zoom with a major new Teams feature.
Microsoft has just scored a stunning strikeout against its biggest rival Zoom with a major new Teams ... [+] feature. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Microsoft’s Teams has been launching features left, right and center as it aims to beat Zoom in the videoconferencing arena. Now, Microsoft has just ramped things up another level after confirming a major new Teams feature—the ability to allow 300 meeting participants to attend a video call.
Microsoft product manager Mike Tholfsen confirmed the launch of the new feature, previously outlined in the firm’s roadmap, in a tweet. By adding this feature, Microsoft will allow more businesses as well as groups such as Churches to host large meetings using Teams.
Zoom only allows 100 participants to take part in a free call, and you need an add-on if you want to increase this to up to 500 meeting participants.
Could Zoom’s security woes be a boost for Teams?
Zoom is a very feature-rich service that’s very hard to beat in terms of usability. However, its reputation has suffered in recent months as a surge in users led to a number of security issues and vulnerabilities.
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Microsoft has been taking advantage of this by pushing the security credentials of Teams, and quickly launching new features to put itself on a par with, and sometimes beating Zoom.
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This latest new feature comes alongside a bunch of consumer tools as Microsoft aims to sell Teams to the masses. Other recently launched Teams features include new backgrounds, and the ability to display up to 49 people on a call—which will be available to all users this Fall.
Meanwhile, a major Zoom-beating feature in Teams is the unlimited time frame for free calls, compared with Zoom’s 45 minute allowance for free users.
Zoom has been making a huge effort to make its service safer, but many users are still looking for an alternative. Some people say Teams isn’t as streamlined as Zoom for large meetings and can be slow or laggy, but Microsoft will of course have tested this new feature to ensure it works.
There are other options, but Teams is certainly worth trying out if you are looking for a secure Zoom alternative for large video meetings or chats.
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53688d5f19c896ea26615efe8389ddee | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/08/22/facebook-sparks-oculus-outrage-you-need-an-account-to-log-in/?sh=6f172018405a | Facebook’s Bold New Oculus Move Sparks Outrage | Facebook’s Bold New Oculus Move Sparks Outrage
Facebook has sparked outrage among Oculus users after confirming this week that a Facebook account will be needed to log into their device. The social network—which bought Oculus for $2 billion in 2014—said in a blog that starting in October this year, everyone using an Oculus device for the first time will need to log in using a Facebook account.
Facebook has sparked outrage among Oculus users after confirming this week that a Facebook account ... [+] will be needed to log into their device AFP via Getty Images
Existing Oculus users have the option to log in with Facebook and merge their accounts now, and those who choose not to will have two years to use their Oculus accounts—Facebook will end support for Oculus accounts in January 2023. But Facebook warned that those who choose to stick with Oculus accounts will lose functionality.
“If you choose not to merge your accounts at that time, you can continue using your device, but full functionality will require a Facebook account. We will take steps to allow you to keep using content you have purchased, though we expect some games and apps may no longer work.”
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Oculus user outrage
Oculus users expressed their outrage on a Reddit thread, with one pointing out that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey had betrayed a promise he made back in 2016 that people would not need a Facebook account to use the Oculus Rift.
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Luckey responded to the recent accusations, saying: “I am already getting heat from users and media outlets who say this policy change proves I was lying when I consistently said this wouldn't happen, or at least that it was a guarantee I wasn't in a position to make.
“I want to make clear that those promises were approved by Facebook in that moment and on an ongoing basis, and I really believed it would continue to be the case for a variety of reasons. In hindsight, the downvotes from people with more real-world experience than me were definitely justified.”
I have contacted Facebook for a comment and will update this article if the firm responds.
EFF: Facebook breaks promise
Privacy advocates the EFF criticised the move on Twitter, saying: “Facebook requires Oculus Rift users to log into Facebook, breaking yet another privacy promise.”
EFF analyst Karen Gullo sent me an additional statement via email: “The new requirement breaks a privacy promise to users. Facebook should be held accountable—keeping promises should be a minimum standard for new acquisitions.”
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What to do
Other privacy experts agree. Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET says the move seems “a blatant way to gain user connection information”, adding that “it is rather unusual to only offer one option when signing up.”
But Moore thinks it’s possible Facebook may backtrack after the backlash from Oculus users: “It is likely that it will only work if Oculus’ user base doesn’t reject the decision to hand over their Facebook details. Therefore, there is a distinct possibility that this move may not ever come to fruition.”
So, what should you do if you use Oculus, or are planning on buying a device? For now, Moore suggests those who do not feel comfortable in offering up their Facebook details should create a burner account for the single use of Oculus sign up.
It’s a good idea if you really want to buy an Oculus, and who knows, by 2023, maybe things will have changed.
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cdf17bea40c77cff3fd4c89108fe3280 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/08/23/microsoft-teams-issues-new-blow-to-zoom-with-these-superb-features/ | Microsoft Teams Issues New Blow To Zoom With These Superb Features | Microsoft Teams Issues New Blow To Zoom With These Superb Features
Microsoft has just issued a new blow to number one rival Zoom after dropping a bunch of superb features and updates that will help make working from home easier. One of the most significant updates launched this week is a number of improvements to Teams on both iPhones and Android smartphones.
Microsoft has just issued a new blow to number one rival Zoom after dropping a bunch of superb new ... [+] features. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The boost for mobile Teams users comes via enhancements to the apps, including the ability to upload images to your gallery and search inside chats and channels on Android. Meanwhile, the Android app also allows people to generate links for free meeting invites to send to others who do not have a Teams account, and adds a new Safe Key setting.
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For those who use Teams on an iPhone, Microsoft has updated the app to Version 2.0.19 with a major improvement—the ability to see eight participants (2x4) on the same time on an iPhone and nine (3x3) on an iPad via a new boost to the grid view. At the same time, the iOS Teams update allows users to see an agenda view of upcoming meetings which people can join, edit or share with their contacts.
The Teams iOS app also adds a new setting to reduce the amount of data Teams uses while video is on—useful when people are on the move. Excitingly, Microsoft has also confirmed Cortana voice assistance has been made available on iOS for U.S. users of Teams, and this will be rolled out gradually.
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Microsoft Teams updates to try to beat Zoom
The enhancements to grid view come hot on the heels of a recent new Microsoft Teams update that brings it on a par with Zoom by allowing you to see up to 49 people on a call.
Also this week, Microsoft confirmed on its UserVoice forum that it has added a feature many people have been asking for—the ability to customize your left side bar, allowing you to rearrange and pin and unpin your apps.
Another big Teams update came earlier in August in the form of a new offering called Advanced Communications, which allows Microsoft to beat Zoom using the strength of its other offerings to the business market. As part of this month’s Teams update, people can now have mega meetings of up to 20,000 participants in “view only” mode—and interactive meetings of up to 1,000.
Other big updates to Teams over the last couple months include the chance to change your backgrounds. As of June this year, Teams offers the opportunity to use your own logo or picture as a background, or to use one of the multiple custom backgrounds Microsoft has created.
Not to be outdone, Zoom has been focusing on features and updates of late. After a brief hiatus due to prioritising security, Zoom has also this month launched a load of new features including the highly sought-after noise cancellation.
Zoom is of course highly functional, but despite its efforts, many are still concerned about its security. Teams is catching up, becoming in some cases better in the business market due to the integrated offering. Now it’s branching out across mobile too, Teams can cement its place as probably the most substantial Zoom alternative.
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26be6ca26fd7a074f12cf1d89d48cabf | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/10/14/zoom-beats-microsoft-teams-google-meet-with-game-changing-new-features/ | Zoom Beats Microsoft Teams, Google Meet With Game-Changing New Features | Zoom Beats Microsoft Teams, Google Meet With Game-Changing New Features
Zoom has had a tough few months as competitors such as Microsoft Teams and Google Meet have tried to steal its crown in the video conferencing space. But now, Zoom is fighting back with a bunch of game-changing features—one of which is rare in large scale video conferencing.
Zoom is fighting back against Microsoft Teams and Google Meet with a bunch of game-changing ... [+] features—one of which is pretty rare in large scale video conferencing. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The first and possibly the biggest new feature is the availability of end-to-end encryption in Zoom. This will be available as a technical preview from next week, allowing free and paying users to host up to 200 people on an end-to-end encrypted video call.
End-to-end encryption means no one has the keys to access your Zoom call—including Zoom itself and law enforcement. It’s available on services including WhatsApp, Signal and FaceTime, but other video conferencing services Teams and Google Meet do not have this level of security (they are encrypted, but not end-to-end).
Zoom’s end-to-end encryption offering is optional, and it can be enabled at the account, group, and user level. Depending on how the account admin sets up the feature, it can be toggled on and off by the host on a by-meeting basis depending on the sensitivity of the discussion.
Other new Zoom features announced
During its Zoomtopia virtual conference on October 14, Zoom also announced some other new features that it hopes will increase its user base and beat its competitors. OnZoom is a platform for Zoom users to create and host free, paid, and fundraising events. Available starting today as a public beta for U.S. users, additional functionality includes gifting tickets and an attendee dashboard to keep tabs on favorite events and brands.
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Zoom has also added a tool called Zapps that connects other apps directly in Zoom. This will rival Microsoft’s Teams and its Advanced Communications offering which is tightly integrated with Microsoft’s other services.
Another new feature, Immersive Scenes lets the host set a custom background theme for their meetings or create layouts where participant videos are embedded within a scene that everyone shares, such as a classroom or courtroom, similar to Teams’ “Together Mode.”
Building on this, Zoom Rooms smart gallery leverages AI to present in-room participants as individuals in gallery view to better enable face-to-face communication between in-office and remote participants.
Zoom also announced that support for DTEN ME, Facebook via the Zoom on Portal app, and Zoom Rooms appliances are generally available. Amazon Echo Show, DTEN onTV, Google Assistant-enabled Smart Displays including Nest Hub Max, and Yealink A20 will be supported by the end of year.
Zoom’s game-changing feature
Other features include voice command options and simplified pairing of personal devices to control Zoom Rooms meeting experience and a suite of whiteboarding enhancements to enable collaboration across mobile, desktop, and rooms.
The availability of end-to-end encryption is certainly a big deal. Zoom promised users it would provide this feature after criticism of its security as millions flocked to the platform during the early stages of Covid-19.
Zoom has always been the most functional of platforms for straight video chats, meetings and events, but rivals including Microsoft’s Teams were catching up with features designed to offer an immersive and integrated meeting experience.
Access to end-to-end encryption via Zoom will please a lot of people. It’s something Teams doesn’t have, and it gives Zoom another game-changer to add to its feature portfolio.
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5997e213043ede7529004aa2f6787c27 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/11/07/ios-14-apple-will-make-a-vital-new-iphone-privacy-move-next-month/ | iOS 14: Apple Will Make A Vital New iPhone Privacy Move Next Month | iOS 14: Apple Will Make A Vital New iPhone Privacy Move Next Month
Apple’s iOS 14 launched in September with a bunch of important features to help improve your privacy and security. Some of these, such as an indicator light to show you when your mic or camera are active, launched when iOS 14 first dropped.
But now another iPhone privacy requirement is arriving in the form of a privacy “nutrition label” on apps. From December 8, all app developers on Apple’s App Store will need to detail the privacy information of their apps, Engadget reports. This date is also the time iPhone and iPad users are likely to see the nutrition label-style information when they visit an application’s store page.
Apple will add a vital new privacy feature to iOS 14 next month. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Information included on the label is the data the app collects, and whether this can be used to track you, as well as whether the data is linked to you.
It’s a great feature that should be well-received by privacy-conscious iPhone users. Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET says it’s “vitally important” that people are told what data is collected on them, so they can “control or even limit the amount of information on offer.”
He thinks Apple’s privacy label will also highlight the importance of limiting the amount of personal information and tracking data being absorbed by apps. “There are many people who are still unaware of how our data is regularly analysed, processed and profited from in the background,” Moore says.
Apple just released iOS 14.2, with cool updates and important security fixes for iPhone users. Other previously released iOS 14 features include the Security Recommendations Menu, which helps detect weak or compromised passwords as part of the iCloud Keychain.
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For further reading on iOS 14’s privacy features, I have written a guide detailing the key changes and how to use them. This latest iPhone and iPad privacy feature is pretty cool, and I’m looking forward to trying it out.
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00daf1d3e60ffe081cb5fdd64f6d0846 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/11/16/apple-iphone-tracking-heres-how-to-turn-it-off/ | Apple iPhone Tracking—Here’s How To Turn It Off | Apple iPhone Tracking—Here’s How To Turn It Off
Apple’s so-called IDFA (identifier for advertisers) is under fire once again after a European privacy advocate accused the iPhone maker of unlawfully installing the ad tracking function on its devices. Here’s how you can disable ad tracking.
Apple’s so-called IDFA (identifier for advertisers) is under fire once again after a European ... [+] privacy advocate accused the iPhone maker of unlawfully installing the ad tracking function on its devices. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
When Apple launched iOS 14 this fall, it was already planning to give consumers more choice over whether to enable the IDFA—which allows advertisers to track your behavior and consumption preferences. But the iPhone maker delayed the new privacy feature after a major pushback from advertisers including Facebook.
Now, according to Bloomberg, there’s been pushback in the other direction, against the IDFA, by Noyb, a group founded by privacy activist Max Schrems. The group is complaining that because the trackers are placed on iPhones by default, consumers are unable to consent to them.
Rather than being based on the 2018 EU Update to Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the complaints by Noyb are based around an old EU law regulating firms’ use of cookies and other tracking devices, Bloomberg said. The action refers to only German and Spanish users who complained about Apple’s use of invasive trackers.
But Apple has hit back against the claims, calling them “factually inaccurate.”
In a statement, the iPhone maker said: “We look forward to making that clear to privacy regulators should they examine the complaint. Apple does not access or use the IDFA on a user’s device for any purpose.
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“Our aim is always to protect the privacy of our users and our latest software release, iOS 14, is giving users even greater control over whether or not they want to allow apps to track them by linking their information with data from third parties for the purpose of advertising, or sharing their information with data brokers.
“Our practices comply with European law and support and advance the aims of the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, which is to give people full control over their data.”
How to stop iPhone tracking
I recently wrote a useful guide on how to use Apple’s new privacy features in iOS 14. Within that, I included some steps detailing how you can prevent advertisers from tracking you ahead of the planned opt-in feature—which will hopefully become available in an updated version of iOS 14 in 2021.
So for now, in your Settings, go to Privacy > Tracking. Here you can turn off the ability to allow apps to request to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies.
In your Settings, go to Privacy, then Tracking. Here you can turn off the ability to allow apps to ... [+] request to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies. Apple iPhone
If you ask to “learn more” the text is a little confusing so I’ll explain it here. If you turn off the ability for apps to ask to track you, you also stop them from tracking you across apps by default.
As Apple explains, if you disable Allow Apps to ask to Track, “any app that attempts to ask for your permission will be blocked from asking and automatically informed that you have requested not to be tracked.”
In your privacy settings you can go to Analytics and Improvements and toggle off data sharing here.
IOS 14 added a bunch of cool new privacy and security features such as an Orange dot to show when your camera and mic are in use, and developers now have to offer a privacy “nutrition label” to show how your data is used.
I’m hopeful Apple will add the anti-tracking feature to iOS 14 soon. For now, why not go through and adjust your iPhone settings yourself.
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e8edfe6d871061371eb02fa0687f9d3c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/11/17/stop-zoom-bombing-zoom-unveils-game-changing-new-features/ | Zoom Battles Microsoft Teams With Vital New Security Features | Zoom Battles Microsoft Teams With Vital New Security Features
Zoom has just launched two new features that help to stop Zoom bombing.
Zoom has just launched two new features that help to stop Zoom-bombing. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Zoom has seen an explosion in user numbers since the start of the pandemic, but the video conferencing service has also been plagued with security issues. The most common one, for which Zoom has arguably received the most grief, is “Zoom bombing”—which sees uninvited guests trying to join your meeting or chat.
But now, Zoom has just launched two new features that help to avoid this issue with the ability to remove and report disruptive users, the company has revealed in a blog.
The two new Zoom features, “Suspend Participant Activities” and “Report by Participants” are available now on desktop clients for Mac, PC, Linux, and mobile apps. Support for the web client and VDI will come later this year.
How the new Zoom security features work
The Suspend Participant Activities function allows Zoom meeting hosts to pause their meeting temporarily, remove a disruptive user, and notify Zoom’s Trust & Safety team.
To use the feature, you click on the Security menu, select “Suspend Participant Activities” and confirm your choice by selecting “Suspend.” All video, audio, in-meeting chat, screen sharing, and recording will stop, and breakout rooms will end.
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You will then be asked if you would like to report a user from the meeting, share any details, and optionally include a screenshot. Once you click “Submit,” the reported user will be removed, and Zoom will send an email to the host or co-host after the meeting to learn more about the incident.
Hosts and co-hosts can resume their meeting by individually enabling the features they would like to resume using, such as video, audio, in-meeting, chat, screen sharing, and recording.
The Report by Participants feature allows participants to report a disruptive user directly from the Zoom client, by clicking the top-left security icon.
Meanwhile, Zoom has also created an At Risk Meeting Notifier, which scans public posts on social media and other sites for Zoom meeting links. When it finds publicly posted meeting information that indicate a given meeting may be at high risk of being disrupted, Zoom will notify account owners and admins by email.
Zoom battles Teams with new features
Microsoft Teams is probably Zoom’s biggest competitor, and the Microsoft-owned platform has been launching features like wildfire to try and beat Zoom. While Zoom is probably the most functional platform for straight video conferencing, it’s been beleaguered by security issues over the past few months.
Zoom bombing is one of the worst of these, with church groups for example, disrupted by criminals sharing explicit and offensive imagery.
But Zoom is trying to fix its reputation, with the security gold standard—end-to-end encryption—now being tested, and of course, these security features to help prevent Zoom bombing.
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78b0bdc1a182d834f0cecf3e7393017d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/11/29/iphone-weak-security-wi-fi-warning-heres-what-it-means/ | iPhone ‘Weak Security’ Wi-Fi Warning: Here’s What It Means | iPhone ‘Weak Security’ Wi-Fi Warning: Here’s What It Means
Have you received a “weak Wi-Fi security” warning on your iPhone since upgrading to iOS 14? You are not alone, here’s what it means and how to fix it.
Have you received a “weak Wi-Fi security” warning on your iPhone since upgrading to iOS 14? You are ... [+] not alone, here’s what it means and how to fix it. NurPhoto via Getty Images
Since upgrading to iOS 14, many users are reporting seeing a warning on their iPhone that says their Wi-Fi has “weak security.”
The message, which appears under the Wi-Fi network name on your iPhone, states that WPA/WPA2 TKIP is “not considered secure” and you need to reconfigure your router. Confusing, huh. So what should you do?
Firstly, there is no need to panic. Yes, Apple is telling you that the Wi-Fi network you’re using to connect your iPhone isn’t secure. But specifically it means that your connection is not as robust as the latest up to date standard—it doesn’t mean a hacker is inside your router and has compromised your iPhone and other devices.
Wi-Fi security broken down
Wi-Fi is governed by security protocols, which are updated to fix weaknesses in the previous iteration. The oldest (from the 1990s) and least secure is WEP. The next step up is WPA, then WPA2—either TKIP or AES. WPA2 AES is a lot stronger than WPA2 TKIP but both are a common standard used on today’s routers.
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WPA3, meanwhile, is the newest “gold” standard, and ideally what everyone should be on. But this isn’t a game-changer especially if you are just a home user. In addition, some older routers don’t even support the WPA3.
However, it’s a good idea to ensure your router is as secure as possible. If you are feeling brave, you can update your router by changing its settings. Sure, this isn’t always as straight-forward as it sounds, but if you have a copy of your manual you need to look up how to download the last firmware and software updates, and make sure you are doing so regularly.
If you are fairly tech-savvy, this guide by Sergey Shcherban is pretty useful, if you want to try and update your Wi-Fi settings yourself.
And if you haven’t yet, make sure you set your password to something new—never use the default that came with the device.
iOS 14 boosts privacy and security
Apple’s iOS 14 comes with a host of privacy and security settings, such as an orange dot to tell you when an app is accessing your mic. I’ve outlined some of the key features, and how to use them in my iOS 14 guide.
In addition, iOS 14 gives you the ability to mask your iPhone’s Wi-Fi address to help prevent your activity being tracked when using wireless networks.
Overall, the key takeaway is, if you receive the “weak security” warning on your iPhone, don’t be alarmed. If you use a very old protocol, such as WEP, it might be time to get a new router—but otherwise it should be fixable.
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cc2a9c61e7f519df9bf7af532a62ad39 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/11/29/microsofts-new-productivity-score-what-does-it-mean-for-you/ | Microsoft’s New Productivity Score And Workplace Tracking: Here’s The Problem | Microsoft’s New Productivity Score And Workplace Tracking: Here’s The Problem
Microsoft’s new productivity score, which allows employers to see which 365 products employees are using and for how long, has been called a “privacy nightmare.” What does that mean for you?
Microsoft’s new productivity score, which allows employers to see which 365 products employees are ... [+] using and for how long, has been called a “privacy nightmare." SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
At the start of this year, most of us hadn’t even contemplated the idea of working from home permanently. But then Covid-19 hit and suddenly, everyone was working remotely, using videoconferencing tools such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom to stay connected to colleagues.
It was perhaps inevitable then, that increased workplace tracking would start to happen. But even so, privacy advocates were outraged after the details of Microsoft’s new Productivity Score came to light.
First seen at Microsoft’s annual Ignite conference in October, a virtual presentation detailed how the feature provides “insights that transform how work gets done” by showing employers how workers use Microsoft 365 services like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive.
Microsoft’s Productivity Score: “A privacy nightmare”
But as Forbes revealed this week, Microsoft’s tool is a “privacy nightmare,” according to researchers and privacy advocates. Among its capabilities, managers can find an employee by name and see the number of hours they’ve spent in meetings on Microsoft Teams over the last 28 days.
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It can tell your boss how many hours you were active on Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype and Teams in the last month and on what type of device, and more—all in a handy dashboard.
Thankfully, the Productivity Score isn’t on by default, and Microsoft says it isn’t intended to be an employee surveillance tool. In a blog post announcing the feature, Microsoft 365 Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro said it’s about helping employees use the firm’s tools to discover “new ways of working, providing your people with great collaboration and technology experiences.”
A Microsoft spokesperson sent me the following statement: “Productivity Score is an opt-in experience that gives IT administrators insights about technology and infrastructure usage.
“Insights are intended to help organizations make the most of their technology investments by addressing common pain points like long boot times, inefficient document collaboration, or poor network connectivity. Insights are shown in aggregate over a 28-day period and are provided at the user level so that an IT admin can provide technical support and guidance.”
But Brian Higgins, security specialist at Comparitech.com says the “mission creep potential” of Microsoft’s product is “obvious.”
He points out that “there is no mention in any of the marketing material that I have seen that mentions employees,” adding: “It’s all about employers. Most people who have this level of monitoring imposed upon them in the workplace will, quite rightly, be dismayed. But what, in the current economic landscape, can they do about it?”
The new normal
It’s a sad but true fact. New ways of working during Covid-19 are likely to lead to more monitoring and tracking of employees. Searches for these tools have rocketed by 51% since the pandemic started, according to a recent survey.
But that’s not to say it’s right. As Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET points out: “If surveillance technologies are required, there is clearly a lack of trust among middle and upper management that must be addressed.”
“Being spied upon in your own home can have adverse effect on productivity and is likely to make staff feel anxious even to take a coffee break,” Moore says.
Microsoft is not alone in promoting this type of tool, points out Matthew Hodgson, CEO of Element. “People have a right to privacy and should be worried about the normalisation of extensive workplace surveillance.
“Employers and employees should look to maintain high privacy standards by choosing pro-privacy tools that don’t facilitate profiling and which minimise unnecessary data collection.”
And in some countries at least, regulation such as the EU Update to Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a barrier to excessive employee surveillance.
“Employers will need to tread very carefully when it comes to monitoring employees’ working patterns more closely because getting this wrong could be a serious breach of data protection legislation and be damaging for the company’s reputation,” says Sally Mewies, head of technology and digital at law firm Walker Morris.
She says an increase in home working during Covid-19 is not a good enough justification for over-zealous surveillance by companies. “Employers will need to ask themselves why the relevant level of monitoring is needed and think hard about whether there is a less intrusive way of achieving the same end.”
The problem with employee tracking
Employee monitoring is nothing new. Many people are already monitored at work, in enterprise scenarios as well as the obvious vehicle tracking that takes place for delivery drivers. Javvad Malik, security awareness advocate at KnowBe4 says the features rolled out by Microsoft are “nothing new in the grand scheme of things.”
In fact, he says, monitoring software has been around for years which tracks employees in similar ways. Now, he says, Microsoft has the ability to provide arguably richer data through 365—the problem is that managers aren't always well-equipped to know how to interpret the data or what to do with it. “This can lead to managers assessing the competence of employees through metrics such as how long they spend on certain apps—which in some cases is fine, but in others, wholly inappropriate.”
Even so, as someone who cares about privacy, I find the idea of workplace tracking pretty intrusive, and I’m sure many employees will too.
—
Update December 1 at 9am PT
Microsoft has updated its Productivity Score in response to criticism. Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365 said in a blog that the firm is removing user names from the product. He explained that Microsoft is also modifying the user interface “to make it clearer that Productivity Score is a measure of organizational adoption of technology—and not individual user behavior.”
He said: “We appreciate the feedback we’ve heard over the last few days and are moving quickly to respond by removing user names entirely from the product. This change will ensure that Productivity Score can’t be used to monitor individual employees.
“At Microsoft, we’re committed to both data-driven insights and user privacy. We always strive to get the balance right, but if and when we miss, we will listen carefully and make appropriate adjustments.”
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844f1694b5281e0b25188ad1df6e62ad | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/12/01/microsoft-teams-declares-battle-with-zoom-with-massive-new-feature-overhaul/?sh=20d3b5357a9f | Microsoft Teams Declares Battle With Zoom With Massive New Feature Overhaul | Microsoft Teams Declares Battle With Zoom With Massive New Feature Overhaul
Microsoft Teams has launched a massive overhaul of one of its most popular features as it looks to beat biggest rival Zoom.
Microsoft Teams has launched a massive overhaul of one of its most popular features as it looks to ... [+] beat biggest rival Zoom. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Microsoft Teams is looking to leapfrog its biggest rival Zoom with the launch of a massive overhaul of one of its most popular features. In a news update released December 1, Microsoft announced a number of enhancements to its quick call service, Teams Calling.
Teams calling has been a popular option of late. Microsoft says the use of this function rather than a formal meeting has “skyrocketed,” in recent months with users making over 650 million calls in October—up 11 fold over March of this year. On average, the firm says, calls are just one-fourth the length of a typical meeting.
The updates to Teams calling include a more streamlined calling experience by bringing the dial pad, call history, voicemail, contacts, and settings—into a single location.
Meanwhile, when calls are recorded Teams admins can take advantage of Teams and OneDrive or SharePoint integration and elect to make OneDrive or SharePoint the default recording storage location, in lieu of Stream. The recordings can now be shared with external guests, with quicker access to transcripts, and greater storage capacity.
More Teams calling features
Teams calling has also added CarPlay support including using Siri to place and answer calls; spam identification and the ability to transfer calls between mobile and desktop.
Users can also now call merge for both PSTN and VoIP calls. And as part of another cool update starting in early 2021, Teams users will be able to adjust their settings to cap the amount of data used during video calls and establish different settings based on network availability.
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Meanwhile, Microsoft has launched voice enabled channels: A new collaborative calling capability to integrate call queues into a specific channel, for collaboration and information sharing before, during, and after the call. For example, says Microsoft, IT or HR help desks can now be managed from a channel so available team members can answer the call, and easily share information about service tickets. Starting in early 2021, Teams users will have the option to create new voice-enabled channels.
Microsoft also used the December 1 announcement to push its hardware options such as Teams Displays via the Lenovo Thinksmart view, integrating voice assistant Cortana. Meanwhile, Teams will be available on low-cost phones by Yealink and AudioCodes in early 2021, Microsoft said.
At the same time, Microsoft is launching a new Teams “Device as a Service” offering including monthly payments from 2021.
Teams V Zoom
2020 has seen an epic battle between Teams and Zoom, with each service looking to leapfrog the other with new features and updates.
Microsoft has so far differentiated itself through its integrated offering, with services such as Advanced Communications, but Zoom quickly launched its own similar version, along with highly sought after end-to-end encryption that Teams lacks.
But Microsoft launched free Teams video calling indefinitely for Thanksgiving, while Zoom offered a free service only for the day.
Zoom was once far ahead with features, but Teams is certainly catching up. One thing is certain: 2021 shows no chance of the battle slowing up.
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2b05fa3bd0e545951023e9aed73c40f7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2021/01/10/apples-game-changing-iphone-privacy-move-sparks-serious-new-problem/ | Apple’s Game-Changing iPhone Privacy Move Sparks Serious New Problem | Apple’s Game-Changing iPhone Privacy Move Sparks Serious New Problem
Apple’s game-changing new privacy move is great for users and bad for data collectors such as Facebook. And it could spark a serious new problem, according to reports.
Apple’s game-changing new privacy move is great for users and bad for data collectors such as ... [+] Facebook. And it could spark a serious new problem, according to reports. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
After Apple announced iOS 14 last year, firms including Facebook were up in arms. Their issue—a game-changing new iPhone privacy feature which would essentially signal the end of the so-called identifier for advertisers (IDFA).
So much was the resistance to Apple’s new anti-tracking feature that the iPhone maker delayed it when it launched the rest of iOS 14 in September, to give developers more time to adjust.
But the feature is still on its way in an upcoming update of iOS 14, and it could mean app developers find new ways of tracking you, despite the fact it could get them thrown out of Apple’s iPhone App Store.
Developers say they will try to circumvent the iOS 14 privacy change
The confirmation comes after an article in Ars Technica, which quotes several app developers who say they will try to circumvent the iOS 14 privacy change. Device fingerprinting—which correlates factors such as a device’s operating system, browser version and type, language and IP address to identify it—is one method being considered, a mobile games developer told the site.
This goes against Apple’s guidelines, which state in answer to the question “Can I fingerprint or use signals from the device to try to identify the device or user?”:
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“No. Per the Developer program License Agreement, you may not derive data from a device for the purpose of uniquely identifying it.”
Worryingly, the article states that some developers plan to use methods such as this even if Apple users deny access to the IDFA.
It comes as Facebook finally yielded to Apple’s anti-tracking changes, saying people have no choice but to follow the new rules. Facebook placed full size adverts in several newspapers last year criticising the iPhone maker.
Apple app developers—”between a rock and a hard place”
In some ways, it’s understandable that developers are desperately looking for new ways to recoup lost revenue in the lucrative iPhone advertising market. "App developers are stuck between a rock and a hard place,” says Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET.
“They need to make an app functional and secure and yet there is always a major push to make such apps track. IDFA tracking without explicit user consent has been the backbone of modern-day advertising and is worth billions of dollars so when privacy updates are instructed by Apple, it is inevitable that some developers will seek to avoid these new measures.”
Sean Wright, application security SME lead at Immersive Labs says because developers rely on advertising as a means of generating revenue from their applications, it’s no surprise the proposed changes from Apple “aren’t too popular.”
What Apple users should do
Bad practices such as fingerprinting are against Apple’s App Store rules, but Wright says it’s important how the iPhone maker enforces this. “It’s a question if this will be something they can enforce via technical controls or instead rely on users reporting violations.”
So what does this mean for iPhone users? Wright says the best way to avoid device fingerprinting is to have similar settings to other users, so it’s hard to identify your device. Of course, this isn’t easy to do, so Wright also advises Apple users to look to paid alternatives instead, “since they would not tend to rely on advertising for revenue.”
As Apple’s anti-tracking changes draw near, iPhone need to be prepared. One thing you can do now is use my guide to turning off the ability for apps to track in your settings. More generally, make sure you trust the developers who make your apps. Use the app privacy labels and manage your permissions carefully.
In the meantime, why not have an app clean up on your iPhone, deleting anything you don’t use. When you download new apps, paid for services may be safer. After all, nothing is ever truly free.
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82e97aa230bca436cf1d13d116470caf | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2021/01/10/facebook-users-have-3-superb-reasons-to-quit-in-2021/ | Facebook Users Have 3 Superb Reasons To Quit In 2021 | Facebook Users Have 3 Superb Reasons To Quit In 2021
From WhatsApp to data collection and tracking, here are 3 good reasons to delete your Facebook account in 2021.
From WhatsApp to data collection and tracking, here are 3 good reasons to delete your Facebook ... [+] account in 2021. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
It’s new year, so what better time to start thinking about the services you use and the data they collect. One of the biggest offenders is Facebook.
Here are 3 good reasons to delete your Facebook account in 2021.
Facebook collects huge amounts of data on you
It’s never been a secret—Facebook collects huge amounts of data on you. Just look on the App Store at the amount of data included on Apple’s privacy labels, which show how much the social network tracks you as you use your iPhone. Among the information gathered by Facebook is your browsing history, location and search history—things many people would like to keep private. Sure, you can try and limit the amount of data Facebook collects, but it doesn’t change the company’s ethos.
Apple's privacy labels: Facebook data linked to you. Apple iPhone
Yet Facebook doesn’t think the privacy labels reflect the “context” of how data is used. In response to this story, Facebook said the format of Apple’s new labels is “too broad and ignores how data is used in context.”
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A spokesperson told me: “Apple doesn't let us explain to people that these labels don't apply the same to everyone. We also believe people should see labels for pre-installed apps the same way they will see labels for other apps. This is another example of Apple playing by a different set of rules for their own services."
WhatsApp shares your data with Facebook
Bad news if you live outside of the EU and UK (who are protected by privacy regulation the EU GDPR)—WhatsApp shares your data with Facebook, and you have to accept new privacy terms if you want to continue to use the service.
Facebook announced its purchase of WhatsApp in 2014, and at the time it promised that the platforms would be kept separate. It’s clear now that this isn’t the case, and it’s angered a lot of WhatsApp users, many of whom are threatening to quit.
“Hey, remember when Facebook bought WhatsApp and swore they wouldn’t do this? Surprise!,” Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at digital rights group the EFF said in a tweet.
It’s a matter of trust. Facebook said it wasn’t going to do something, then it did it anyway.
In response to this, Facebook said: “As we announced in October, WhatsApp wants to make it easier for people to both make a purchase and get help from a business directly on WhatsApp. While most people use WhatsApp to chat with friends and family, increasingly people are reaching out to businesses as well.
“To further increase transparency, we updated the privacy policy to describe that going forward businesses can choose to receive secure hosting services from our parent company Facebook to help manage their communications with their customers on WhatsApp. Though of course, it remains up to the user whether or not they want to message with a business on WhatsApp.”
Facebook said the update “does not change WhatsApp’s data sharing practices with Facebook and does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or family.”
Facebook tracks you as you browse other apps and websites
As well as the data collection, Facebook tracks you as you visit other apps and websites. This is something that has sparked a battle between Facebook and Apple, the latter of which is about to launch an anti-tracking feature that spells the end of the identifier for advertisers (IDFA). Apple argues that transparency is key, and I’m inclined to agree. But Facebook says the loss of this tracking will impact its SMB advertisers.
Either way, a lot of people find this tracking pretty intrusive.
Should you quit Facebook altogether?
I get it—you’ve been using Facebook for years, you are on the social network to keep in contact with your family and friends. As Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET says: “Facebook offers many reasons to use its platform offering huge amounts of information on whatever you are into. However, this now comes with a large price tag—that cost is your privacy.”
If you aren’t ready to delete Facebook altogether, I have a suggestion—why not delete the app and use Facebook in the browser only, and with privacy controls? This will help to at least wean you off the social network, if you are not quite ready to completely get rid of it.
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0b5ee0f761826465779f5f7d268bd0a2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2021/01/10/microsoft-teams-issues-new-year-blow-to-zoom-with-this-stellar-new-feature/ | Microsoft Teams Issues New Year Blow To Zoom With This Stellar New Feature | Microsoft Teams Issues New Year Blow To Zoom With This Stellar New Feature
Microsoft Teams has just issued a new year blow to Zoom with a major new feature.
Microsoft Teams has just issued a new year blow to Zoom with a major new feature. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
There is no doubt about it—2020 was the year of the video conferencing service, and Zoom and Microsoft Teams were at the forefront. In 2021, this battle shows no sign of slowing down. Microsoft Teams has already announced a new feature that should be coming soon—Dynamic View.
First revealed on LinkedIn by Microsoft product marketing manager Remco de Kramer, the new Teams feature means that the speaker and presentation videos are the same size and can be viewed side by side.
“The gallery is optimized automatically or controls are given to personalize the view,” he explained. Currently when watching shared content in Microsoft Teams, the speaker’s video is small.
As reported by WindowsLatest, Windows 10 users should be getting the Dynamic View feature in March 2021. The new Microsoft Teams feature builds on Together Mode launched last year, which is intended to make meetings feel more personalised.
Microsoft knows that your video conferences can sometimes feel disjointed, and Together Mode sees Teams feel like you are in one room with your colleagues.
More new Microsoft Teams features
Microsoft also launched a bunch of new Teams features in December. In a blog this week, Microsoft outlined all the capabilities it launched last month, including virtual breakout rooms to allow you to divide your meeting into smaller groups for discussions and brainstorming.
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Microsoft also confirmed that extensions on its live events limit are now available until June 30 2121, as virtual events continue amid the pandemic. Meanwhile, there are some new calling features in Teams including live captions for one-to-one calls to make it easier to follow what’s going on.
Before last year, Teams was a poor second to Zoom, but now the platform is adding a tidal wave of new features its user numbers are surging. This week, an article in the Financial Times saw the firm’s CEO Satya Nadella describe how Microsoft’s focus is now shifting towards making Teams a channel through which users access its Office apps.
Recently-launched Advanced Communications sees Microsoft integrate Teams into its other services, but Zoom is also playing for this market with its recently launched Zapps, the addition of end-to-end encryption that Teams doesn’t have, and a possible new email service.
Only one week into 2021 and the video conferencing battle is already ramping up. It’s going to be an interesting year.
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a02f9e628388fabb6a9cc24ee9492e3a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2021/01/11/how-to-use-signal-the-awesome-whatsapp-alternative/ | How To Use Signal: The Brilliant WhatsApp Alternative | How To Use Signal: The Brilliant WhatsApp Alternative
Recent WhatsApp news has left many people looking for a secure and private alternative. Enter Signal. Here’s how to use it.
Recent WhatsApp news has left many people looking for a secure and private alternative. Enter ... [+] Signal. picture alliance via Getty Images
I’ve been using secure messaging app Signal for years, but I’ve had to keep WhatsApp because many of my friends and family use it to communicate. Now that could be about to change—following the news that WhatsApp shares data with Facebook, people are moving to Signal in droves.
In fact, Signal is the number one most popular app in my version of the Apple App Store right now, compared to WhatsApp at number five and Telegram at number three.
A screenshot taken January 11 2021 of the top free paid apps from the Apple App Store. Apple iPhone
If you are thinking about moving to Signal, the good news is, the app is just as easy to use, and it has a desktop version too. Better still, you can voice and video chat on Signal, and calls are all end-to-end encrypted, which means no one can access them—even Signal itself. Group calls are limited to five, so Signal can’t replace Zoom yet for large video conferences, but it’s fine to speak to friends and family.
Downloading and setting up Signal
The first step, of course, is to download the Signal app on your iPhone or Android device via the Apple App Store or Google Play.
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Once you have done that, you can create an account. Simply open the app on your smartphone, select Continue and allow permissions. You then need to enter your phone number, after which point you’ll receive a verification code, which you need to enter into Signal. You can then set up a profile picture and name, as well as a PIN (more on this later).
If you want to use Signal on your desktop, you’ll need to link the device via your phone app. It’s really easy to do. Go to your smartphone app’s Signal Settings > Linked devices > Link New device and use your camera to scan the QR code on your desktop. This will set Signal up on the desktop too.
Sending a message is as simple as it is on WhatsApp. Just tap the pen icon in the top right-hand corner and you are ready to go. You can search through your contacts using the search bar at the top.
Extra Signal settings
For extra security and privacy, go to your Signal Privacy settings. There you can set up or change a PIN—Signal’s future means of IDing you instead of a phone number—as well as enabling a screen lock to use biometrics such as Touch ID or Face ID to open Signal. Like WhatsApp you can allow or disallow Read Receipts too.
It’s also easy to move your group chats from other apps to Signal.
Getting the hang of using Signal
When you’ve been using a messaging service such as WhatsApp for years, downloading a new one can be daunting. But don’t be afraid—a few years ago you moved from text (SMS) messages to WhatsApp. My mom even uses WhatsApp, and the same will soon apply to Signal.
A new app always takes a bit of getting used to, and Signal is certainly worth it. I’m excited about the prospect of more of my friends and family switching over to Signal, allowing me to finally get rid of WhatsApp altogether.
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b1dd174d76ea0b654ec821b18504fb2e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katepierce/2013/05/22/partners-in-power-the-worlds-most-influential-couples/ | Partners In Power: The World's Most Influential Couples | Partners In Power: The World's Most Influential Couples
The 100 ladies on FORBES' list of the world's most powerful women are politicians, CEOs, activist billionaires and celebrities, and all are at the top of their game. This year, several of our power women have a partner who is as equally influential.
These power duos prove that whether they're tackling global crises or ruling the world, sometimes it takes two. Here's a look at the world's 15 most powerful couples:
Gallery: The World's Most Powerful Couples 16 images View gallery
The World’s Most Powerful Women The 100 top politicians and CEOs, activist billionaires and celebrities, next gen entrepreneurs and philanthropists who matter most. Power Circuits The colleges and companies behind the world’s power women. In Pictures: The 100 Most Powerful Women
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93728d8f5ed10313d456c0dacf7d6f30 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katepierce/2013/10/30/the-worlds-nine-most-powerful-women-2013/ | The World's Nine Most Powerful Women 2013 | The World's Nine Most Powerful Women 2013
This year there are nine women on FORBES' list of The World's Most Powerful People, representing 12% of the ranking — in stark contrast to being 50% of the world’s population. Both 2011 and 2012 featured six women leaders. The year previous had five and the inaugural list from 2009 included only 3 — or just 4.4%. Recently elected Park Geun-hye of South Korea joins the other heads of state German Chancellor Angela Merkel (No.5), Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff (No. 20) and de facto head of India Sonia Gandhi (No. 21). Two of the world’s most important NGO’s are run by women: Christine Lagarde (No. 35) leads the IMF and Margaret Chan (No. 59) steers the World Health Organization.
Gallery: The World’s Nine Most Powerful Women 2013 9 images View gallery
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Hillary's Universe: How Clinton Is Connected To The World's Most Powerful
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872a10e0bb25ea51a4f00f747c0e1670 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateracovolis/2016/08/18/global-entrepreneurs-take-note-this-is-the-worlds-most-liveable-city-for-the-sixth-year-in-a-row/ | Global Entrepreneurs, Take Note: This Is The World's Most Livable City For The Sixth Year In A Row | Global Entrepreneurs, Take Note: This Is The World's Most Livable City For The Sixth Year In A Row
Southbank Pedestrian Bridge in Melbourne, Australia (Photo courtesy of Scott Barbour/Getty Images)
For the past six years, my work as a journalist and editor has taken me on something of an extended – as travel agents like to call it – “round-the-world trip.” No, I haven’t lived everywhere, but I’ve worked in four cities (in three different countries) in a short period of time, including Melbourne, London, New York and Sydney.
My career has thrived abroad, having worked in two global business centers, while growing up in Melbourne, Australia (rather far away from many global hubs), my curiosity about the world always had me looking beyond the borders of my home country to take the next step in my career.
Today Melbourne, Australia, was crowned "the world’s most liveable city" for the sixth year running by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in its latest Global Liveability Ranking, which draws on data from 140 cities around the world and ranks them based on stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.
After living in New York for a year and for nearly four years in London, and as a “Melbournian” – I can see why. The sprawling city of Melbourne has long been lauded for providing an excellent quality of life to its population. People from all over the world are attracted to the city for its diversity, vibrant art scene, restaurants and renowned coffee culture. In fact, 28.2% of Australia's "estimated resident population was born overseas," according to recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Austria’s capital, Vienna, came in second, separated only by 0.1 point from Melbourne, as were Canada’s Vancouver and Toronto, which were ranked third and fourth respectively. Taking equal fifth position was another Australian city, Adelaide, alongside Calgary in Canada.
Some key factors connect these top-ranking cities: “Those that score best tend to be mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density,” The EIU reports. “These can foster a range of recreational activities without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure. Six of the top ten scoring cities are in Australia and Canada, which have, respectively, population densities of 3.1 and 3.9 people per square kilometer.”
For global entrepreneurs, the liveability of a city is important, because our work and personal lives are naturally and inextricably linked. Yet the largest cities aren’t always the most “liveable.” According to EIU: “Global business centers tend to be victims of their own success. The 'big city buzz' that they enjoy can overstretch infrastructure and cause higher crime rates. New York, London, Paris and Tokyo are all prestigious hubs with a wealth of recreational activity, but all suffer from higher levels of crime, congestion and public transport problems than are deemed comfortable," says the report.
But "The question is how much wages, the cost of living and personal taste for a location can offset liveability factors. Although global centers fare less well in the ranking than mid-sized cities, for example, they still sit within the highest tier of liveability and should therefore be considered broadly comparable, especially when contrasted with the worst-scoring locations,” according to the EIU. Tokyo, for example, was ranked relatively high on the list [13th], followed by other global business hubs such as Paris [32nd], London [53rd] and New York [55th].
For example, I grew up in a city where, for my particular industry (journalism), many of the global media brands I looked up to and wanted to work for were based in global business centers. So I relocated from Melbourne to London first, where I rented a small one-bedroom apartment — for the same rent back in Australia, I could probably have rented a place at least twice the size. But the size of my apartment didn't matter to me. Though a key indicator of “liveability” is cost of living, which can be intimidatingly high in some of the major cities, for me it wasn't enough to stop me. At the time, working overseas was my top priority, and I was prepared to sacrifice almost any creature comfort for that experience.
It really comes down to this: your personal and professional goals, the obligations that may or may not already be in place, and what kind of a life you want to create for yourself. Do you prefer to be at the center of business, for example, and thrive in a big-city working and living environment? Is being near family and friends important to your wellbeing? Where in the world should you place yourself to help achieve your goals – and are you willing to make compromises to get there?
If it were up to me to answer the question of what makes a city liveable, I’d probably define the place by its quality of coffee (essential), total number of days of sunshine per year (vital) and proximity to a beach (absolutely necessary). The EIU is thankfully more strategic. That Melbourne also is known for serving some of the best coffee in the world is pure coincidence.
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bff7a91d78370841db3e5c7f7720f30c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateracovolis/2016/10/24/lisa-messenger-on-how-to-unleash-your-inner-global-entrepreneur/ | Lisa Messenger On How To Unleash Your Inner Global Entrepreneur | Lisa Messenger On How To Unleash Your Inner Global Entrepreneur
Lisa Messenger (Image courtesy of Collective Hub)
“Be a trailblazer, break the rules, disrupt, take a different road and do it fearlessly,” says Lisa Messenger, the Sydney-based entrepreneur, author and speaker, in her best-selling book Daring and Disruptive: Unleashing The Entrepreneur, which is newly available in the U.S. this month.
Her bold, unapologetic and motivational approach to mentoring entrepreneurs (both budding and established) has garnered Messenger an international fanbase, which includes the likes of Sir Richard Branson and New York Times bestselling author Bradley Trevor Greive, as well as a 100,000-strong following on Instagram.
And as the founder and editor-in-chief of Collective Hub, now a multi-platform lifestyle magazine that celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit, and CEO of publishing house of The Messenger Group, Messenger urges people to pursue their goals and dreams fearlessly, be willing to fail and recover quickly, and master the art of investing in their own health and wellbeing.
Being daring and disruptive are two qualities that Messenger thinks every entrepreneur could benefit from embracing. “I want to encourage greater self-awareness and self-belief and open people up to the possibilities of a limitless life,” says Messenger, 45.
“I often say just because I have chosen to impact five billion people [for example], someone else might choose to impact five people. I don’t believe either is right or wrong, or better than the other. What I do believe though is that we should all open our eyes and minds to the limitless possibilities the world has to offer.”
It is based on this creative spirit that Messenger founded Collective Hub as a print magazine in 2013 – now distributed in 37 countries, including the U.S. – which she launched amidst a publishing industry in decline and dwindling circulations figures globally. She has also published more than 400 books through her company, The Messenger Group, and has co-authored 16 books, as well as four of her own.
For those who have global aspirations for their business in particular, Messenger shares four key pieces of advice based on lessons she has learned throughout her own international entrepreneurial journey, from starting a magazine in Australia, to scaling up globally.
Travel As Far As You Want Your Business To Reach
When Collective Hub was first launched, Messenger and her marketing director journeyed from Sydney, Australia to visit a global magazine distribution conference in Toronto, Canada, and it was an experience Messenger says was worth the expense, since it helped her to establish key new contacts abroad, in order to grow the company internationally.
“Going there, rather than just approaching people on email and phone, meant that they could catch the spirit of what we were trying to do. But it also meant we could understand their unique distribution processes and challenges,” says Messenger. “It also showed them that we were serious. They were so surprised to see us there and said few independent or new publications like ours ever attended. So go straight to the source, cut out the middle men and women if you can and be tenacious and ballsy in your approach (you have nothing to lose). I am never afraid of spending money when there is a solid chance of revenue in return and these relationships are key to magazine sales globally.”
Learn How To Trust Your Instinct
Expanding Collective Hub’s reach was part of Messenger’s vision for her product, and she implemented this part of her strategy by trusting her gut instinct that she was on to something that people all around the world would want to be a part of. What underpinned this self-belief, however, was a confidence that was backed up by careful market research and planning.
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“We held off launching in market segments that were risky or unknown until we had the correct information and this is largely to the advice of our international distributor,” she says.
“Be smart, do your research, test and ask questions. But at the end of the day, when all of the work like that is done, then you must muster up every skerrick of self-belief until your idea becomes a reality and eventually a success, because it often takes a lot of hard work, a lot of rejection and a lot of closed doors to get anything off the ground.”
“Without a doubt, you have to believe in yourself and back yourself, trusting your gut instinct at every turn,” says Messenger. If your aspirations are global as an entrepreneur, don’t be put off by any of the challenges that come with it, such making the leap to enter and navigate new and foreign markets, for example. “It all boils down to tenacity, self-belief and your ability to hustle,” she adds. “There will be all sorts of naysayers and barriers to entry – this is just potentially one of them and another hurdle to overcome.”
Build A Global Network
You don’t necessarily need to build a large community of people when it comes to growing your professional network. Instead, channel your efforts into surrounding yourself with even just a few like-minded people from a range of backgrounds and stages in their professional journey who can help you, and who you can help in return.
“Realize the value of networking and making connections with the right people,” says Messenger. “The people we connect with are those who can make or break our ideas and future success. And, we can also be the same for them. There is great value in being connected with and having a strong network of big thinkers and achievers all over the world. I have always tried to be a connector of people myself and to help others in their pursuits, believing in the values of generosity and reciprocity. The best advice in this area I can give is to be genuine and consistent in your approach and intentional generally. Don’t think it will just happen organically. Instead, travel, attend thought leadership events and conferences, agree to coffees with like-minded people and cleverly reach out to those you want to connect with."
Prioritize Your Health
Another element of business and entrepreneurship that Messenger is a strong advocate of is investing in yourself. Taking care of your wellbeing, ensuring you are replenishing your energy levels and getting plenty of sleep are paramount in helping all of your ambitions come to life.
“You must look after yourself,” says Messenger. “All of the skills and knowledge and the incredible connections you make across countries and international waters will mean nothing if you aren’t here to implement them. I have learned that it can all come crashing down very quickly if you don’t look after yourself – mind, body and spirit.”
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3c50762dd91beedccb93db55ee0314d8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katestalter/2011/10/13/invest-like-a-shark-with-these-3-stocks/ | Invest Like a Shark with These 3 Stocks | Invest Like a Shark with These 3 Stocks
Investors should carefully track momentum in the current market, and be prepared to make buy decisions on strong uptrends, says James "Rev Shark" DePorre. Though small caps performed poorly in the market downturn, he likes the prospects of some names if the uptrend holds, and shares his views on three current picks.
Listen to the complete interview here.
Kate Stalter: I am speaking today with James “Rev Shark” DePorre, and he is the author of one of my favorite investing books, Invest like a Shark. He also runs the popular trading site at sharkinvesting.com, he is an asset manager, and a columnist at RealMoney.com.
Now Jim, you believe that the general market conditions these days have turned positive after undercutting the August lows and rebounding. I know that you have also written lately that maybe the technical picture for some of the individual stocks may not be so good; so give us some detail on that.
James “Rev Shark” DePorre: Well, right now I am starting to become a little more bullish about a possible run until the end of the year. I think the recent breach of the annual lows that we saw about a week ago was what we needed to get the kind of washout that will help put in a bottom.
The other positive that we have right now is that we have a lot of companies that are reporting good earnings. I think there has been a disconnect between the sentiment about the overall economy, the European situation, and so on, and what actual companies are reporting.
Earnings have been good, but people have been understandably bearish because personal observations about the economy don’t look so hot. I mean, who can be highly positive when housing, the job market, Europe, and the economy are doing so poorly?
But there are companies that are doing well. I think because people are out of position, there is a potential for some of these to really start to move into the end of the year.
Also read: 3 Stocks Ready for Earnings Season
Kate Stalter: Now you just talked about the upcoming earning season. Any specific moves that retail investors should be making right now within their portfolios to prepare for that?
James “Rev Shark” DePorre: Well, I tend to be more of a small-cap investor. What I really am looking for are stocks that have exceptional EPS growth or good revenue growth, and most importantly, are set up well technically.
Most small caps have been performing very poorly for a while. I tend to buy momentum rather than bottom fish, so I want to see a lot of these stocks improve before I will start putting my money into them.
One stock, in particular, that is at the top of my list for this quarter and into next quarter is Mitek (MITK).
They have technology that allows you to use your smartphone as a scanning device. Right now, that is being used by some of the major banking institutions to allow you to scan in a check and deposit it directly into your bank account. You may have seen some of these commercials they have on TV about that.
I think this technology is going to start become much more accepted, and I believe that stock is in the very early stages of being discovered.
Here’s another one, a very small company: EasyLink Services (ESIC). This is basically a cloud-computing play. They allow data to be shared using the cloud system.
They just reported exceptionally good earnings, following an acquisition of a competitor. They just reported last week with some good numbers. I think that one will do well as the small-cap market comes back.
Let me give you one more: C&J Energy Services (CJES). That is that is up strongly today due to an acquisition of its competitor, Complete Production Services (CPX), which is in the oil-services sector.
What CJES does is fracking—they introduce water into gas and oil wells to help production. There are some exceptionally strong numbers on that one.
I think that now that this one has bottomed and seems to be reversing, it is going to be on my radar as the technical picture starts to improve. It is supposed to earn over $4 next year, and the stock is currently selling for about $17, so it is a very cheap on a P/E basis.
Also read: 3 Small Caps Showing Leadership
Kate Stalter: Jim, you just talked about the stories behind some of these moves, and also some of the fundamentals, as well as the expectations. On the technical side, what are you looking for in terms of a stock that you are eyeing as a possible setup?
James “Rev Shark” DePorre: What I want to do when I invest is, I tend to believe that there is always someone who is going to know more about a company than I will. There is always big money out there that has the ability to do research that an individual investor can never do.
So what I am looking for are some signs that those elephants with a lot of cash are putting their money to work in a stock. So what I want to see is an uptrend. I want to buy stocks when they are going up. That has been very difficult in the recent environment, because we just don’t have much leadership right now.
If you want to get in, it has been the real dilemma of this market for many technical traders. Ever since the bottom back in March of 2009, we tend to have very peculiar moves where we go straight up and straight down with little basing action or little consolidation along the way.
So it has been much more difficult to play some of the standard charts. You have to be much more willing these days to chase momentum once it starts.
It tends to persist to a much greater degree than it has in the past. I think that is probably a function of high-frequency trading and computerized trading, which has become a much bigger part of the market. These computer programs tend to accentuate the moves. Once they start, they keep pushing and pushing while they extract their gains.
So technically, I am looking to chase strength much more than I would in the past, to stick with positions longer than I might otherwise. There has been a real change in the way you have to trade technically, and it has been a hard adjustment for many people, including myself. I think that is going to persist.
I am more hopeful that one of the other issues that really comes into play is that individual stock picking has taken a backseat to a lot of the trading off of the headlines. The European situation tends to push us one direction or the other and all stocks tend to be correlated.
So individual stock picking really has not been rewarded very much; it is a much more of a game of trying to time the market and to play directional moves. The advent, or the popularity, I should say, of ETFs is really having much influence on that, as well. There are a lot of things going on out there.
Kate Stalter: There sure are. Let me just ask you one follow-up question to what you just said, Jim: Should retail investors be prepared to sell on pullbacks to keep their gains, or to be patient and sit through a pullback? How do you trade those situations these days?
James “Rev Shark” DePorre: Well, the most important thing that an individual investor needs to do is have a methodology. I don’t think there is any particular style of trading that is inherently superior; it really depends on the execution of your particular style.
I know there are traders who will never want to average down positions, whereas there are other traders, that is their primary methodology. It really boils down to whether you are trading purely off technicals, or if you have enough confidence in your fundamental analysis to average down into positions. My tendency is to only add when stocks are going up.
Now, I will allow some smaller positions some leeway to go through pullbacks and so on. But the one thing that I don’t worry about is if I get stopped out of a position, I am always confident I can re-buy it if I still think the stock is worthwhile. A lot of times, I think it is more important to be disciplined about honoring your stops, sell out, and just come back and re-buy later on.
Also read: How to Avoid the 4 Biggest Mistakes
In fact, selling is just a cheap form of insurance; it allows you to escape the potential of a loss. If you have to buy your stock back at a higher price, that is just the premium you paid for a little protection in the interim.
The way you handle averaging in, I would like to average in slowly and average out slowly; it helps a lot to do that if you have an uptrending market. In a down-trending market, you just have to be much more disciplined in implementing your methodology.
Read more from The Daily Guru on MoneyShow.com.
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d0e8cf23bd28d333183d44cc2bca7d58 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katestalter/2011/11/07/a-fund-managers-views-on-stock-picking/ | A Fund Manager's Views on Stock Picking | A Fund Manager's Views on Stock Picking
Mutual funds are among the giant institutions that move the market through bulk buying and selling of stocks and bonds. Today, fund manager Lisa Myers shares an insider’s view of that process with MoneyShow.com. She tells Kate Stalter about a top sector pick, and explains why certain big caps are catching her eye.
Listen to the complete interview here.
Kate Stalter: Today I’m on the phone with Lisa Myers, manager of the Templeton Global Balanced Fund (TINCX).
Lisa, I noticed that you changed the name of the fund a few months ago. Was there also a shift in the fund’s objective and in your investing style?
Lisa Myers: We did change the name, Kate, a few months ago. But, no, there has been no change in either the management, the mandate, or the investment style of the fund.
We really changed the name simply because the fund has three mandates: Capital appreciation, capital preservation, as well as income. Formerly it was called the Templeton Income Fund.
As you can imagine, when you’re in a sliding asset-allocation fund that is dynamic, which invests in both fixed income and equities—particularly global equities and global fixed income... And particularly in a fixed-income market where duration has become less and less important, and fluctuates quite frequently in terms of how that portion of the fund is invested in fixed income... It can be quite difficult, unless you’re willing to commit to a fixed dividend yield to maintain a static or near-static dividend yield on an ongoing basis, quarterly.
So, we just felt that because the fund strives for capital appreciation, as well as income, we found that there was a little bit of misnomer or misunderstanding regarding a fixed dividend payment on a regular basis. So, while we absolutely maintain a mandate of providing income to our shareholders, we wanted there to be a little less of an emphasis on an idea that there would be a fixed income payment on a quarterly basis.
Also read: View the Market Like a Value Fund Manager
So, we’re still paying income, but it does fluctuate, depending on how the fund is invested, where the fund is invested, and where we’re finding value in order to drive capital appreciation.
Kate Stalter: I want to ask you just one follow up to that. You did mention the fixed-income holdings in the fund. I notice that a number of them tend to be from Asia and Latin America. Can you say a little about that?
Lisa Myers: Sure. Michael Hasenstab and the Templeton Fixed Income Group run the fixed-income portion of the fund. So, I am not shying from your question, but I’m actually responsible for the equity portion.
So, I’ll explain in perhaps a little bit less detail than Michael might, but Michael and his team have been very proactive on the emerging market. They believe that the GDP growth that the emerging markets have enjoyed will continue. The demographics are favorable there, that much of the political risk in some markets, like Indonesia and Malaysia, have been overblown by the yields that are demanded there.
Consequently, Michael has felt that there’s just a lot of value in that, both on the currency side, as well as on a yield dislocation from the growth and the stability in some of those countries, has been a great way to drive returns. So, he really utilizes many different methodologies to drive capital return.
Kate Stalter: Let’s talk a bit then, Lisa, about the equity holdings. I know that there are a number of techs among your top ten. Can you say something about that?
Lisa Myers: Sure. We’ve been big fans of technology. It represents sort of a theme that is two-pronged when it comes to technology.
One is: You may be well be aware that free cash flow yield across markets and cash on balance sheets of corporate, is something that has been talked about a great deal. Technology companies are among those companies which have a lot of cash on their balance sheets over the last decade.
Since the bursting of the telecom, media, and technology bubble; there’s been a lot of consolidation in that sector. They’ve really been companies that have rationalized their businesses, have delivered very strong earnings, and have not gotten a lot of credit for it. So, these are companies sitting with a lot of cash on their balance sheets.
But importantly, the reason we like technology is not only the strength of these companies and their ability to invest and grow their businesses globally, but also because technology spends from the rest of corporate, in varying sectors—technology investment has been really below trend since before the year 2000, when companies were forced to spend a lot of money to get over the Y2K issue.
Obviously, the subsequent recessions we’ve gone through since then have not been conducive to companies making a lot of capital expenditures in that area. Consequently, as we look at companies today with a lot of cash on their balance sheets, but a lot of uncertainty in the macro environment, technology is actually a very interesting place for companies to make capital investments today, because technology investments tend to be productivity enhancing and not capacity enhancing.
A company can make an investment over a year or two years that can help drive productivity and earnings growth, without having to commit to taking on the same kind of cost as hiring new employees or building new capacity would cause them to do in an uncertain environment, which they seem unwilling to do.
So, we like technology from both of those perspectives. One, because we’ve already started to see some of that capital spending for productivity growth come through from companies across many industries, and also because many of these technology companies have used the cash on their balance sheets to really make themselves global companies.
So, we like in particular enterprise software companies, like Oracle (ORCL) and SAP (SAP) are two great examples of very strong companies that have great global businesses that are participating in that kind of software, productivity-enhancing investment across the world. And most importantly, are trading at a significant discounts to what we think they can grow their businesses over the next three to five years.
Also read: Ante Up for This Proven Value Fund
Kate Stalter: Now, is Microsoft (MSFT) another of your holdings, Lisa?
Lisa Myers: It is indeed. Microsoft is a company trading at nine times next year’s earnings. It’s a company that’s involved in the software space. As you know, it’s loaded into 90% plus of all PCs that enter the marketplace.
It’s a company that has a server business. It’s a company with its Xbox Kinect. I don’t know, there was a recent article discussing the potential of Kinect even in the industrial world.
But at nine times next year’s earnings, with tens of billions of dollars on its balance sheet, with a very global business, returning cash to shareholders in the form of an increasing dividend, as well as a very high free cash flow yield, and buying back stocks. It’s just a stock that really is trading on valuation that suggests that it has no growth, and we think it certainly has growth going into the future.
Kate Stalter: I noticed another holding in the fund is Asia-based insurer AIA (AAIGF). The financial sector has really been under pressure in Europe and the US. Is the same also true for Asian financials?
Lisa Myers: Yeah, Asian financials have been under significant pressure over this last little while. I think the market has been relatively indiscriminate about being negative on financials.
However, AIA sort of represents two themes within the portfolios and our view on financials. One is, we’ve been very constructive on the insurance companies, because insurers have traded at an equal discount in terms of valuation to the banking sector.
There’s not nearly as much regulatory risk or as much sovereign debt exposure that would suggest that they deserve that kind of valuation discount, based on the uncertainty in the regulatory environment, as well as the future of returns that banks across the world will be able to deliver. So, insurance companies have been interesting to us in that regard.
Asian financials have also been interesting to us, because I like to say we’re very comfortable investing in underleveraged financials, in underleveraged regions of the world, serving underleveraged consumers.
So, quite the antithesis of the problems in many of the developed markets. What we see out in Asia is a growing consumer base with rising income levels that are starting to look for increasing amounts of financial services. As you know, many of the countries out there enjoy capital surpluses on their balance sheets, and also consumer themselves are not in debt as they are in many of the developed markets.
Also read: Mark Mobius Discusses 3 Markets Stirring in Africa
So, we’ve tended to see, and many of these financials are also overcapitalized themselves as opposed to being undercapitalized, as we see in many of the levels of undercapitalization in some of the European financials. So, very different profiles, yet really have not been left out of this malaise, this financial malaise, so we think there’s a lot of value there.
Kate Stalter: Great information. Thank you. Let me throw a little bit of an oddball question at you, Lisa, but it is something that I personally have heard a number of retail investors wondering about: That’s the fiscal year-end from mutual funds. A lot of folks wonder whether or not that coincides with some major buying or selling that they might see on the major indices.
Lisa Myers: For us, Kate, the fiscal year-end of the mutual fund is really not a date that we look toward in terms of trading. We are very disciplined value investors, and we buy stocks in an open-end mutual fund when there is cash to be invested, or we buy bonds likewise, depending on what the allocation is at the time. We invest accordingly to those cash inflows and outflows, really not to a fiscal year end.
Likewise, we are also buying and selling stocks. When we see good value, we’re buying stocks, and when we see positions in our portfolios that have reached full value, we are selling stocks, or bonds, as the case may be. So, really it’s not a meaningful date for us in terms of buying or selling or moving the portfolio significantly around that time period.
Kate Stalter: Great. Thanks for clearing that up. A final question for you today, Lisa: Any words of wisdom for retail investors, who are understandably pretty frustrated trying to navigate these very challenging markets? What would you say to them?
Lisa Myers: I would say to them that amidst a lot of the macro concerns that are out there today...I mentioned corporate cash a while ago when we were talking about technology companies.
But again, I mentioned that it’s also a phenomenon across many industries, where companies are sitting on a great deal of cash. They’ve been disciplined. They’ve cut back on capital expenditures broadly. They have been able to maintain margins by continuously cutting costs, and there are a lot of great global companies today that are trading at very low valuations.
So, as an investor, we’re pretty excited about buying companies that are participating in growth around the world, which may be more robust today in some of the emerging markets than it is in the developed markets that are mired in some of these macro issues. But these are companies, brands, products, and services that are very viable, and will last well beyond the macro concerns that we have today.
Many of these companies are trading at very high free cashflow yields, very low valuation. They are buying back shares, paying dividends to shareholders, and we would encourage investors to take solace in the fact that they can participate in mutual funds that are owning those kinds of companies. Those companies should deliver value and should deliver returns longer term.
So, I say, stand tough and feel good about your investments, and hang in there.
Also read: Remembering Sir John Templeton
Read more from The Daily Guru on MoneyShow.com.
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d4ff797bc23688540a9b4dd06b0cbb9b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katestalter/2020/11/28/how-homeowners-knew-refinancing-was-the-right-move-for-them/ | How Homeowners Knew Refinancing Was The Right Move For Them | How Homeowners Knew Refinancing Was The Right Move For Them
With mortgage rates at historic lows, many homeowners are refinancing mortgages on their primary ... [+] residences or rental properties. Rawpixel Ltd.
While investing may get the lion’s share of attention, when it comes to financial planning topics, plenty of other aspects are equally, if not more important.
For example, back in March, as equity markets were tumbling, few of us could have imagined there may be any positive developments from the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, as the Federal Reserve pledged to keep interest rates anchored around 0% for at least five years, many homeowners realized they could refinance their mortgages to get a better long-term rate.
“For us, it was a very easy decision. We wanted to move to a 15 year mortgage for awhile, but interest rates were too high. When the rates dropped, we were able to lock in at 2.5% with a slight increase of payment,” says Kristy Marshall, founder of personal finance education company Money Bliss.
Marshall encountered a bit of a hitch before closing could be completed.
“The process was a little interesting because of the new protocols put in place,” she adds. “The overall process was pretty easy and straightforward - all completed digitally. Instead of meeting at a closing office, the title company sent out a notary to close the loan and overnight our documents back to them. They were lost by the delivery company. So, it was a pretty intense week while the lender and title company figured out a plan B. Thankfully, the documents arrived before we had to start over.”
She adds, “For us, it was the best decision. From the start we should have only taken out a 15-year mortgage. I wished we were given better advice as a young couple. However, in the end, it all worked out.”
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HELOC was a bonus
Ricardo Pina, founder of personal finance site The Modest Wallet, had two objectives for refinancing.
Ricardo Pina, founder of The Modest Wallet Ricardo Pina
“I personally decided to refinance my mortgage to access my home equity in order to invest in my business and lower my interest rate,” he says. “I was also able to obtain a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) while refinancing my home, which is something I didn't have before. That was a nice bonus.”
Fortunately, his refinancing process went smoothly.
“The process of refinancing my mortgage was easy and fully online as it was done in May 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic,” Pina says. “The bank was really helpful and somewhat sophisticated to get all paperwork signed digitally so I didn't have to go to a physical branch.”
He adds, “I'm really happy with the decision to refinance my mortgage as I was able to kill two birds with one stone. I was able to lower my interest rate and also access my home equity to invest in my business. Overall I'm really satisfied.”
Homeowners interested in refinancing must account for closing costs, even when they are able to get a significantly lower interest rate. The costs are similar to the costs incurred any time borrowers get a mortgage. Sometimes the closing costs may be rolled into the mortgage balance, but either way, they must be factored in.
“We decided to refinance mainly because our interest rate dropped by 1.375%,” says Sam Hawrylack, co-owner of personal finance blog, How To FIRE.
Even after closing costs, she says, “We are still putting a significant amount more of equity into our home each month. This was attractive to us because we are looking to move in the next few years. The additional equity will help us to have a larger down payment and move sooner than we thought.”
Hawrylack says the refining process was easy and straightforward, for the most part. “It took time to provide all the necessary information and documents at the beginning of the process. After that, it was as simple as waiting for the mortgage company to move through their processing and underwriting process. We did make sure that we looked through all of the disclosures that were sent to us, as they had a few mistakes on them that would have cost a few thousand dollars! Because of COVID, we were able to hold closing at our home which made things easier and more convenient.”
Do your math homework
Hawrylack and her husband did the calculations to determine that refinancing was the right move for them.
Sam Hawrylack, co-owner of the personal finance/FIRE blog, How To FIRE Sam Hawrylack
“We are very happy with our decision, especially because we did the math ahead of time. We are essentially saving more money by putting a larger portion into principal than interest each month. It also further along our goal to move in the next few years,” she says.
Often, homeowners believe they can’t refinance since they only recently purchased their homes. That’s not necessarily true, however.
Forrest McCall, owner of Don’t Work Another Day, a personal finance, investing, and entrepreneurship blog, refinanced to get a better interest rate, although it had only been two years since he originally purchased his home.
“I was able to lower my interest rate by more than two percentage points, saving thousands over the life of the loan,” he says.
McCall’s refinancing process went easily.
“To get started, I was approached by the original mortgage broker I used to purchase the home. From there, he verified my income and ran a credit check,” McCall says. “I was not forced to get an appraisal or inspection on the home because of how recently it was purchased. I filled out all of the paperwork and was approved within the week. I closed on the refinance within the month. The entire process was a breeze and super simple.”
He is happy about the decision, although rates are even lower today than when he refinanced. “By refinancing, I lowered both my interest rate and monthly payments, not to mention skipping one payment in the process,” he says.
Homeowners must do the calculations to determine that refinancing is the right move for them. iqoncept (Chris Lamphear)
Refinancing a rental property
Disha Spath, MD, is CEO and Founder of The Frugal Physician, a blog that helps doctors get out of debt and manage their finances.
“We had planned on doing a cash-out refinance of our rental property this year, even prior to the pandemic,” Spath says.
She cites the favorable rate environment, as well as a Fannie Mae FNMA and Freddie Mac financing fee of .05% going into effect December 1, as motivations.
Spath and her husband had a strategy behind the move, in addition to lowering their rate.
“We did a cash-out option to harness some of the accumulated equity in the house and re-invest into another rental property. With this strategy, we were able to turn one rental into two and decrease our interest rate at the same time from 3.75 to 3.375%,” she says.
However, the process was not always easy. “I've taken out several mortgages before and this was definitely one of the more frustrating ones,” she says. “The processing times from the lender were very long, I'm guessing because people are working from home and they have a very high volume of refinances at this time.”
She had to call the lender several times to get rate-lock extension fees to be taken off, as the delays in the closing were caused by the lender.
“There were also several mix-ups with getting a notary to come to our home for closing and issues with doing it safely outside with masks on, etc.,” she recalls.
Ultimately, she is glad she made the decision to refinance. “This cash out refinance was always in our financial plan, but the current environment has made it even more advantageous by lowering our interest rate,” she says.
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2daaf42b7de4fbf692b7cdb1a77cb147 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katestalter/2020/11/29/do-you-know-if-youre-prepared-for-retirement/ | Do You Know If You’re Prepared For Retirement? | Do You Know If You’re Prepared For Retirement?
Pre-retirees should do a review of all their assets and liabilities, as well as expected future ... [+] expenses. Copyright: Andrey Popov
Are you prepared to retire?
Sixty-seven is the magic number for retirement, according to a January study by TD Ameritrade AMTD .
More than half of Americans surveyed told pollsters they had a plan in place to retire by that age.
The survey polled 2,000 U.S. adults between the ages of 40 and 79, who had at least $25,000 in investable assets.
In my experience as a financial planner and investment advisor, Americans often believe they are on track to retire, but a comprehensive plan (sometimes even a quick glance at the numbers) reveals shortfalls.
The TD Ameritrade study uncovered some of those shortfalls.
Among respondents in the age groups approaching retirement, here are the amounts they have saved for retirement:
Ages 50-59
Less than $50K: 37%
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$50K-$99K: 16%
$100K-$500K: 32%
$500K-$999K: 6%
$1 million or more: 8%
Ages 60-69
Less than $50K: 28%
$50K-$99K: 10%
$100K-$500K: 36%
$500K-$999K: 14%
$1 million or more: 12%
While some of those amounts may sound like a lot of money for retirement, they may be deceptive. For example, as back-of-the-envelope math, a 67-year-old couple with $500,000 saved could run out of money in about a decade, if they have fairly frugal lifestyle expenses of $50,000 per year.
One piece of good news: The TD Ameritrade study did show that Americans are adaptable: 81% of respondents said they are shifting their financial strategy to prepare for a longer life expectancy.
How Much Will Retirement Cost?
In fact, accounting for a longer-than-expected life is a key tenet of financial planning.
That’s where it’s crucial to understand how much retirement will cost. If Americans opt to retire at age 67, the age when people born in 1960 and later are eligible for their full Social Security benefit, they need to anticipate living another 20 years, or even more.
It’s true that Americans have been hearing end-of-the-world retirement scenarios for decades. While we’ve yet to see the worst predictions play out, there’s no denying that many Americans are unprepared for retirement, even as that day approaches.
It’s also true that the Boomer generation has it tougher than its predecessors, in some ways.
Longevity is increasing, especially among higher earners. The life expectancy for women and men has increased over the past 40 years. Also, corporate pensions have all but disappeared. Those benefits meant Americans didn’t have to save on their own for retirement; many in the Boomer generation never developed that habit, despite not having the backstop of a pension.
Retirement has also become more complex, and a dizzying array of financial products can add confusion.
However, the Boomers enjoy some advantages unknown to their parents and grandparents. Asset allocation is much easier today, due to inexpensive exchange-traded funds. Investors can fully diversify with a broad basket of domestic and overseas stocks of all market capitalizations. That means it’s easier to smooth returns with other assets when U.S. stocks decline.
Boomers Benefit From Fintech
Financial planning technology also makes it easy for today’s pre-retirees to get a good understanding of what their future cash flow, taxes and other scenarios will look like.
Have you run retirement scenarios to determine what your income will be? Do you understand the risk levels in your portfolio? The implications of taxes on your retirement income? The best time to take Social Security?
Here’s a word of warning: Don’t try this at home. Hire a qualified financial planner.
I’ve seen complex do-it-yourself spreadsheets that failed to anticipate potential pitfalls. In one case, I worked with a widow whose engineer husband devised thorough spreadsheets that looked great - yet, when he passed away, there were gaps in her income that he hadn’t accounted for.
Don’t cripple your own retirement by neglecting to understand what you’ll need to sustain a comfortable life, or, even better, the retirement you dream of.
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ec60f002ee865172e2595f0ac79c8c89 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katestalter/2020/11/30/two-tech-names-notching-price-gains-showing-accumulation-near-buy-points/ | Two Tech Names Notching Price Gains, Showing Accumulation Near Buy Points | Two Tech Names Notching Price Gains, Showing Accumulation Near Buy Points
Shopify has boasted double-digit earnings growth in the past eight quarters. burdun
Stocks making price moves in big volume are worth watching. The volume indicates large buying on the part of institutional investors, such as mutual funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies or foundations and university endowments.
These institutions place large trades, far bigger than retail investors can. These large, heavy-volume trades indicate confidence in a stock’s future prospects, and often foreshadow even more gains.
While it’s not necessarily advisable to purchase a stock zooming higher out of a consolidation, it’s worth watching the stock to see if it forms a new consolidation or pullback to a key moving average.
Here are two stocks up in volume Monday. These companies also boast strong fundamentals, especially sales and earnings growth in recent quarters.
Shopify (SHOP): The cloud-based e-commerce platform jumped 4.67% mid-session Monday, in volume 126% higher than average.
Rather than offer a central e-commerce marketplace, as EBay (EBAY EBAY ) does, Shopify allows small and large businesses to transact sales, process payments, fulfill orders and perform other functions.
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Monday’s gains follow an announcement that Shopify’s Black Friday sales totaled $2.4 billion, a 75% year-over-year rise.
Year-over-year earnings growth has been solid over the past four quarters. Sales grew at double-digit rates, between 45% and 97%, over the past eight quarters.
The price-to-earnings ratio of 369 may give some investors pause. However, there are growth-investing schools of thought holding that high P/Es among fast growers, and is not something to panic about.
If you believe the stock is overpriced, relative to its earnings performance, you may want to avoid it. But if the potential for further price appreciation is a more compelling argument, consider the chart action.
Shopify is nearing a buy point after a three-month price consolidation. StockCharts.com
The stock began a consolidation on September 1, after rallying to a high of $1146.91. The consolidation formed a double-bottom pattern, although the second leg down failed to undercut the first. That particular type of double bottom may precede a failure of the next breakout.
With Monday’s price action, the stock is still below a potential buy point of $1130.
MongoDB MDB (MDB): The database specialist, in a business category dubbed “Big Data,” serves a wide range of enterprise and government customers. It offers its open open-source database software on a subscription basis.
The company went public in October, 2017, and is up more than 850% since its debut.
Investors who only add big earnings gainers to their watch lists may want to wait for this company to notch some profits, which it has yet to do. It’s not atypical for young, newly public companies to rely on venture funding to sustain growth and operations for a long period of time.
Analysts see continued losses for the full year of 2020, as well as 2021.
Revenue at MongoDB is strong, however. Sales grew between 39% and 71% over the past seven quarters.
MongoDB cleared a buy point of $273.01, and is hovering around 5% above that level. StockCharts.com
The stock broke out of a 14-week consolidation in early September, yet pulled back in heavy volume. That type of price action is not necessarily unusual. Institutions will often accumulate shares on pullbacks, or when the stock gets support at a key moving average.
In addition, MongoDB’s pullback occurred at the same time the broader market retreated. It’s typical to see even strong stocks pull back along with the indexes.
The stock cleared a buy point of $273.01 on Friday, but ended the session below that level. Monday’s action brought it to just around 5% above that point. Beyond this, it’s a riskier proposition to purchase shares, as another retreat could shake out a buyer who put in stops at levels around 7% below the buy point.
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830dba06c2bde984ce7579166f2162dd | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katestalter/2020/12/18/rebuilding-your-finances-after-divorce/?sh=11741b6b5509 | Rebuilding Your Finances After Divorce | Rebuilding Your Finances After Divorce
As a financial planner and advisor, I routinely meet with clients and prospects in varying degrees of financial uncertainty or even distress.
Sometimes accounts were tied up at a bank or brokerage, with seemingly endless paperwork, phone calls and waiting time before they could access accounts. Other times, there is a lawyer somewhere who is supposedly working out the financial details, usually at a snail’s pace. Still other times, the situation is simply glum, with little or no recourse to get a better financial outcome from the divorce.
Does it have to be that way?
No, say advisors who specialize in planning for clients who are divorcing.
For clients who find themselves in a precarious or unsettled financial position after a divorce, a first step is getting a handle on expenses, says Nancy Hetrick, a certified divorce financial analyst and founder of Smarter Divorce Solutions in Phoenix. She is the author of “Divorce Financial Planning: Building a Successful Niche Business,” the textbook for CDFAs hoping to grow their practices.
Supporting Two Households
“The reality of every divorce is that the same money that used to support one household now has to support two,” she says. “It's completely normal to be spending based on the standard of living you are used and that is usually beyond the current cash flow available.”
Attitude and mindset, not just budgeting skills, play a role in how well people adjust to their new reality after divorce.
“Individuals that can't let go of the past will struggle emotionally far more than those that look toward the possibilities for their futures,” says Hetrick. “Divorce can actually be an amazingly transformational period if those involved choose to view it that way. However, jumping into a new relationship too quickly is not the answer. In my experience, one has to go through the grief process and there is no going around it. If you try to go around it, it will only resurface later.”
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By hiring a divorce financial planner, couples may avoid many of the monetary stresses and arguments ... [+] than can accompany divorce. SIphotography
Russ Thornton is another CDFA who is a financial advisor and founder of Wealthcare For Women in Atlanta. His practices specializes in retirement planning for women 55 and older.
Thornton also says a good mental state is key in rebounding from divorce.
“The mindset that I’ve seen most beneficial to people dealing with divorce is one of resilience,” he says. “Whether you filed for divorce or were served divorce papers, you likely didn’t walk down the aisle on your wedding day thinking you’d find yourself going through a divorce.”
He also cautions that the process won’t necessarily go according to plan.
Focus on what’s in your control
“Rather than getting sidetracked by these things that will inevitably pop up throughout the divorce process, just remember to focus on the things within your control and focus on ‘progress not perfection.’ The best way to do this is think and be resilient,” he says.
If you are midway through the divorce process, and perhaps have attorneys already working on your case, is it too late to begin financial planning?
Absolutely not, says Hetrick.
“Especially if you are in the middle of the process and you are feeling like the decisions you're being asked to make are getting more confusing instead of less, that's the perfect time to bring in a divorce financial planner,” she says. “If you aren't 100% clear on what the results of your settlement will be the day after your divorce and five years in the future, you should never sign anything.”
Thornton says open communication, where possible, is another way to sidestep potential pitfalls. Even when at the mediation table discussing final negotiations, he says it’s not too late to get help and begin applying financial planning to your situation and evaluation of various settlement offers.
“The best way to avoid some of the problems and issues often involved with divorce is through communication. Now this might not be easy, but it’s worth the effort to communicate with your spouse, even if they’re making things difficult, your attorney, and your other professionals,” he says.
What If Your Spouse Isn’t Onboard?
“In some cases, you might need to let go of your ego for a period of time in order to help move the divorce process forward,” he adds. “And regardless of where you’re at in the divorce process, it’s never too late to hire a CDFA or other professionals who can help and support you throughout your divorce.”
What if your soon-to-be-ex-spouse is not onboard with the financial planning process? Do both parties have to agree to a plan?
“It's my preference to work as a neutral party with a couple, but no, it's not necessary,” says Hetrick. “In most marriages one of the spouses has taken the lead role in the financial management of the household. I often refer to the other spouse as ‘the non-CFO spouse.’ It's not that they're any less intelligent. The finances just weren't their responsibility. It's not unusual for that person to need a lot more support than the other and I often support those spouses in an advocacy role to help get them educated and up to speed on the decisions that need to be made.”
Thornton says if one spouse is not willing to collaborate amicably on financial decisions, the other can still benefit greatly from financial planning.
Finances after divorce can be a difficult, emotional topic. IgorVetushko
“Not only will it help educate you about your decisions throughout the process, but it can also help you understand the short- and long-term impact of decisions around custody, spousal support, division of assets, current and future income, and much, much more,” he says.
“It’s never too late to get started regardless of whether your spouse is on the same page with you,” he adds. “Ultimately, divorce is about making sure minor children are taken care of and dividing one household’s finances into two separate household’s finances. You need to think about and take control of your situation and also begin to consider your life on the other side of divorce.”
Getting Through It
What about the person whose divorce has already been finalized? Is there anything he or she an do to reduce the negative financial effects?
“The best thing a person can do once they’re already reeling from the impact of divorce is to first take a deep breath and know that you have the strength to get through this,” says Thornton. “Beyond that, you need to first assess where you are currently with regard to your financial situation, your family and relationships, and your future opportunities and strengths.”
He advises, “Once you’ve assessed your current position, next focus on and prioritize the things and decisions within your control. So much of our lives are out of our control, so don’t spend your time, energy or attention worrying about these.”
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8c72c9c4faf8a4c1d6729509120bb4a7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katetalbot/2018/03/05/what-startups-can-learn-from-the-snapchat-redesign/ | What Startups Can Learn From The Snapchat Redesign | What Startups Can Learn From The Snapchat Redesign
Snapchat’s redesign has caused quite the uproar. After years of hearing feedback that the app has been notoriously hard to navigate, founder and CEO Evan Spiegel acknowledged a redesign of the app on a November 2017 earnings call: "One thing that we have heard over the years is that Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use, and our team has been working on responding to this feedback. As a result, we are currently redesigning our application to make it easier to use.”
As Snap looked to expand beyond their user base and bring in more advertising revenue, the redesign had the opposite effect. The app fell to a 1.8 rating on the app store and a Change.org petition named "Remove the new Snapchat update" gathered over 1.2 million signatures. And, in one day, there was a market drop of 7.2%, wiping out $1.3 billion in market value — most pointing to Kylie Jenner’s tweet "Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me ... ugh this is so sad" as the leading factor.
This volatility is a solid case study for startups so that they don’t face similar challenges as their products mature.
Listen To Your Customers
Snapchatters are a passionate demographic. Daily active users spend thirty-three minutes a day on the app. After the redesign, they were very vocal about the changes.
A tweet posted right after the update showcased a fake conversation with Snapchat saying they would change back to the original layout if the tweet got 50,000 retweets. The tweet was retweeted almost 1.5 million times and became the 6th most retweeted tweet of all time.
This viral tweet highlights how imperative it is for startups to remember that customers come first and are the reason for success. To keep your customers calm, have a crisis communications plan in place for these situations. This way you can mitigate negative sentiments. This could include replying back to the tweets or having an official statement sent to press or posted on social media channels.
In the case of Snapchat, they released a statement acknowledging the Change.org petition which included, "We hear you, and appreciate that you took the time to let us know how you feel. We completely understand the new Snapchat has felt uncomfortable for many.”
Make sure to always listen to user’s concerns and have them feel valued through strong communication and swift action. Snapchat illustrated how startups and entrepreneurs need to move forward in tough decisions and make users feedback an integral part of their product release plan.
Provide Value For Brands And Influencers From The Start
Discoverability on Snapchat has always been a pain point for brands and influencers. With the redesign, Snapchat is hoping that more brand and influencer content will be created on the platform, as their stories are now featured alongside Discover content.
Mike Platco, a Snapchat influencer, who has worked with large brands and media including NBC Universal for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Marriott Hotels, T-Mobile, and ABC Family for Pretty Little Liars is a fan of the redesign, “I like that popular stories are being featured, adding a level of discoverability to the platform for creators. Snapchat also released a new ‘Insights’ dashboard for creators and popular accounts that show a magnitude more data about our following and engagement. I’m confident this will get more brands and creators back on the Snapchat bandwagon.”
Carmen Collins, Social Media Lead of the well-received WeAreCisco Snapchat account agrees, “In the past week, we’ve seen our peak unique views go up. Our completion rate has been outstanding.”
As brands and influencers secure new users and increase advertising revenue, startups need to remember the importance of building positive relationships and providing product features such as robust analytics and ease of discoverability from the beginning. Being able to build community and gain followers through being easily discovered on the platform is core for power users. This way brands and influencers will promote the channel and continue to bring their creativity and community to the platform.
Don’t Alienate Your Core Users
Finding product market fit relies heavily on capturing the correct target market. In the case of Snapchat, they were able to scale and succeed by tapping into the Millennial and Gen Z generation, who embraced ephemeral storytelling and disappearing messages — leading to the ever most important Snapstreaks.
Millennial founder, Andrew Lee, of Buy Custom Geofilters, explains the importance of Snapstreaks and how the redesign has affected them, “A Snapstreak starts when two users both send snaps to each other every day. It’s quite a bit of work to do so. Because of that, a
Snapstreak has become a status symbol on the platform. However, with the update, Snapchat displayed stories on an algorithmic feed versus displaying them by most recently added. This new update matters to Snapchat users significantly. Why? Because it’s now harder to find your friends on Snapchat in the busy feed of stories that Snapchat’s algorithm is now showing you.”
This change has shifted users over to Instagram. Maybelline even led a poll on Twitter asking their followers if they should stick to Snapchat or move more of their efforts to Instagram: “Our @Snapchat views have dropped dramatically and we want to stay connected to you all. We're not sure if this is the platform to do it anymore, unfortunately. Should Maybelline stay on Snapchat?” Before the tweet was deleted, there were over 6,000 votes heavily in favor of Instagram.
As competition is fierce, it is a good reminder for startups to delight their core user base always. Keep platforms intuitive when making product updates and get feedback from focus groups and core users before making large changes that could affect long-term growth. There are many tools like usertesting.com or usability hub that places prototype designs in front of potential customers. By testing updates before they are released to the masses, startups can glean insights into if it will be a success or not.
Lessons To Take Away
For startups, the Snapchat redesign highlights the importance of listening to community, keeping brands and influencers engaged, and focusing on the core user-base for growth. In doing so, product updates will be appreciated by users and lead to increased use and customer satisfaction.
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1f1b3c240b4d7e8d658bd643ae22f22b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katetalbot/2018/10/10/what-brands-can-learn-from-the-new-york-public-librarys-instagram-stories/ | What Brands Can Learn From The New York Public Library's Instagram Stories | What Brands Can Learn From The New York Public Library's Instagram Stories
The New York Public Library -- founded in 1895 -- has always had to adapt to how the written word is consumed. Recently, the library introduced Insta Novels with the goal of “reimagining Instagram Stories to provide a new platform for iconic stories.”
With the rise of social media in the past decade, attention spans have decreased and the addiction to technology has taken away from consuming off-line content. By embracing social channels like Instagram, the New York Public Library found a way to inspire this new generation of readers through creating digital content that expands their knowledge-base of the classics.
They teamed up with the creative agency Mother and well-known illustrator Magoz to bring classics to life in the form of ephemeral content with each page only lasting 10 seconds in nature before disappearing. Luckily, these books live in the Highlights section on Instagram and can be viewed at any time. The three books they’ve piloted include Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Yellow Wallpaper, and The Metamorphosis.
The launch of Insta Novels has been a resounding success. The library says it has seen an increase of 100,000 new Instagram followers and over 40,000 readers completed Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Here are four ways the New York Public Library has been able to capture a new audience using the classics.
Build a community, not just followers.
When brands launch exciting and out-of-the-box campaigns there is always an influx of positive feedback. Comments and direct messages to the New York Public Library included, “This is brilliant. You know an idea is pure gold when you think how was this not a thing already?’” and “This is amazing! Accessible literature is everything. Thank you for doing this.”
The digital team saw this as an opportunity to develop stronger relationships with their community. Director of Digital Media, Richert Schnorr explains, “What’s great about the follower growth we’ve seen from this project is we see this as a huge new audience we get to keep engaging with.”
By looking at social media as a community, rather than a numbers game, they were able to create loyal followers. They did so by replying to the comments and direct messages with comments and emojis and listened to any user feedback from the launch. Additionally, they continued to post daily content on Instagram to illustrate their comprehensive social strategy and that this wasn’t just a stunt for new followers. “It’s not followers for follower's sake; it’s about inspiring this new community to engage with their local library and read more,” notes Schnorr.
Choose content that resonates with your community.
The New York Public Library strategically chose classics that would be truly enjoyable to digest from a visual perspective. By launching Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, they picked a novel that has many illustrative components and placed into the Instagram Stories format to galvanize readers back to the classic. It was an important decision to start with a book that is so well-loved and beloved by the masses, to make sure it got the most amount of attention and engagement.
To create a cohesiveness, the three books all have the theme of transformation, where one reality becomes another. The books also all touch on issues of diversity and inclusivity -- which are core tenets of the New York Public Library and of the millennial generation. Schnorr notes, “Each book -- especially Yellow Wallpaper -- with a focus on feminist literature -- highlights current societal themes.”
Embrace social impact.
Millennials are fervently passionate about social impact and gravitate towards brands that have a higher purpose. With Insta Novels, not only is there entertainment value, but the New York Public Library is highlighting their core value proposition of reading. With the libraries mission to be a force for social good, this initiative allows for civic participation into a world of knowledge and information. Schnorr elaborates, “What’s great about this project is how perfectly it aligns to both our mission and our brand. Part of our mission is to inspire lifelong learning, and our brand is bold, smart, and innovative. Any time we can inspire people to read, learn, and think more is an opportunity for us to carry out our mission.” When crafting content for the millennial generation it is imperative to showcase how it is deeply tied to the mission and has an overall positive impact.
Meet your audience where they spend their time.
As technology has become more commonplace in our everyday lives, the New York Public Library sees this as an opportunity to produce an experience for the next generation that would inspire more reading -- the ultimate goal. “We are always trying to be nimble, to stay on top of trends and meet our audiences where they are,” says Schnorr. By understanding that their audience’s go-to social channel is Instagram, the library created content on the platform where their audience lives. This had a ripple effect, and after the launch of Insta Novels, the library found a spike in eReader downloads.
The next chapter
Established brands and institutions will always have to shift their strategy to connect with each generation. The New York Public Library illustrates that if you celebrate your main product offering and core mission, those values will resonate with a newer audience. You just have to adapt to the ever-changing technological landscape. In doing so, you can inspire and educate global citizens, one page - or Stories tap - at a time.
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b20effb8a0a67eb0f1bbaf31b6a98f64 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katetalbot/2018/12/29/5-tips-if-you-are-ever-a-social-media-expert-witness/ | 5 Tips If You Are Ever A Social Media Expert Witness | 5 Tips If You Are Ever A Social Media Expert Witness
Being a social media practitioner allows you to utilize your skill-set in a variety of different ways. The traditional social media career used to include managing a brand account or working at a social strategy agency.
However, as social media has expanded throughout all components of business, there are a plethora of ways to implement your knowledge-base.
This can take the form of working at a university or as an online lecturer, a ghostwriter for celebrities or influencers, or even working in the judicial system as a social media expert witness. This past summer, I was retained as a Snapchat expert witness. Here are five insights that I gleaned from the experience.
Know Your Expertise Inside And Out
The lawyers hired you as an expert and are counting on you to become a valuable part of their argument. You will be questioned about the minutiae of social media and the product itself. It is imperative to be able to explain every aspect of the tool and how it relates to the case. This can be especially taxing as apps are constantly being redesigned and updated. Make sure you do your due diligence to make sure your arguments are sound by testing out processes, using online resources like YouTube or blogs to read up on certain areas, and engaging with your community of other social media thought leaders to double check your research -- just remember to keep the details of the case under wraps.
Understand The Law
Working in the judicial system opens you up to a new world of terms that you’ll need to know to succeed as a social media expert witness. It is prudent to truly understand each term and how they relate to the case. These can include arbitrator, opposing counsel, exhibit, deposition, errata, affidavit, and expert letter. There are many nuances to the law, and the more you comprehend them, it will be better for all parties involved.
Have Confidence
Lawyers need you to explain and defend a compelling argument during the case whether in a deposition or at trial. Because of this, you will need to have confidence while opposing counsel is questioning your abilities. You will do deposition practice that will get you prepared, but you’ll also need to go over your argument because you never know what could be coming your way. To do your best work while under pressure -- as these depositions can go for many hours -- you can practice power poses beforehand or find an activity like meditation or yoga that will give you internal strength and calmness.
Be Clear In Your Analysis
As your words will have an impact within the trial, be clear and detailed in how you present your analysis. As social media is a new field, it is of utter importance to explain the tactics to an audience that is unfamiliar with the apps. By taking your time to explain the digital landscape and how it relates to the case, it will be beneficial for your side to win.
Communicate With Your Lawyers
You are providing value and a paid service so it is essential to be as communicative as possible. Lawyers are on a time crunch and need insights and data points as soon as possible. Make it a top priority to communicate swiftly so that the lawyers can prepare all of the information they are gathering from you. To make things easier, you can manage your email notifications so that their correspondence always pops up and gets attention, and always hop on a call if they need more explanation.
Conclusion
Being a social media expert witness is an incredible way to use your skill-set for the greater good. You can work on court cases that can set a precedent for alleviating sexual harassment, bullying, workplace retaliation, and more. Because social media is such a new phenomenon in the grand scheme of the court of law, it will be interesting to see how social media will be integrated into court cases. By following these five tactics, it will help you if you’re ever a social media expert witness.
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eb53c1e51e858645ec8cf856e93c878d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katetalbot/2019/05/01/how-snapchat-is-transforming-the-physical-world-through-augmented-reality/ | How Snapchat Is Transforming The Physical World Through Augmented Reality | How Snapchat Is Transforming The Physical World Through Augmented Reality
Snapchat was the first social media app to introduce the concept of Stories and is now leading the augmented reality (AR) revolution.
This was apparent at their first annual Partner Summit when they highlighted their AR-based Lens Studio -- where 400,000 AR Lenses have already been created with 15 billion total plays. There, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced new AR features like Scan, AR Bar, Landmarkers, and Creator Profiles to further their product roadmap and vision.
As a camera company, here are three examples of how they’re encouraging their community to turn a simple snap into a whole new world.
Immersive experiences that are truly one-of-a-kind.
Selfie-centric places like The Museum Of Ice Cream and Color Factory have become the go-to spots to simultaneously enjoy your surroundings; while capturing social media content. Whether selfie’ing in a sea of sprinkles or taking a video on a unicorn, these museums have entranced the digitally minded consumer. With the new Marker lenses, these spaces take on new meaning.
Founder of Selfie Circus, Matty Mo of The Most Famous Artist, part of the Snapchat accelerator, Yellow, is on a mission to conceptualize and produce physical spaces meant to be shared on social media. He shared his vision with me at his office in Los Angeles, “We aim to scale unscalable retail and in real life entertainment experiences by enabling our visitors to create and share exciting content from physical spaces on their own social media channels. This consumer behavior creates a viral loop that drives new foot traffic and additional revenue for our customers.
With the launch of Marker lenses on Snapchat, we can now dynamically program our real-world experiences with contextually relevant augmented reality to keep our physical spaces fresh and encourage repeat visits and content creation by consumers.”
Marketing takeaway: Now is the time to think big when engaging consumers. Instead of a static approach to experiences, utilize AR to make a retail space or museum more immersive. With AR, you can design anything, so create an AR-based strategy if you want consumers to have a memorable experience in your physical space.
Billboards that comes to life.
With the launch of their Snap Original show, Bringing Up Bhabie, Snap has already produced a compelling use-case for using AR in advertising. Snap invested in a billboard on Sunset Boulevard which included a QR code that unlocked a lens that brought Bhabie to life, and she interacted with users as if she was there with them.
I spoke with Mish Matheus, prior social media manager at Nasdaq and Sundance Film Festival, over the phone about how AR will affect marketing for brands, influencers, and media companies, “The real value of AR is that it's not limited by traditional billboards in the physical realm. Advertisers can create with a clean slate and fewer rules. AR brings a new interactive dimension. It turns the device in people’s hands into an interactive platform which bridges online and the offline realities. All surfaces become fair game to deliver unique advertising to your community and beyond. This opens up the unlimited potential for savvy vendors and creatives agencies.
With AR, people have a new opportunity to become part of the experience and community to interact with brands in ways they haven't before. The only limit to your success in AR is your imagination.”
Marketing Takeaway: This is a gamechanger for brands, media, influencers -- even small businesses. With AR, you can advertise in a completely different way, and in doing so, have access to much more data. With a data-driven approach to AR, you can surprise and delight your audiences to discover new entertainment programming, consume content, as well as, purchase products.
Travel photos that aren’t basic.
Snapchat has transformed tourism with Landmarkers. Qi Pan, the computer vision engineer at Snap, whose team spearheaded the Landmarkers project explained their reasoning in the promotional video about bringing landmarks to life, “Nowadays we take more photos of these places and it’s hard to find a fresh perspective, so we started thinking how can we empower people to look at these monuments in new ways.”
Andrew Lee of Buy Custom Geofilters described to me over the phone how this capability will increase personalized content that contributes to FOMO (fear of missing out) culture, “Landmarkers on Snapchat is going to change how we interact with the world fundamentally. Who would have believed fifteen years ago that people would be sharing daily pictures of their food or outfits? Similar to that change, anytime a Snapchat user goes to a new attraction, you’ll see them checking the Landmarker lenses and taking photos for their community. They want to have their own personalized photo of their travel experience, which the Landmarkers allows for, as opposed to the ones that are posted already over social media.”
Marketing Takeaway: For creators tap into this feature to showcase your work. Right now, Lens Studio is free for all to use and those who take advantage of this window of time are going to see results; as there is an opportunity to have your artwork seen by millions. This will have a significant impact on your personal brand exposure. In fact, it could even lead to partnerships with brands that want to tap into the millennials and Gen Z generations who are heavily using Snapchat.
The new reality
With AR becoming part of the user experience, everyday activities are become more engaging with the content we’re consuming and capturing. The world around will look completely different as more social media companies integrate AR into their products.
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8f245d32c73a14de3049bbb7fec2e0cd | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katetalbot/2019/06/02/diversity-in-influencer-marketing-why-representation-matters/ | Diversity In Influencer Marketing: Why Representation Matters | Diversity In Influencer Marketing: Why Representation Matters
YouTuber influencer culture has seen a fair amount of drama lately. There was the famous feud between James Charles and Tati Westbrook, and during that timeframe, Gen Z fashion app Dote was called out across social media for their lack of diversity in their Dote Girls branded campaigns.
At a recent influencer trip, YouTube star Daniella Perkins shared her experience with racial exclusion at the Dote house where the influencers were staying and promoting Dote at Coachella. This shocking revelation prompted many A-list Gen Z influencers such as Emma Chamberlain, Ellie Thumann, and Summer Mckeen to end their relationship with the fashion app.
Dote vows to be a more inclusive brand, but it begs the question: how can the influencer marketing ecosystem be more representative of all genders, races, sexualities, and perspectives?
Here are how brands, influencers, and influencer marketplace and agencies can collectively work together to do a better job in promoting diversity and inclusion.
Brands: Highlight diversity in campaigns.
Brands are leveraging influencers now more than ever. They’re tapping into every type of influencer whether B2B employee ambassadors, fashion nano-influencers, or celebrities with millions of followers. With this immense investment in influencer marketing, brands need to think about inclusivity from the very start of their campaign strategy.
Eric Toda, former marketing executive at Gap Inc., Airbnb, Nike, and Snapchat who has created high-visibility global campaigns with influencers like Beyonce and Kim Kardashian, shared his thoughts on how brands can do better:
“You tend to see marketers let their unconscious biases' make decisions. It's not a secret that marketing is a predominantly white industry so naturally there are marketers who choose influencers who look like them; it's safe, it's relatable, but unfortunately, it's not real life.
As marketers we continue to be one of the only industries in the world that can influence large masses of people; we can do that in the effort of good, or we can choose the other route. We need to put values-driven messages out there, show real life versus a sterilized mirage, and instill purpose. You can achieve this by partnering with influencers that represent different stories, races, socioeconomic backgrounds, etc.”
Influencer Marketing Takeaway: When crafting your campaigns, think about your target demographic and imagine how they’d react to a non-diverse influencer mix. Be strategic in finding influencers that represent your audience and brand values. This allows for more positive brand sentiment and affinity as you’re leveraging connectivity between community and influencer.
Influencers: Research the right partnerships.
Being an influencer is a business. With a high-followership, influencers have opportunities to produce content for a broader audience through brand partnerships. Influencers need to research the right brands to work alongside.
Indian-American beauty influencer Arshia Moorjani who has over 600,000 social media followers and works with top brands like L’Oreal and Estee Lauder is passionate about the choices she makes with brand deals:
“I have turned down many campaigns because the brand is not inclusive, and this goes beyond the products. Before agreeing to any campaigns, I study the brand from looking at their products, social media accounts, and past campaigns.
I also love to meet brands in person to understand their core values. It's not just about accepting another paycheck; it's about aligning myself with brands who actually create products for my skin tone but represent a large group of people.
I want brands to continue to work with a diverse group of people, not for the sake of being inclusive but from an understanding of why actually diversity matters. Everyone should feel represented in this industry and that goes beyond one's skin tone. True diversity means showcasing people with different backgrounds, genders, body types, ages, sexual orientation, audience size, and more.”
Influencer Marketing Takeaway: Influencers need to align with forward-thinking inclusive brands like Fenty Beauty, MAC Cosmetics, and NARS that are creating products for a wide audience, but are also showcasing diversity on their social media accounts and campaigns.
Influencer marketplaces and agencies: Educate clients.
Influencer marketplaces and agencies help facilitate connections and campaigns for brands and influencers. Employees at these marketplaces and agencies can help educate their clients on how to optimize successful campaigns by showing data and insights that highlight the importance of inclusivity.
Kate Edwards, COO of influencer marketplace, Heartbeat, is actively encouraging brands to work with influencers of all ethnicities, genders, sizes, and perspectives. She explains:
“We are on the front lines of showing brands the value of working with diverse, everyday people who are actually the brand's consumers. Millennials and Gen Z are actively looking for brands to represent people who look like them and share their values, and this is a major shift in how "influence" is perceived.
Sometimes, when we go to a brand to talk to them about influencer marketing, they are looking for a cookie-cutter influencer, many of whom represent traditional standards of beauty. However, we have to sit the brands down and tell them that working with real people, serving their actual demographic, is much better for their brand. It's been an uphill battle, but we're making progress. Plus, the data in terms of our campaign results speaks for itself.”
Influencer Marketing Takeaway: Influencer marketplaces and agencies need to be at the forefront of leading the charge in providing a diverse array of influencers to their clients. By showing data points and leveraging insider knowledge they can help to create impactful campaigns that transcend the traditional standards of beauty.
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71045dc36960f1464892f822cfa13ae8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katetaylor/2012/07/18/can-you-avoid-majoring-in-debt/ | Can You Avoid Majoring in Debt? | Can You Avoid Majoring in Debt?
Jane Lynch, telling students not to "major in debt" in a publicity shot for NCFC
Student debt has reached over one trillion dollars. Student loans have tripled in the last 10 years. Debt stays with graduates for years, with 20% of student loan debt held by those over 50. With nearly two-thirds of college students taking out loans to attend public and private schools, and prices to attend schools continuing to climb, this is a problem that is impacting more and more students and their families in ways that are, at times, economically dangerous.
Overwhelmed with debt, confused by changing economic situations at home and at school and facing an increasingly competitive job market, many college students and graduates feel lost. “The government tricks us into thinking that they will supply us with the money we need and then screw us over in the end when we owe them thousands of dollars,” a friend who just finished her freshman year in college told me when discussing student loans. “A four year education in college isn’t going to get you a job to pay back those loans with ease, but going into higher education costs more money. Loans just grow bigger and bigger.”
Another friend who is entering her fourth year at an Ivy League school told me she is currently $48,000 in debt. “It was either take out loans and go to my dream school, or settle for the state school down the road that I really didn't have the heart for,” she explained. “My parents help me make monthly payments on my alternative loan, but it is quite scary knowing I will graduate with about $60k in debt from undergrad alone. I want to go to law school and I know that loans are going to be a big part of that.”
Yelenea Mandenberg, a 23 year old Journalism major at Brooklyn College and the vice chair of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) Board of Directors, said concerns that you “need a bachelors degree to do anything” are common among students feeling pressed to take out loans, affecting not only students in the long term, but entire families. Faced with the harsh reality of student debt, the NYPIRG and New York State Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC) came together to power the National College Finance Center and its national public service campaign.
The National College Finance Center (NCFC) website collegefinancecenter.org is “a free, first-stop, unbiased resource to help educate students, prospective students and families all across the country on how to evaluate their options for financing a college education.” Emmy-winning actress Jane Lynch is serving as the face of the project, helping prepare high school students economically entering college instead of her usual role as a high school cheerleading coach on Glee. She described her involvement as stemming from a “perfect storm of occurrences in my life.” With nieces and nephews currently dealing with student debt, the reach of the issue hit home for Lynch.
The NCFC website aims to provide something for everyone impacted by student debt. The Center believes that there is an information (and misinformation) overload from sources offering conflicting material on financial aid. The NCFC aims to offer unbiased information, personalized to the user’s experience. To do so the website is divided into two main parts.
For the undergrad, there is the “pay for college” section. Here, students have the option to complete a number of easy questions to receive information tailored to their state, needs and general circumstances. Information on loans, state resources, and aid is extensive. The website is emphatic about the importance of extensively researching “free money” (scholarships, grants, awards) first, then looking toward loans.
For those who are already in debt, the second half the website is dedicated to “repaying loans.” Again, a quiz allows for personalized information and solutions. Relevant items include links to retrieve federal loan information, calculators for interest capitalization estimation, finding out which form of repayment is optimal for you and consolidating federal loans, and extensive information on loan repayment solutions. While the NCFC recommends speaking to states directly if necessary for specific information, the website certainly provides streamlined information that allows anyone dealing with student loans feel more confident and sure of their position.
Collegefinancecenter.org provides an accessible service to a group of people who need the information. I have no doubt that the site will allow thousands of people to find better solutions to paying for college that they did not even think to explore previously. However, I still wonder: is this enough? Even students who do everything “right,” from searching for scholarships to working through college, are saddled with thousands of dollars in debt. A student who spoke at the launch of NCFC’s website, who is looking at owing $30,000 in debt after graduation, told the crowd he came to college “planning to major in neurobiology. I refuse to major in debt.” While resources such as collegefinancecenter.org are essential to those dealing with college debt, how long will it be until students demand further solutions?
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2e15e988d286ce6d2753c289e171f69a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2014/07/07/data-breach-bulletin-brazilian-banks-lose-3-75-billion-because-of-boleto-malware/ | Data Breach Bulletin: Brazilian Banks Lose $3.75 Billion Because Of Boleto Malware | Data Breach Bulletin: Brazilian Banks Lose $3.75 Billion Because Of Boleto Malware
In the first half of this year, 381 reported breaches led to the exposure of 10,879,404 individual records in the United States, according to a new report from the Identity Theft Resource Center. That’s equivalent to 2.1 breaches and 60,107 records exposed per day—not counting the breaches that were never reported. With that perspective on the scale of the problem, here’s a roundup of some of the notable breaches from the past week—with leaked data ranging from confidential BBC reports to baseball trade deals.
Brazilian Bolware – World Cup-related cybersecurity concerns in Brazil have been well-documented, but cybercrime is also the cause of 95% of losses for Brazilian banks. Last week, RSA uncovered a fraud campaign with a potential loss of US$3.75 billion through the country’s most popular payment mechanism – the Boleto Bancario. Similar to a money order payment in the United States, a Boleto is a financial document that allows a customer to pay an exact amount to a merchant. Anyone with a bank account can issue an offline or online Boleto, and more than 6 billion Boletos were issued last year. The RSA Research Group analyzed 17 versions of the malware with data between March and June 2014, after the Boleto malware first appeared near the end of 2012. Bolware operations, the fraud ring that uses the Boleto malware, has conducted 495,793 potentially fraudulent transactions affecting more than 30 banks in Brazil and infecting more than 192,000 victim PCs, according to the RSA report. Additionally, 83,506 email credentials were stolen using the malware. While Bolware operations appears to only be targeting Brazilian banks, this report is a reminder of how costly cybercrime can be.
BBC Investigation Breach – Confidential information related to a secret British Army unit was recently leaked by a BBC researcher. On July 2nd, the Independent reported that the BBC’s Panorama program was investigating the Military Reaction Force (MRF)—which was allegedly responsible for shooting unarmed civilians in Northern Ireland in the 1970s—when an “inexperienced researched” allegedly downloaded materials from an online dropbox onto a USB and gave the USB to a third party. The file contained the names and details of senior military figures and individuals who had anonymously contributed to the BBC’s investigation, leading to the identity of at least one former member of the MRF being compromised. Additionally, the file contained information about another Panorama program aired last November about “Britain’s Secret Terror Force.” The incident is being treated as a criminal offence under the British Data Protection Act, and military author and commentator Hugh McManners described the incident as “absolutely disgraceful,” saying that the “Ministry of Defense would be justified in refusing all media requests” after the incident.
Houston Astros – Baseball trade secrets were targeted in a recent data breach, in which details about Houston Astros trade deals were leaked online. At least 10 months ago, hackers accessed “Ground Control,” software built by the Astros to provide access to player statistics, videos and communications with other teams. Ground Control “centralized sensitive data making it a prime target for cybercriminals, and apparently failed to secure the data properly,” according to the Digital Journal. The data logs obtained by hackers were first published on Anonbin.com, an anonymous data sharing website. Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow says that the Astros learned about the breach a month ago, according to MLB.com. After Deadspin published the leaked data on June 30, the Astros issued a statement, saying, “It is unfortunate and extremely disappointing that an outside source has illegally obtained confidential information. While it does appear that some of the content released was based on trade conversations, a portion of the material was embellished or completely fabricated.” The Astros have been working with MLB security and the FBI to uncover the source of the hack.
Houston Astros (Photo credit: Keith Allison)
Car Wash Breach – Hackers made a splash in Connecticut last week in a car wash credit card skimming scam that may have exposed thousands to identity theft. Computer software was installed in credit card readers at six Splash car washes in Greenwich, Cos Cobb, Stamford, Darien, Norwalk, Fairfield and Wilton, Connecticut, between February 28 and May 16, 2004, according to the New Haven Register. Officials from Splash report that 1,400 customers were impacted, but that number could be as high as 30,000. According to Splash CEO Mark Curtis, Splash has replaced credit card readers with equipment from banking institutions, and Splash is also cooperating in a federal investigation. According to Curtis, customers with unlimited plans were not affected because “all unlimited data is encrypted.” Imagine the damage that could have been prevented if all Splash data had been encrypted.
Butler University Breach – In the latest in a series of higher-education breaches, Butler University notified 163,000 staff and students of a data beach last week, according to the Miami Herald. California law enforcement alerted Butler to the breach after arresting an identity theft suspect who was carrying a flash drive containing information about Butler employees, according to a letter from the school. After an investigation, Butler discovered that the information on the USB likely was the result of a hack between November 2013 and May 2014. The investigation is still ongoing through third-party computer forensics experts, but the school has determined that names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, and academics records were accessible to hackers. Butler spokesman Michael Kaitenmark told WTHR-TV that the school believes this was a case of “remote hacking” as the arrested suspect has no affiliation with the university.
Stanford Federal Credit Union –All it takes is one wrong email address to lead to a large data breach, as Stanford Federal Credit Union recently learned. Last week, SC Magazine reported that Stanford Federal Credit Union sent a letter to 18,000 members informing them that their personal data had been emailed to another member on April 30, 2014. This data included names, address, phone numbers, tax identification numbers, loan offers and credit information, according to the letter. Luckily, the error was discovered within minutes, and the data was destroyed before being viewed, but Stanford Federal Credit Union says it is taking steps to ensure that a similar incident does not occur again. “We are confident this information was never seen by unauthorized individuals and you are not at risk,” wrote Stanford Federal Credit Union CEO Joan Opp. The lesson to be learned from this breach is to always triple check the recipient of any email containing sensitive data that you might be sending—as Goldman Sachs and Riverside Community College District also recently learned the hard way.
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c4941795530ba9ef56f56b5ec3d8cd5b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2014/09/03/data-breach-bulletin-home-depot-credit-card-breach-could-prove-to-be-larger-than-target-breach/ | Data Breach Bulletin: Home Depot Credit Card Breach Could Prove To Be Larger Than Target Breach | Data Breach Bulletin: Home Depot Credit Card Breach Could Prove To Be Larger Than Target Breach
Here’s a roundup of the latest data breach news:
Home Depot – Home Depot may be the latest in what is becoming an increasingly long list of retailers hit with credit card breaches this year, Brian Krebs reported on Tuesday. Some banks say the breach extends back to late April or early May 2014. If this is true, the Home Depot breach could end up being much larger than the now-infamous Target breach. Home Depot spokesperson Paula Drake confirmed that the company is investigating a potential breach. Krebs believes this breach may come from the same Eastern European hackers responsible for the Target breach and others.
iCloud – After nude celebrity photos were leaked over the weekend—allegedly from celebrity iCloud accounts— Apple issued a statement on Tuesday, saying that the attack was a result of a “a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions.” The statement says that the photos were not leaked as part of a larger breach to Apple’s iCloud or Find My iPhone systems. Many have speculated that hackers might have gained access to celebrity iCloud accounts though an iCloud vulnerability that made it possible to endlessly submit usernames and passwords to iCloud through the Find My iPhone API. (Apple has now patched the vulnerability.) The breach has generated a lot of discussion around privacy—unsurprising given the sensitive nature of the photos and the high profile of the celebrities involved. While some have blamed the celebrities for taking the photos or failing to use strong iCloud passwords, others argue that nude photos are part of the digital age and the fault lies entirely with the hackers who leaked the photos.
JP Morgan Chase –Last week, the FBI announced that it was investigating a cyber attack against JP Morgan Chase and other banks. As of Tuesday, the FBI says that JP Morgan Chase appears to be the only bank affected by the cyber attack, according to the Wall Street Journal. While the attack may have begun months ago, it was only discovered recently through a routine investigation, according to USA Today. Sources close to the investigation told Bloomberg last week that the attack was likely the work of Russian hackers “as a possible retaliation for government-sponsored sanctions.” JP Morgan Chase says it spends $250 million on cyber security every year, and will have approximately 1000 employees focused on cyber security by the end of 2014.
Dairy Queen – Last week, Brian Krebs reported that Dairy Queen might have been hit with a credit card breach, according to financial sources that were investigating credit card fraud at several Dairy Queen locations. While Dairy Queen originally claimed no knowledge of the breach, the company eventually admitted that “customer data at a small number of stores may be at risk.” According to one of Krebs’ sources, a credit union in the Midwest, at least 50 customers have been affected by the breach, which may have begun as early as May 2014.
Racing Post – Nearly 700,000 UK customers were affected by a breach to a daily newspaper covering horses and racing, according to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO said that 677,000 customers’ names and passwords were leaked after an SQL injection attack in November 2013. The ICO sharply criticized Racing Post for its security, saying that the newspaper had taken “no steps to keep abreast of security developments” creating an “unacceptable level of risk of inappropriate processing.” According to SC Magazine, Racing Post is avoiding fines because no financial information was stolen in the breach.
OTTO Pizzeria – Nine hundred people who just wanted a slice of pizza from OTTO Pizzeria in Portland, Maine, have now been notified that their information may have been compromised in a data breach. According to a post on OTTO’s website, the breach was a result of malware installed on credit card terminals between May 1 and August 13, 2014. In an FAQ, OTTO’s asked a question on many people’s minds after hearing about a breach: “Why did it take over two months to discover the breach?” The answer is less encouraging—OTTO’s cites statistics from a Verizon Report, which states that 99% of attacks are not discovered by retailers themselves, and that 85% of breaches take weeks to discover. While its good to know that OTTO’s is no worse than the majority of retailers when it comes to discovering and responding to data breaches, that is hardly something to celebrate.
Cedars-Sinai Health Systems – An unencrypted laptop—which violated Cedars-Sinai Health Systems device policy—was stolen from the home of an employee last week, exposing more than 500 patients’ Social Security numbers. According to Cedars-Sinai, some patient information may have been stored in temporary files on the hard drive of the laptop, which the employee brought home to do additional work. Cedars-Sinai does not believe that there has been any unauthorized access to patient information, but is notifying everyone who may have been affected by the theft.
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7f6bd9cb9d71441607d8244e03d386bd | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2014/09/18/with-56-million-cards-compromised-home-depots-breach-is-bigger-than-targets/ | With 56 Million Cards Compromised, Home Depot's Breach Is Bigger Than Target's | With 56 Million Cards Compromised, Home Depot's Breach Is Bigger Than Target's
Home Depot announced that 56 million credit cards were compromised in a breach that lasted from April to September 2014—making this latest retail breach larger than Target’s 40-million card breach.
Home Depot began its investigation on September 2, the same day Brian Krebs broke the news of a potential breach at the retailer. On September 8, Home Depot confirmed that a breach had occurred. Now, just more than two weeks after the investigation began, Home Depot says that all malware is gone from the company’s system.
Home Depot says the malware used in the attack has not been seen in previous attacks, describing the malware as “unique” and “custom-built.” This differs from reports during the investigation that experts believed the breach involved the same malware as the Target breach.
“We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and anxiety this has caused, and want to reassure them that they will not be liable for fraudulent charges,” said Frank Blake, Home Depot’s chairman and CEO Frank Blake.
Home Depot estimates that the breach has cost approximately $62 million, with more costs likely to come. The company believes it will be reimbursed $27 million thanks to its insurance coverage. Last month, Target announced that its breach cost the company $148 million, more than twice the amount Home Depot is estimating.
According to its statement, Home Depot believes it will have a 4.8 percent growth in sales this year, as previously predicted. When Home Depot first began investigating a potential breach, Forbes reporter Samantha Sharf noted that Home Deport could suffer high financial losses from the breach, with one analyst predicting a loss of 7 cents per share from Home Depot’s 2014 earnings.
Home Depot also announced that it has now “rolled out enhanced encryption of payment data” to all its stores in the United States, completing a project that was started at the beginning of this year. Additionally, Home Depot says it plans to have EMV “Chip and PIN” technology in all stores in the United States by the end of the year, ahead of the retail industry’s 2015 deadline.
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ca8127097fa9e5dc3f8450c3b1549fd1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2015/03/10/convicted-silk-road-mastermind-ross-ulbricht-wants-a-new-trial/ | Convicted Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Wants A New Trial | Convicted Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Wants A New Trial
After a month-long trial and less than four hours of deliberation, a jury found Ross Ulbricht guilty of running the Silk Road in early February. But this legal story is far from over. Ulbricht’s defense is not only calling for a retrial, but is also asking for another look into the question of whether Ulbricht's Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the government's seizure of the Silk Road servers. That question is at the center of a motion to suppress evidence filed and denied last fall before the trial began.
On Friday, Ulbricht’s lawyer Joshua Dratel asked for a new trial in a court filing, claiming that the government had not produced evidence favorable to the defense--known as “exculpatory material"--quickly enough before and during the trial. (Dratel cites the Brady Rule, which requires the prosecution to produce this evidence, whether or not the defense asks for it). In the filing, Dratel outlines how the government added 5,000 pages of material for the government’s first witness--Special Agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan—less than two weeks before the trial started. Additionally, the government added “hundreds of additional exhibits” after the court’s deadline on December 3, 2014.
“That continued fluidity in the government’s presentation—in a trial focused on exhibits rather than testimony—created for practical and legal purposes a continuously moving target,” Dratel wrote in the filing.
The timing is only half of the defense’s concern about the evidence the government produced. In the second part of the filing, Dratel wrote that evidence (in particular the 5,000 pages related to Der-Yeghiayan’s testimony) was relevant to a motion to suppress evidence that had been filed and denied last year. For this reason, Dratel asked for a new evidentiary hearing in the case.
Unmasked: The Man Behind The Silk Road Click here to read about the shutdown of the illegal bazaar and its tale of online secrecy, murders-for-hire, courtroom drama and corruption.
The motion in question has a long paper trial in the case’s court docket. The 102-page motion was originally filed on August 1, 2014 and argued that Ulbricht’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the seizure of the Silk Road servers in Iceland and subsequent searches. By the fruits of a poisonous tree argument, the motion argued that if Ulbricht’s rights were violated by the seizures, any evidence they produced would have to be suppressed. The government’s response to the motion one month later was the first time the feds had explained how the Silk Road servers were seized in Iceland in October 2013. The defense had follow-up questions--calling the government’s explanation overly simplistic, and suggesting the government may have hacked the Silk Road. The government’s responsed that it wouldn’t really matter if the government had hacked the Silk Road. By the government's reasoning, because Ulbricht hadn’t claimed ownership of the servers, his Fourth Amendment rights couldn’t have been violated. Judge Forrester ultimately denied the motion.
Friday's filing references text messages between Der-Yeghiayan and a confidential informant, which shed new light on the motion, Dratel argues. The motion quotes a message from Der-Yeghiayan to the informant, which reads, “[a]re we up on the exit node yet?” The informant responds, “[s]uccess!” and “100 percent running, logging, and recording...with verification.” Dratel points to this as evidence that the government was "conducting warrantless TOR network surveillance."
Despite the legal back-and-forth over the seizure of the servers before the trial started, the issue barely came up in the New York courtroom. Leading up to the trial, defense had tried to frame the case as key to many legal questions about rights and law enforcement in the age of the Internet. Instead, the case centered on a wealth of evidence against Ulbricht--particularly a revealing diary found on Ulbricht’s computer, which the prosecution used to tie Ulbricht to the Silk Road convincingly enough to return a speedy guilty verdict. FORBES’ Sarah Jeong, who covered the trial from the courthouse, described how Ulbricht’s defense was “derailed,” and because of that, we would never to see “the defense Ross Ulbricht planned to have.” Following many calls for a mistrial during trial, this filing may be another attempt for Dratel to put that "derailed" defense back on track.
Ulbricht is scheduled to be sentenced on May 15, 2015.
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43f8cc29c646b987c3a6905f991166f8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2015/05/20/data-belonging-to-1-1-million-carefirst-customers-stolen-in-cyber-attack/ | Data Belonging To 1.1 Million CareFirst Customers Stolen In Cyber Attack | Data Belonging To 1.1 Million CareFirst Customers Stolen In Cyber Attack
Data belonging to 1.1 million CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield customers in the Washington D.C. area was stolen in a cyber attack last year, the healthcare insurer announced Thursday.
Concerned by the string of recent cyber attacks against other healthcare providers--including Anthem , Premera, and Community Health Systems--CareFirst decided to take a look into its own system, the company explained in a notice on its website. CareFirst hired Mandiant to review its networks, which led to the discovery of an undetected intrusion in June 2014.
While no health records or Social Security numbers were compromised in the breach, attackers accessed a database containing names, birth dates, email addresses and subscriber ID numbers of CareFirst customers. Luckily, the passwords required to access member accounts were encrypted and stored separately.
CareFirst blocked all affected member accounts, and members will have to create new user names and passwords to log in. CareFirst is offering two free years of credit monitoring to the 1.1 million affected customers in Maryland, Washington D.C., and Virginia, the company said.
“We deeply regret the concern this attack may cause," wrote CareFirst President and CEO Chet Burrell. “We are making sure those affected understand the extent of the attack – and what information was and was not affected."
The CareFirst cyber attack is the third major healthcare breach announced this year alone--all of which were investigated by Mandiant. On March 17, Premera Blue Cross announced that 11 million customers' medical and financial data had been breached in 2014. On February 13, Anthem announced that 80 million Social Security cards had been stolen in a breach that may have started in April 2014.
From big cyber attacks that make headlines to smaller breaches where just a few records are stolen, security incidents cost the healthcare sector $6 billion per year, according to a recent Ponemon Institute study. And for the first time, cyber attacks became the leading cause of data breaches this year.
"The root cause historically was around negligence, incompetence,--not necessarily around criminal activity," explained Dr. Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute. "It changed this year for the first time. The number one root cause of a data breach is criminal activity--could be insider or external."
Criminal cyber attacks in the healthcare sector have risen 125% since 2010, driven by the value of the healthcare data and electronic health records in an industry that's lagging behind when it comes to security.
"An electronic healthcare record on the black market is worth somewhere between $60 and $70 on the black market, compared to a Social Security number that's worth 50 cents or a dollar," explained Rick Kam, cofounder of ID Experts. "There's a really significant difference in value on the black market."
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1372f1e21b3f61329eebc943829eda0b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2015/06/08/syrian-electronic-army-claims-responsibility-for-hacking-army-website/ | Syrian Electronic Army Claims Responsibility For Hacking U.S. Army Website | Syrian Electronic Army Claims Responsibility For Hacking U.S. Army Website
The U.S. Army's public website has been taken offline after hackers compromised the site on Monday. On Twitter , the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) took credit for the attack.
Before the Army's website was taken down, a message appeared on the page, claiming that the SEA was responsible for hacking the website. The SEA is a group of hackers who support Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. A pop-up message told visitors: "Your commanders admit they are training the people they have sent you to die fighting." Around 1 p.m. ET, the SEA began tweeting about the attack, taking credit for hacking the website:
The #SEA hacks the official website of the US Army and leave several messages on it | http://t.co/Q93FQFg3cG pic.twitter.com/e8ZXp58oAY — SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) June 8, 2015
One of #SEA messages left on the US Army website. #SEA #USArmy pic.twitter.com/jIA7HN9jXt — SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) June 8, 2015
At approximately 3:30pm ET, the Fort Bragg Facebook page told people to avoid using the Army website because of the hack, saying "Avoid using www.army.mil for the time being. The web site is currently down, reportedly from being hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army."
U.S. officials confirmed that an attack had taken place and that the Army website had been taken offline. The government did not name the SEA as the group behind the attack.
"Today an element of the Army.mil service provider's content was compromised," said Brigadier General Malcolm Frost, chief of Army public affairs, in a statement. "After this came to our attention, the Army took appropriate preventive measures to ensure there was no breach of Army data by taking down the website temporarily."
The Syrian Electronic Army has a long history of hacking websites and then taking credit for their actions to send a political message. Most recently in May 2015, the SEA hacked the Washington Post and redirected visitors to a site under SEA control. A number of other news sites have been compromised by the SEA, including the New York Times, the Guardian, and Forbes. In 2013, the hacker group got access to the Associated Press Twitter account and announced that the White House had been attacked, creating a stock market panic.
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a54f1d06d3bc4aeeba4c6335f3e4b248 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2015/12/02/what-you-should-know-about-mark-zuckerbergs-big-gift-news/ | What You Should Know About Mark Zuckerberg's Big Gift News | What You Should Know About Mark Zuckerberg's Big Gift News
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made two big announcements on Monday: the birth of his daughter, Max, and his pledge to donate 99% of his Facebook shares by the end of his lifetime to the newly formed Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Beyond the initial excitement of Monday's headlines, here are some things you should know about Zuckerberg's big gift.
Zuckerberg has made large charitable gifts before
While 99% of Zuckerberg's Facebook stock is a huge gift--currently worth $45 billion—this is not the 31-year-old billionaire's first charitable donation. Before Monday, Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, had donated just under $1.6 billion to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF). In 2010, the couple first donated $105 million to SVCF, followed by a $499 million gift in 2012 and $991 million more in 2013.
This money has been used for a variety of education and healthcare initiatives. One of Zuckerberg's earliest and best known donations through SVCF was $100 million over five years starting in 2010 to the Newark, New Jersey school system. Announced on Oprah’s show, the donation aimed to take one of the worst performing school districts in the country and make it one of the best. The donation didn’t reach its goal, which was likely overambitious, as was detailed in a book published this year called The Prize: Who's In Charge of America's Schools? Since then, Zuckerberg has donated to the Education Super Highway ($20 million), the Centers for Disease Control ($25 million), San Francisco Bay Area schools ($120 million), San Francisco General Hospital ($75 million) and more.
The newly formed Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will have a similar focus on education and health, though that won't be all. In a letter to his daughter on Facebook, in which he announced the pledge, Zuckerberg wrote that the Initiative will focus on “personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities.”
Zuckerberg has limited how much he’ll give in the next three years
In an official filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Zuckerberg said that he will not sell or give away more than $1 billion in Facebook shares per year for each of the next three years. At current stock prices, that means he will give away no more than 9.27 million shares in a single year, which would be about 2% of the 462 million Facebook shares Zuckerberg currently owns.
Image Credit: Mark Zuckerberg via Facebook
Zuckerberg plans to maintain majority voting control at Facebook
While it’s not clear yet how much of his stock Zuckerberg plans to donate each year after 2018, it’s unlikely that he’ll give away the rest of his shares quickly. Zuckerberg has 60% voting control of Facebook shares (he owns a smaller percentage but votes some other people's shares) and wants to maintain control of his social media company for the time being. In the SEC filing, Zuckerberg said that he will hold onto his majority voting position for “the foreseeable future.” In his letter on Facebook, Zuckerberg told his daughter, "I will continue to serve as Facebook's CEO for many, many years to come, but these issues are too important to wait until you or we are older to begin this work." Because Zuckerberg made this pledge so early in life-- he's just 31 years old - he still has a long time left during which to donate the shares.
Zuckerberg’s $45 billion pledge is greater than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's assets in 2014
While Zuckerberg is very young, he has established himself as a potential philanthropic giant with this pledge. The Facebook shares Zuckerberg has promised to give away are currently worth $45 billion, which is greater than the $41.3 billion in assets held by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2014. Of course, it will be many years before the Initiative has access to all of Zuckerberg's shares.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is an LLC, not a charitable trust or a traditional family foundation
According to the SEC filing, the money Zuckerberg donates will go to "philanthropic, public advocacy, and other activities for the public good" through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative LLC. Because the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a limited liability company (LLC) and not a charitable trust, Zuckerberg will have more freedom with how he chooses to spend the Initiative's money. The money won't be required to go directly to a charity; instead, Zuckerberg will be able to do advocacy work and use the money however he feels will best serve his goals to “advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation.” He can invest in for-profit companies, as well.
Other billionaires are supporting Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg received support from several key billionaires yesterday after his announcement. On Facebook, Melinda Gates offered her and Bill Gates' support and congratulations to Zuckerberg and Chan. "As for your decision to give back so generously, and to deepen your commitment now, the first word that comes to mind is: Wow. The example you’re setting today is an inspiration to us and the world," Gates commented on Facebook. UK billionaire and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, also chimed in, writing: "Commitments like this from the next generation of young entrepreneurs means the world can and will sort out its remaining problems."
Matt Bannick, a partner at eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's Omidyar Network, offered his congratulations in a statement, saying "We look forward to the great outcomes the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will accomplish." Former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg , an active philanthropist and billionaire CEO, issued a statement congratulating Zuckerberg. He also issued a challenge to other billionaires, saying: “The only question now is: How many of his peers in Silicon Valley and beyond will join him?”
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f19a6717e1cdc4e7d3ba0d7a02208296 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/05/26/thiel-denton-speak-out-publicly-about-gawker-case/ | Gawker Founder Speaks Out About Thiel Involvement In Hulk Hogan Case | Gawker Founder Speaks Out About Thiel Involvement In Hulk Hogan Case
Gawker founder Nick Denton (AP Photo/Steve Nesius, Pool)
By Kate Vinton, Matt Drange and Ryan Mac
Gawker founder Nick Denton issued an open letter to billionaire Peter Thiel Thursday afternoon, two days after FORBES broke the news that Thiel was bankrolling Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. Thiel confirmed he was backing Hogan in an interview with The New York Times Wednesday night.
Denton questioned Thiel's long-standing grudge in his letter.
"I thought we had all moved on, not realizing that, for someone who aspires to immortality, nine years may not be such a long time as it seems to most of us," Denton wrote. He later added, "Your revenge has been served well, cold and (until now) anonymously."
In his letter, Denton listed a number of people Gawker has written about--Sean Parker, Hulk Hogan, writer Ashley Terrill, Shiva Ayyadurai and finally Thiel. "I can see how irritating Gawker would be to you and other figures in the technology industry," Denton wrote, adding that Silicon Valley isn't accustomed to media scrutiny.
Denton described Thiel as a "thin-skinned billionaire," unlike public figures in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C who are also criticized in the media. "I can see how tempting it would be to use Silicon Valley’s most abundant resource, a vast fortune, against the harsh words of the writers of a small New York media company," Denton wrote.
Denton challenged Thiel to a public debate, either in person or on a neutral platform like Medium. As part of a final series of questions, Denton asked Thiel if he was funding other cases and if his goal was to "bankrupt, buy or wound Gawker Media."
On Wednesday, Thiel told the Times about his decision to fund Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, against Gawker. In 2007, Gawker outed Thiel in an article titled "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people" causing the Facebook investor to claim that that the publication had the “psychology of a terrorist.” While Thiel said he has the money to defend himself against the likes of Gawker, he believed that others do not have the financial means.
"I can defend myself. Most of the people they attack are not people in my category," Thiel told the Times. "They usually attack less prominent, far less wealthy people that simply can’t defend themselves." He later said that funding the case against Gawker was one of the "greater philanthropic things" he had done.
Gawker's union, the Writers Guild of America, East, issued a statement on Thursday asking Thiel to come clean about other lawsuits he had funded. "We cannot let Peter Thiel heedlessly destroy one of the most original, intrepid digital media companies in modern journalism--regardless of whether or not we like everything that gets published there," the statement read. "It is imperative that the public know the extent of his efforts to silence the press."
The New York Post reported on Thursday morning that Denton is looking to sell Gawker after the judge denied Gawker's motion for a re-trial in the Hogan case. Other sources said that Gawker is not looking to sell. "Everyone take a breath," Gawker said in a statement to Politico. "We’ve had bankers engaged for quite some time given the need for contingency planning around Facebook board member Peter Thiel’s revenge campaign — that’s how the Columbus Nova investment was arranged."
Gawker raised outside funding earlier this year for the first time, in anticipation of legal fees from this lawsuit. Denton sold a minority stake in the company to Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg's investment vehicle, Columbus Nova. In March, the judge awarded Hogan $140 million in damages, a sum big enough to potentially end the media company. Gawker is working on an appeal of that ruling.
Follow Ryan on Twitter at @RMac18 or email him at rmac@forbes.com. Follow Matt on Twitter at@MattDrange or email him at mdrange@forbes.com. Follow Kate on Twitter at @kate_vinton or email her at kvinton@forbes.com.
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59e92bf1658ae43e61716cea8ef64ce8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/10/25/private-equity-billionaire-and-philanthropist-david-rubenstein-elected-as-smithsonian-board-chairman/ | Private Equity Billionaire And Philanthropist David Rubenstein Elected As Smithsonian Board Chairman | Private Equity Billionaire And Philanthropist David Rubenstein Elected As Smithsonian Board Chairman
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Philanthropist and private equity billionaire David Rubenstein was elected as chairman of the Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents on Monday. He has served on the board since 2009 and has given $44.7 million to the Smithsonian over his lifetime.
Rubenstein's appointment to the chairman role was announced at the Smithsonian's annual public meeting of its governing board. Fellow billionaire and AOL founder Steve Case was elected as vice-chairman of the board and Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey was elected to the executive committee. The three will begin their tenure on January 31, 2017.
Rubenstein, whose net worth FORBES estimates at $2.4 billion, made his fortune as the cofounder and co-CEO of private equity firm The Carlyle Group, which has $176 billion in assets under management. In addition to his role at The Carlyle Group, 67-year-old Rubenstein chairs four other institutions and serves on a number of other boards. He is co-chairman of think tank The Brookings Institution, chairman of the board of trustees at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, chairman of the board at Duke University and vice-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
When asked by a Washington Post reporter after the meeting where he would find the time for another leadership position, Rubenstein said: “I don’t play golf, I don’t drink alcohol so I’m not going to bars. At this point in my life, I only do the things I want to do. This isn’t work. This is pleasurable.”
Calling himself a "patriotic philanthropist," Rubenstein has supported historical and cultural institutions with his giving. He was one of the earliest signers of The Giving Pledge in 2010, created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage more philanthropic donations by the world's wealthiest. In 2011, he donated $4.5 million to the panda program at the National Zoo. In 2012, he donated $7.5 million to help repair the Washington Monument and $13.5 million to the National Archives. In 2013, he gave $10 million to Monticello for restoration and another $10 million to Mount Vernon. He gave $5 million to the White House Visitor Center in 2014. In January 2016, Rubenstein donated $10 million to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian, bringing his total gifts to the Smithsonian to $44.7 million.
"I have a lot of institutions that I am very deeply involved in. I can’t just pick one because I like organizations that have been helpful to me in my life or are part of my life in Washington D.C.,” Rubenstein told FORBES in 2012.
Rubenstein has also purchased a number of historical documents for public display. In 2007, he bought the Magna Carta from fellow billionaire Ross Perot for $21.3 million in an auction and displayed it in the National Archives. One year later, he bought a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was displayed in the White House. In 2009, he bought a copy of the Declaration of Independence for display in the State House.
Outside of Washington, D.C., Rubenstein gave $10 million to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2012 and $25 million to Duke University in 2015.
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25e202660be28546a992511a2fb62fac | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2017/05/17/meet-americas-richest-self-made-women-in-tech/ | Meet America's Richest Self-Made Women In Tech | Meet America's Richest Self-Made Women In Tech
The 11 women in tech on Forbes’ third annual Richest Self-Made Women list are a powerful group: seven are CEOs, five founded their own companies and three are billionaires (some hold 2 of these titles). Together, these 11 women are worth a combined $10.3 billion. All but three live within a 50-mile radius of each other in California’s Bay Area.
Meg Whitman is the richest self-made woman in tech. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Tech's richest self-made woman is HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, who has a $2.5 billion fortune. In August 2016, Whitman, a Republican, endorsed Hillary Clinton, calling Donald Trump a “demagogue.” In January, she told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos that America needed to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.
The bulk of Whitman’s net worth comes from her time as CEO of eBay. Under her decade-long leadership, revenues grew from $5.7 million to $8 billion. Before eBay, Whitman was an executive at Walt Disney and Hasbro. She is the richest self-made woman in America who is not the founder of her own company.
SHI International founder Thai Lee TK The other two female tech billionaires, Facebook Chief Operating Office Sheryl Sandberg and SHI International CEO Thai Lee, each have a $1.6 billion fortune. Lee, one of just two in tech on the list outside of California, lives in New Jersey and runs IT provider SHI International, which had $7.6 billion in 2016 sales.
Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook (Photo credit should read FABRICE... [+] COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images) Whitman, Lee, Sandberg and the other women in tech on this list are a rarity in the technology sector, which has produced a tremendous amount of wealth--but mainly for men. Sandberg became the Silicon Valley poster child of the fight for gender equality in the workplace after her 2013 book Lean In catapulted her to prominence.
Sandberg has served as COO of Facebook since 2008 and has helped dramatically increase revenue at the social media giant. In April, Sandberg published her second book, Option B, written after the sudden death of her husband, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, in 2015. The book discusses grief and resilience. Init, she admits that she didn’t fully appreciate how hard it is to be a single mom when writing Lean In.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki In March, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who has an estimated $410 million fortune, published a Vanity Fair op-ed called “How to Break Up the Silicon Valley Boy’s Club,” discussing sexism in tech and steps companies can take to support women. Wojcicki said the number of women at YouTube had increased from 24% to 30% since she became CEO in 2014.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images) Sandberg, Wojcicki and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer all worked together at Google early in their careers. Mayer, who left Google for Yahoo in 2012, will soon be out of a job. After an ill-fated five year tenure, Mayer will be stepping down as CEO when Yahoo is sold to Verizon for $4.48 billion. She has a $540 million fortune, the bulk of which comes from her time at Google.
Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz (Photographer: Albin Lohr-Jones/Pool via Bloomberg) Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, Facebook's Sandberg and other tech leaders met with President-elect Donald Trump in December. Catz then joined Trump's transition team, leading one Oracle exec to resign. An 18-year Oracle veteran, Catz became co-CEO when Larry Ellison resigned in 2014. Catz, who has an estimate $670 million fortune, earned $41 million in 2016.
While more than half of these women made their fortunes as executives at companies they didn't start, five founded their own tech companies. Lee is the only billionaire female founder in tech. The other four founders are Weili Dai (net worth: $770 million), cofounder of Marvell Technology Group; Neerja Sethi (net worth $750 million), cofounder of IT consulting and outsourcing firm Syntel; Adi Tatarko (net worth: $300 million), cofounder of home design startup Houzz; and Lynda Weinman (net worth $280 million), founder of online education platform Lynda.com.
The richest self-made women in tech have an average age of 53, nearly a decade younger than the average age of all the self-made women on the list. Mayer, who is 41, is the youngest of the group, and Wienman and Sethi are tied as the oldest at age 62. All but two of the tech fortunes on the list increased in the past year, as a result of a successful year on the stock market for many tech giants.
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7e0ae1f7e58db1aa2960f2528a459562 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2017/08/23/100-richest-tech-billionaires-2017/ | The 100 Richest Tech Billionaires In The World 2017 | The 100 Richest Tech Billionaires In The World 2017
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates is the richest person in tech - and in the world. (Photo credit:... [+] KAMIL ZIHNIOGLU/AFP/Getty Images)
Edited by Kerry A. Dolan
The old adage that the rich just keep getting richer is certainly true for the world’s wealthiest tech billionaires this year.
For the first time on Forbes’ third annual Richest In Tech list, the 100 richest self-made tech billionaires are worth more than $1 trillion. Their combined net worth of $1.08 trillion is up 21% from last year, buoyed by a dizzying rise in stock prices at companies like Facebook, Amazon.com and Chinese social media behemoth Tencent. Half of the $189 billion increase came from the 10 richest tech billionaires. More than three-quarters of the list’s billionaires have bigger fortunes than a year ago. The cutoff to make this year’s Richest In Tech list was $2.6 billion, up from $2.2 billion last year.
Gallery: 2017 Richest in Tech: Top 10 10 images View gallery
Microsoft founder Bill Gates maintains his spot as the richest person in tech (and the richest person in the world) this year with a net worth estimated by Forbes at $85.4 billion. A month ago, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos looked poised to take the No. 1 spot this year. He even surpassed Gates for a single morning in late July, but quickly dropped below Gates and now has an $81.7 billion fortune. Gates' net worth is up $6.5 billion in the past year, despite the fact that he gave $4.6 billion worth of Microsoft stock this summer to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He now owns just 1.3% of Microsoft’s outstanding shares.
The biggest dollar gainer this year is the third richest tech billionaire, Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He’s one of only 16 billionaires on the list under the age of 40 and is the fifth youngest overall. Zuckerberg is $15.6 billion richer than a year ago, as Facebook stock has climbed 34% in the past 12 months. Bezos gained nearly as much as Zuckerberg; his fortune surged $15.5 billion as Amazon stock rose 25%.
The third and fourth biggest gainers on the list are Asia’s two richest tech billionaires. Tencent CEO Ma Huateng (also known as Pony Ma) is Asia’s second richest tycoon and the third biggest dollar gainer on the tech list. His net worth increased $14.7 billion to $36.7 billion. Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Ma is the richest tech billionaire in Asia (as well as Asia's richest person) with a $37.4 billion fortune, up $11.6 billion from last year.
Full Coverage: The Richest In Tech 2017
The United States continues to dominate the Richest In Tech list, followed by China. Fifty list members are American citizens, including eight of the top 10 richest tech billionaires. Nearly three-quarters of these Americans live in California, while the rest are spread out among eight other states. Thirty-three billionaires on this year’s list are Asian citizens and more than half of them live in China or Hong Kong.
Eleven of the 100 richest tech billionaires got poorer over the past year. Of those, only saw their fortune shrink by more than $1 billion. The biggest dollar loser on the list is China’s Lei Jun, whose net worth dropped $2.9 billion to $6.9 billion, as his smartphone maker Xaiomi lost market share in China amidst stiff competition. Uber cofounders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp’s net worths each dropped $1.2 billion to $5.1 billion. Forbes applied a 20% discount to Uber’s last institutional funding round of $68 billion because of the series of scandals that hit the ride-sharing giant in 2017, starting in February with an explosive blog post by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler detailing how the company ignored her reports of harassment and a lawsuit against Uber by Alphabet’s self-driving car subsidiary, Waymo. Uber declined to comment. In June, Kalanick resigned as CEO under pressure and was sued by early venture investor Benchmark Capital, which alleged fraud. Kalanick's spokesperson described the lawsuit as "without merit."
There are seven newcomers on the list and two more who returned after falling off in 2016. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel returns to the list with a $3.2 billion fortune and is joined for the first time by his cofounder Bobby Murphy -- despite Snap shares diving 40% since its IPO in March 2017. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is also a newcomer with a $4 billion fortune, joining the list after Nvidia stock climbed an astounding 117% in the past year. Outcome Health CEO Rishi Shah joins the list with a $3.6 billion fortune after his startup, which puts touchscreens in doctors’ offices, raised $600 million at a $5.7 billion valuation in May 2017.
There was one female newcomer this year, bringing the total number of women on the list to six. Wang Laichun, the only female newcomer, owns Luxshare Precision with her brother Wang Laisheng; the pair has made a fortune manufacturing parts for Apple. Before that, she worked for Terry Guo’s Hon Hai for 10 years. The richest self-made woman in tech is Zhou Qunfei of Hong Kong, who made her $10 billion fortune manufacturing smartphone touch screens. The richest self-made woman in tech the United States is Judy Faulkner, who founded medical record provider Epic in a basement in Wisconsin in 1979 and has a $3.4 billion fortune.
METHODOLOGY
For this list, Forbes excluded telecom and media in our definition of technology. We included people active in hardware, software, social media, online gambling and high-tech manufacturing. We excluded people like Laurene Powell Jobs who inherited their tech fortunes. We used stock prices and exchange rates from the close of business on Friday, August 18 to value publicly-traded fortunes.
Reported by Angel Au-Yeung, Igor Bosilkovski, Deniz Cam, Yinan Che, Maggie Chen, Michael Chu, Grace Chung, Russell Flannery, Elaine Mao, Max Jedeur-Palmgren, Humberto Juarez Rocha, Jeff Kauflin, Noah Kirsch, Chase Peterson-Withorn, Michela Tindera, Kate Vinton and Jennifer Wang
Additional editing by Luisa Kroll and Kate Vinton
Acknowledgments: Orbis BDV; Pitchbook; Privco; FactSet; Professor Ilya A. Strebulaev, Stanford GSB
Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to Jack Ma's title. He is founder and executive chairman of Alibaba.
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dc3cb37b3eff9ef97d26b88bedd423ad | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2017/08/29/spains-amancio-ortega-briefly-overtakes-gates-as-no-1-richest-falls-back-to-no-2/ | Briefly No. 1: Spain's Amancio Ortega Ends Day Back At World's No. 2 Richest | Briefly No. 1: Spain's Amancio Ortega Ends Day Back At World's No. 2 Richest
Founder and chairman of the Inditex fashion group Amancio Ortega (Photo credit: MIGUEL... [+] RIOPA/AFP/Getty Images)
Spanish retail tycoon Amancio Ortega briefly surpassed Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates by mere millions of dollars to become the world’s richest person on Tuesday afternoon.
Update 4:30 p.m. Eastern: As U.S. markets closed Tuesday, Ortega ended the day $100 million behind Gates, who has an estimated $84.8 billion fortune.
The two were separated by only a few million dollars and were switching back and forth as the world's richest person on Tuesday afternoon. As of 1:45 p.m. Eastern, Gates was back in the No. 1 spot. At 2 p.m., he had a net worth of $84.722 billion vs. $84.72 billion for Ortega. Then, as of 2:30 p.m., Gates' net worth dropped $7 million, landing him in the No. 2 spot.
Gates has held the spot as the world’s richest person for 18 of the past 23 years on Forbes’ annual Billionaires List, published each spring. In between lists, however, Gates has been passed up 3 times in the past two years: twice by Ortega and once by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Today Ortega very briefly took the top spot from Gates for the third time.
Ortega, who founded clothing chain Zara's parent company Inditex , first surpassed Gates in October 2015 for less than a day. At the time, he had a net worth of $80 billion. Then, nearly a year later, he took the top spot for two days in September 2016. On Tuesday, Ortega’s net worth increased nearly $500 million to $84.7 billion putting him slightly ahead of Gates briefly.
In July, Bezos was the world’s richest person for a single morning as his net worth surged above $90 billion. A disappointing quarterly earnings report later that same day caused Amazon’s stock to fall and he hasn’t regained the top spot since. He’s currently the third richest person with a $81.4 billion fortune.
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628160308d268110138ea3c39f69ad47 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2017/10/27/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-is-the-richest-person-in-the-world-again/?sh=47bad8bf1948 | Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is The Richest Person In The World -- Again | Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is The Richest Person In The World -- Again
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg)
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is now the richest person in the world for the second time.
On Friday morning, Amazon stock opened up more than 8% higher than Thursday’s close, adding nearly $7 billion to Bezos’ net worth. But thanks to a 7% spike in Microsoft’s stock overnight, it wasn’t quite enough to put him ahead of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates on Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire Rankings. Bezos had a net worth of $89.7 billion, as of the start of trading on Friday, while Gates had a net worth of $90.1 billion, up $550 million from yesterday. Then by 10:15 a.m. Eastern, Amazon stock had climbed nearly 2% since the market opened, adding $900 million to Bezos’ net worth and putting him in the No. 1 spot with a net worth of $90.6 billion versus Gates’ $90.1 billion at that time.
Amazon stock surged in after-hours trading on Thursday after the company reported strong third quarter earnings. Amazon reported $43.7 billion in revenue, well above the $42.1 billion analysts expected. Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in August, made up $1.3 billion of total revenue for the quarter.
Bezos became the richest person in the world for the first time three months ago as Amazon stock hit an all-time high on July 27, just before Amazon reported its second quarter earnings. But Bezos’ first time at the top of Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List only lasted a few hours. That same day, Amazon reported a big miss on earnings in its second quarter, leading to a drop in the e-commerce giant’s stock. Only today has Amazon stock returned close to its previous high, as the stock market responded positively to Amazon’s third quarter results.
When Forbes published The FORBES 400 list of richest Americans earlier in October, Bezos was the second richest person in America, worth $7.5 billion less than Gates. Bezos first joined the Forbes 400 in 1998, one year after Amazon went public, with a net worth of $1.6 billion.
Update: Bezos ended the day as the richest person in the world with a $93.1 billion fortune, up $10.3 billion from Thursday. He is currently $3.1 billion richer than Gates, who ended the day with a net worth of $90 billion.
Gallery: 2017 400 Richest Americans: Under 40 14 images View gallery
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3cfa97e45d35acf43293eb79b3b37c9b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevitasek/2015/11/12/contract-terms-remain-stuck-on-old-school-negotiating-tactics/ | Contract Terms Remain Stuck On Old-School Negotiating Tactics | Contract Terms Remain Stuck On Old-School Negotiating Tactics
Add to the list of things that never seem to change are the go-to terms that contract negotiators always put first.
The top three most negotiated contract terms are limitations of liability, indemnification, and pricing. These three priorities have been at the top of the 30 “most negotiated” terms since 2000, with limitation of liability always occupying the No. 1 spot, according to the latest “Top Negotiated Terms” report from the International Association for Contract & Commercial Management (IACCM).
While this news isn’t particularly surprising, it is actually “bad news,” according to IACCM’s CEO Tim Cummins. Why? It demonstrates a distinct lack of progress—or even much attention—to business reality.
A recent article in The Economist emphasizes the dynamic nature of how business is changing, stating, “Business today is increasingly digital, services-based and driven by intangible assets, including rights to exploit intellectual property, from patents to logos.” In addition, businesses are shifting to more collaborative sourcing business models designed to create value – not simply exchange value.
This disconnect with business reality, historic and status quo contracting practices is what the IACCM refers to as a “mismatch.” This mismatch is starkly highlighted when you compare the top 10 negotiated terms with what IACCM members say should be negotiated:
Top Negotiated Contract Terms 2015 Top Suggested Collaborative Contracting Terms Limitation of Liability Alignment on Scope/Goals Indemnification Change Management Price/Charge/Price Changes Communication/Reporting Service Levels and Warranties Responsibilities of the Parties Payment Service Levels/Warranties Intellectual Property Price/Charge/Price Changes Warranty Limitation of Liability Performance/Guarantees/Undertakings Delivery/Acceptance Termination Dispute Resolution Delivery/Acceptance Indemnification
Cummins reflects on why there is such a profound disconnect in his Commitment Matters blog. “The laws and regulations relating to trade were mostly designed for the manufacturing age. Not only are they inappropriate, but they add to the complexity of dealing with a fast-changing environment.”
Rather than tackle the topics that actually undermine contract performance, contract negotiators focus on dealing with asset protection – “in other words, a presumption of bad faith and that things are quite likely to go wrong.” That’s why clauses related to liabilities, indemnities, intellectual property, data protection, liquidated damages and confidentiality dominate the list of top terms.
Cummins is passionate in his viewpoint, talking plainly when he says, “Today’s contract design and primary terms and conditions are ineffective and actually damaging.”
So is there a better way? The right commercial conversations should be about creating and sharing value in relationships – not extracting value and shifting risk.
Sharing value is not a particularly new idea; it is not very widespread as yet in the corporate world. However, Michael Porter has been working to popularize the concept ever since his influential 2011 article in which he and co-author Mark R. Kramer highlight their “big idea” of “shared value” thinking. Shared value thinking promotes efficiency, collaboration and innovation, which in turn leads value expansion for everyone.
Shared value thinking is an idea whose time has come, and the way forward to the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy. And if you need a supplier to help you achieve your goals, it means contracting professionals must shift their approaches to adopt more rational, collaborative contracting terms.
Kudo’s to Tim Cummins and his IACCM staff for continuing to highlight the disconnection between current practice and needed practice. The need for enlightenment and reform is urgent.
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282b3ae1b343975cbd5aad0df521a302 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevitasek/2016/07/14/brexit-supplier-allies-not-adversaries-will-help-you-weather-the-storm/ | Brexit: Supplier Allies, Not Adversaries, Will Help You Weather The Storm | Brexit: Supplier Allies, Not Adversaries, Will Help You Weather The Storm
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Procurement and contracting communities are buzzing after Brexit, trying to calm nerves on the impact of Brexit. Most agree one thing is fairly certain; regulatory regimes and trade agreements will have to be closely monitored to understand the impact of what will be changing.
Brexit underscores the need for more flexible contract frameworks. Simply put – when business factors change it almost always causes contract economics to shift in favor of one side or the other; there will be winners and losers if organizations are not careful to maintain fairness within the spirit of the agreement. When commercial agreements get out of economic equilibrium one of two things often happen: The parties will become opportunistic or they will work collaboratively to understand the impact and make needed shifts to keep the relationship in balance.
The Short-Term Opportunistic Camp
Two camps are emerging on the best post-Brexit tactics with suppliers – the first being for companies to flex their procurement muscle and “profit from supplier confusion: renegotiate now.” According to that line of thinking, all bets are off: Brexit is an opportunity to take advantage of a suddenly uncertain market and financial relationships to force nervous suppliers into accepting lower pricing arrangements and renegotiated distribution channels.
Gallery: Reactions To Brexit 14 images View gallery
The Long-Term Relationship-Based Camp
The second mindset advises a longer term approach to strengthen relationships with trusted business and trading partners. This is done through approaches to contracting that move away from transaction-based mindsets to more collaborative, trust based partnerships.
The Winning Path
David Frydlinger—a relational contracting expert and author of the book Getting to We: Negotiating Agreements for Highly Collaborative Relationships—says the long-term path is the best bet. “The economic and contracting research is very clear in showing that organizations that have sustainable supplier relationships outperform organizations that use short term opportunistic tactics with suppliers. Having a flexible contract framework that positions buyers and suppliers to cope with unexpected ‘business happens’ events as they occur allows organizations to adjust to the dynamic nature of the business environment while still preserving the supplier relationship in a fair and balanced manner.”
Frydlinger asserts, “The goal of the negotiation and contracting process must shift from getting the best deal and shifting risk to the other guy to negotiating the foundation for a sustainable relationship itself. Negotiating the true nature of the relationship means that the parties create a negotiation atmosphere that encourages cooperation and fairness, which is essential in times of uncertainty like Brexit.”
Five Steps To A More Flexible Contracting Framework
Frydlinger suggests five steps (described in Getting to We) for revamping rigid win-lose contracts to more flexible, collaborative contracts.
1. Getting ready for WIIFWe – Shifting to a collaborative relationship means shifting the mindset from “What’s in it for Me” (WIIFMe) to “What’s in it for We” (WIIFWe). Organizations determine whether a WIIFWe mindset has merit for them and their situation, and whether they are willing to explore establishing or renegotiating a highly collaborative relationship.
2. Jointly agree on a shared vision for the partnership – The parties discuss and create a shared vision for their partnership. A shared vision gives the partnership its purpose and commitment beyond a series of transactions.
3. Develop the guiding principles for the partnership –The Getting to We process posits that partners not only improve the relationship but also abide by a set of “social norms,” or principles— reciprocity, autonomy, honesty, equity, loyalty and integrity —to drive highly collaborative behavior. This is critical because applying the guiding principles to a business relationship sets the parties on a trusting and collaborative journey to live as "we."
4. Negotiate as We – At this point the actual negotiation begins. The first negotiation is creating the “negotiation rules” by agreeing on a common set of negotiation strategies and tactics that both parties agree to follow. For example, they may determine that the classic “good cop, bad cop” negotiating tactic is banned. Once the parties have negotiating rules, they use them to negotiate the specifics of the deal such as the scope of work, pricing, and terms and conditions.
5. Living as We – With the deal specifics negotiated, the parties turn to the final stage of their process: living as “we.” In this step the parties agree on the governance structure and mechanisms the parties will use to keep in alignment when “business happens” – such as a Brexit. This step is essential to creating a sustainable relationship.
The five steps are an opportunity to lay a strong foundation for organizations and their suppliers to work together and survive uncertainties and unexpected twists of business fate.
Allies, Not Adversaries
Bottom line: the best chance of getting through adverse times is with allies. Take a lesson from history: during most major wars and times of uncertainty, you seek out allies. Why not do that in times of economic uncertainty as well? If you treat your supplier as a partner you will have the best chance of weathering the storm and finding ways to mitigate risk – not just avoiding or shifting risk.
Watch on Forbes:
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a397340dceb9d1d749ad08289e8aeedd | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevitasek/2018/10/12/collaborate-your-way-through-tariffs/ | Collaborate Your Way Through Tariffs | Collaborate Your Way Through Tariffs
In the current climate of “anti-globalism” or “economic populism,” tit-for-tat tariffs that can instigate trade wars and the disruption of global trade deals in Europe and the Pacific rim, buyers, sellers and their supply chains have an opportunity to step up and cope with major challenges.
It’s no time to panic or hunker down into an “us versus them” mindset. It’s never too late to optimize the supply chain to make it highly collaborative, flexible and responsive to changing market dynamics. But the clock is ticking.
Employees work on the assembly line at the Harley-Davidson Inc. manufacturing facility in York,... [+] Pennsylvania, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2015. (John Taggart/Bloomberg)
Case in in point: Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, says the president is “reorienting the world’s supply chains” through tariff actions and the desire to rewrite – or scrap entirely – trade deals with Canada, Mexico and the rest of the world. Another related case in point: The New York Times reports that “6 Months Before Brexit, Many in U.K. Fear ‘It’s Looking Very Grisly.’”
“There are certainly risks of short-term disruption,” Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, said, quoted in the Times article in a recent interview with the international media. “We can manage down some of those risks, and we can avoid some of them,” he said, though he conceded that this was not completely in his power and that avoiding disruption “will require good will on both sides.”
On September 24, the latest batch of U.S. tariffs, which start at 10 percent and increase to 25% at the end of the year was imposed on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. These latest tariffs are in addition to penalties implemented earlier this year on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods. This means that roughly half of the products that China sells to the United States each year will be hit by tariffs.
In response, China announced duties on U.S. goods worth $60 billion. China's new tariffs will be levied at rates of 5% or 10%, depending on the product. More than 5,000 U.S. goods will be affected, including meat, nuts, alcoholic drinks, chemicals, clothes, machinery, furniture and auto parts.
Other key U.S. trading partners, including the European Union, Canada and Mexico are in talks with the U.S. administration to avert the implementation of reciprocal tariffs on a broad range of products.
Credit: Getty
Optimize Your Supply Chain
Steve Bowen, Maine Pointe’s CEO and author of Total Value Optimization: Transforming Your Global Supply Chain into a Competitive Weapon, asserts there is no time like the present to “stress test” your supply chain and make changes on three fronts:
Optimize supply chain and operations efficiency. Irrespective of the global trade war, there are still significant opportunities for companies to drive out cost, release cash and enable growth in the end-to-end supply chain. Improve supply chain optionality. Balance risk by exploring sourcing opportunities in countries that are not affected by the new tariffs. In addition, in some areas, now is the time to negotiate the best possible deals on any raw materials, intermediate or finished goods that are not impacted by tariffs. Bowen notes, for example, that “companies such as 3M and General Electric, which have diversified global supply chains, have expressed confidence in their ability to change their sourcing in response to cost increases.” Gain market insights on shifting production facilities. Assessing the viability of shifting production facilities to avoid tariffs is a more medium-term strategy for executives to consider. “For example, President Trump has suggested Apple Inc. should move its production from China to the U.S. to avoid cost increases, Harley Davidson has shifted production for EU destinations from the U.S. to its international facilities to avoid tariffs and Volkswagen group is taking advantage of its 122 factories worldwide to give it the ability to adapt to changing needs and requirements,” Bowen says.
He sums up his advice by saying, “The key for companies and their supply chains is to create, expand and optimize the value chain through high collaboration and strategic partnerships that place them in the best-fit sourcing situation.”
Focus on End-to-End Supply Chain Optimization
The key to coping with daunting and complicated trade politics should reside at the highest governmental levels. But considering today’s realities in the Trump administration, the next best approach is optimizing value at the supply chain level.
A University of Tennessee white paper, ‘End-to-end Supply Chain Collaboration Best Practices,’ shows that a highly collaborative end-to-end focus on the supply chain enables organizations to achieve greater levels of efficiency and resiliency as supply chain partners collaborate to drive continuous improvement and innovations.
This is not easy by any stretch. End-to-end optimization demands that supply chain partners shift from traditional transactional business models that focus on cost savings to models that shift to value creation. To make the shift organizations must first understand the fundamental differences in value extraction, value exchange and value creation.
Value extraction occurs when an enterprise attempts to shift value from one player in the supply chain to itself (a classic win-lose scenario), extracting profit and value from one member of the supply chain and transferring it to a leading player. This is often done using highly competitive bids and power-based negotiations approaches.
Value exchange is better, but still falls short because the parties’ focus is to optimize within their own four walls. In a fair and balanced value exchange, organizations check their power at the door and instead strive to get to a fair price versus value tradeoff (such as quality and service).
Successful supply chains can and should make the shift to focusing on value creation, enabled by realistic end-to-end collaboration and win-win pricing models.
By working as partners with a transparent, win-win mindset, buyers and sellers can identify opportunities that they simply cannot see by working within their walls. A longer-term strategic focus that includes transparency and a win-win mindset can motivate suppliers to invest in solutions they might not otherwise feel comfortable about.
Progressive companies are shifting along a sourcing continuum to more sophisticated and collaborative sourcing business models that are built to make the shift to value creation, as seen below.
The right sourcing model can spur value creation. Strategic Sourcing in the New Economy
While the transactional approach certainly has a strong place in the market, organizations seeking productivity-driven improvements in an uncertain economic climate should shift to more strategic sourcing business models with the key suppliers that are more collaborative in nature.
The bottom line in the Trump era? Collaborate your way to better value-based profit levels by forging highly strategic win-win supply chains that optimize across supply chain partners.
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8f3db4b1f298b862b55d982444ce4813 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevitasek/2020/01/31/walmart-canada-and-dlt-labs-launch-worlds-largest-industrial-blockchain-application/?sh=5c316f983d2e | Walmart Canada And DLT Labs Launch World’s Largest Industrial Blockchain Application | Walmart Canada And DLT Labs Launch World’s Largest Industrial Blockchain Application
Walmart Canada and DLT Labs have launched the world’s largest Industrial blockchain. Pictured are ... [+] Walmart's John Bayliss and DLT Labs' Loudon Owen (right). Melony Jamieson, Get it Done Inc.
Walmart Canada – in collaboration with DLT Labs – has launched what they believe is the world's largest full production blockchain solution for any industrial application. The blockchain-based freight invoice and payment reconciliation solution is now rolling out across Walmart Canada’s 60 transportation carriers with the goal to increase trust, efficiencies and savings between Walmart and its carriers. All carriers in the nation-wide network will be on-boarded by February 1st.
The initiative was championed internally by John Bayliss, Senior Vice President of Logistics, Walmart Canada. Bayliss explains how the initiative came about: “We had some very vocal carriers complaining about the lead-times to get accounts settled. We knew these were systems issues and not people problems. Early on, one of our tech leaders suggested a blockchain network might be interesting, but we weren’t really sure. The one thing we knew is we are definitely not experts on blockchain and if we were to go down that path, we would need a partner that was willing to co-create with us. So, I put the challenge out to the team and that led us to DLT Labs.”
The partnership with DLT was a yearlong effort where the duo collaborated to customize a blockchain enabled freight invoice and payment reconciliation solution to meet Walmart’s unique needs and build on DLT’s supply chain platform.
Loudon Owen, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of DLT Labs, explains how it works. “The new system uses distributed ledger technology to track deliveries, verify transactions, and streamline the payment and reconciliation process among Walmart Canada and its carriers that deliver goods to over 400 retail stores across Canada annually.”
Owen describes the more technical aspects: “The platform integrates and synchronizes all of Walmart Canada’s freight supply chain and logistics data in real time, aggregating the data between Walmart and its fleet of third-party trucks on a shared ledger. It also automates the huge number of calculations to enable real-time invoicing, payments and settlement. In addition, it is integrated with each company's legacy systems, so each organization can continue to follow its existing processes without retraining or a new investment in technology.”
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Walmart Canada and DLT Labs piloted the blockchain-based freight payment network in January 2019 with Bison Transport as the roll-out carrier. After the successful pilot, the remaining Walmart Canada carriers began on-boarding in October 2019. Walmart Canada’s remaining carriers will be live on the system February 1, 2020, which will be accessible in multiple ways, including a web portal, ‘system to system’ through API’s, and an intuitive user interface.
The Walmart Canada and DLT Labs collaboration extended to Bison Transport shortly after the parties began working on the “how.” Bison played an essential role Bayliss says: “Our freight payment problem was a real pain point for our carriers. Having one of our major carriers on board was critical because we knew if we were going to develop a workable and scalable solution – it would have to work for the carriers too.”
He continues, “Bison is a top ten transportation supplier in Canada. From their perspective we weren't able to get the data reconciled as quickly as we needed to. There were disputes in what data we were using, including the timeliness in which we were paying.”
Rod Hendrickson, VP Finance, Bison Transport, shares his perspective. “This blockchain initiative was a new paradigm that had the ability to greatly improve workflows, reduce paperwork, and make the business we do with Walmart more efficient. We welcomed Walmart’s openness and transparency and ultimately we were glad to have had the ability to work with Walmart and DLT as peers to create a mutually beneficial solution that works well for Bison Transport and Walmart Canada.”
The joint team operated with three simple goals shared by Walmart and DLT:
1. Resolve carrier payment issues.
2. Drive efficiency in the ways of working today.
3. Increase visibility and trust in the freight payment process.
Bayliss says having shared goals was important. “We kept coming back to these ‘core tenets’ because we knew if we could deliver on these common goals, we’d have a solution we’d all feel comfortable with. We all shared this commitment – Bison, and DLT, and Walmart.”
Ultimately the platform was developed with extensive transparency, using blockchain technology as the foundation. Bayliss reflects: “It came down to aligning behind finding a way to get to one version of the truth. Using blockchain enabled us to find a solution we could focus on together – not just a Walmart initiative. This meant looking at inputs differently and finding ways to optimize across the entire supply chain, not just for what Walmart wanted. From our perspective, we're now able to be much more efficient in how we process and manage the data around our relationship with Bison, and all other carriers.
“Previously payments were monitored and assessed in a way that was overly difficult and extremely manual, given the volume of data and the complexity of information we have. DLT Labs led the joint team to really develop something that should be a role model for the industry.”
Hendrickson agrees. “From Bison's perspective, there is much greater clarity in how we work with Walmart. The transparency and integrity we have built – not just in the new freight payment process and system but in how we worked collaboratively along the way – has significantly strengthened our relationship with Walmart.”
The bottom line? It is the bottom line – for all of the companies. The new freight invoice and payment reconciliation system using distributed ledger technology (blockchain) has led to increased trust, efficiencies and savings. And the side benefit? A newfound learning of how to truly unlock the power of innovation with the right mindset through shared goals and co-creation.
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8a2acaddc1eff7a7faec5eb04c56d461 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevitasek/2020/03/28/the-increasing-need-for-strategic-alliances/ | The Increasing Need For Strategic Alliances | The Increasing Need For Strategic Alliances
Win-Win arrows concept handwritten on sticky note Getty
As the world struggles with the human and economic impacts of a pandemic, suddenly the need for collaborative strategic alliances between businesses and their service and logistics providers is more necessary than ever.
When major organizations like Amazon, JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway link up, it sends a clear message that strategic alliances are more than a trend. They are here to stay.
Consider what happened in early 2018. Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase announced a partnership to cut health-care costs and improve services for their U.S. employees. The three giants employ more than one million workers, so the launch of an independent operation raised eyebrows and many questions about what the term “partnership” really means in the financial and operational environment. That was then, but now the business environment is turned on its head; their partnership looks prescient.
In the Spring of 2019 PwC partner Bob Saada and the business combination expert Benjamin Gomes-Casseres published “Why Your Next Deal May Be a Partnership” in strategy+business, a report that examined the dynamics and the advantages of taking partnerships seriously among businesses of various sizes and reach. The Amazon–Berkshire–JPMorgan deal showed how companies, responding to “technological disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, regulatory overhaul, and demographic shifts, are pushing such partnerships beyond their traditional limits,” they wrote.
The idea is to combine and connect expertise to expand companies’ reach, to drive growth, and to cope with rising competition and Black Swan events. In other words, a strong focus on partnerships – rather than purely transactional relationships, traditional mergers and acquisitions, sales or market exits – brings much more expertise and value to the table, no matter how large or small the organization.
The numbers are striking. The PwC report noted that in 2017, the number of joint ventures and alliances increased by nearly 30 percent over the previous year.
Saada and Gomes-Casseres said: “Few companies can afford to follow their previous deal blueprints if they want to respond to the disruptions and risks in today’s markets. More important, the traditional lines between industries are blurring, with consumers increasingly expecting goods and services to be interconnected, and businesses seeking to make their supply chains more efficient and effective.”
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A focus on partnerships is becoming a necessity for organizations to get it right. A PwC look at more than a quarter-century of global data on alliances and JVs shows we are in another period of upswing when it comes to those partnerships. The combined number of alliances and JVs has increased in the past two years and is now at its highest level since the start of the century. How that dynamic will shake out in the future is of course highly uncertain, but would seem to underscore the need for even closer collaboration in forging long-term relationships.
A PwC survey/analysis, “Navigating the Rising Tide of Uncertainty,” found a “record level of pessimism” as CEOs looked ahead to 2020. Only 27% of the 1,581 CEOs surveyed are ‘very confident’ in their prospects for revenue growth in 2020, a low level not seen since 2009. The big issues that worried CEOs included: growth, technology regulation, upskilling and climate change. The PwC survey revealed that 49 percent of executives said they were planning a new strategic alliance or JV in the next year to help drive corporate growth and/or profitability. That percentage was more than planned new M&A activity (42 percent), outsourcing (21 percent), or a business sale or market exit (16 percent). That was then—the pandemic could overwhelm all of those issues.
The conclusion? “When it comes to the most pressing topics confronting CEOs, collaboration between and among organizations, individuals and governments can meaningfully enhance not only their own prospects but the prosperity and vitality of society as a whole.”
From my perspective, the most effective way to respond to changes in business and fluidity is the Vested collaborative business model. Vested provides the essential principles, methodology and system for all parties, no matter how large or small, to grow value for everyone, while effectively addressing the turbulent environment they face.
When partners work to be agreeable, strategic, collaborative, and responsible, alliances and JVs can thrive.
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864211b5a253dcb508436040d82d6354 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinegustafson/2016/11/01/four-ingredient-chocolate-chip-cookies-as-nutritious-as-your-breakfast-cereal/ | Four-Ingredient Chocolate Chip Cookies As Nutritious As Your Breakfast Cereal | Four-Ingredient Chocolate Chip Cookies As Nutritious As Your Breakfast Cereal
Chocolate chip cookies (credit: thethrillstheyyield via flickr)
“Is Teff the New Supergrain?” The New York Times asked in August. This ancient grain, a staple crop in Ethiopia, is so packed with vitamins and nutrients it might as well be prescribed by your doctor.
One cup of dry teff packs in 28 grams of protein, 16 grams of dietary fiber, 35 percent of your daily calcium, and 82 percent of your daily iron. In fact the grain is picking up popularity in the US in part because female marathon runners with low iron levels are using it to restore their health. Long-distance runners in Ethiopia have long seen it as a staple of their training diet.
The gluten-free trend that has swept the country has also sparked increased interest in teff, along with other ancient grains like farro, quinoa, spelt, and amaranth. Sales of teff rose 58 percent in 2014, according to market research firm Packaged Facts, and consumers are eating it in everything from protein bars to waffle mix.
One of the strong upstarts in the field, hard at work popularizing teff to a US audience, is Love Grain. The company was founded by American consultant Aleem Ahmed after he went to live in his ancestral homeland, Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley, where he worked with the country's Agricultural Transformation Agency, which oversees Ethiopia's teff production.
Ethiopians use teff in their staple bread injera, and some estimate that the grain makes up almost 15 percent of Ethiopians’ daily calories. To protect prices and supply, the government generally does not allow farmers to export their teff.
Ahmed’s time at the Agricultural Transformation Agency involved working on a new program designed to help farmers increase their teff production. The scheme worked, boosting production among millions of farmers and creating the possibility of new opportunities on the international market. The government now allows a small cadre of teff farmers to sell to US buyers, but restricts their exports to processed teff products like injera and flour.
Through that shift in policy, Ahmed is able to import teff flour for his products. He works directly with the farmers, cutting out the middle man so that the producers get the best prices for their crops, a practice that bumps their earnings up by some 25 percent. Love Grain also pre-pays for seed and fertilizer, and aims to develop long-term, sustained relationships with its suppliers.
The company has so far only produced Love Grain Breakfast Mix, a pancake and waffle mix that sold out very quickly. Along with teff flour, it contains buckwheat flour, arrowroot flour, and coconut sugar, plus leaveners and spices.
Ahmed will soon release his second product, Teff Chips, in sea salt, barbeque, and sour cream & onion flavors.
In the meantime, Ahmed has been posting some scrumptious recipes on his blog featuring his breakfast mix. One particularly enticing one is a four-ingredient recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Here's all you need:
1 1/2 cups of Love Grain Breakfast Mix 1/4 cup of coconut oil 1/4 cup maple syrup 1 cup chocolate chips
This recipe is nice and healthful for a cookie, considering the whole grains and the mostly natural fats and sugars. In fact, health-wise, it’s not so much different than eating a bowl of corn flakes with milk.
Assuming you make 30 cookies of about 20 grams each out of the recipe, each cookie will have about 69 calories, 4 grams of fat, 6 grams of sugar, 6 grams of protein, 1 gram of dietary fiber, and 5 percent of your daily iron.
This better for you than other chocolate chip cookies (such as a Ms. Fields' cookie of the same size, which would weigh in at 93 calories, 4.5 grams of fat, 8 grams of sugar, 1 gram of protein, 1/3 gram of dietary fiber, and and less than 3 percent of your daily iron).
In fact, it's better in many ways, health-wise, than your typical bowl of breakfast cereal. One ¾-cup serving of Kellogg's Corn Flakes with one-half cup of 2% milk gives you 144 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, 9 grams of sugar, 1.5 grams of protein, 1 gram of dietary fiber, and 30 percent of your daily iron.
Of course if you're someone who will eat cookies for breakfast, you’d be apt to eat more than one. So how would a two-cookie breakfast compare to a more sugary cereal option?
Two of these cookies would have 138 calories, 8 grams of fat, 12 grams of sugar, 12 grams of protein, 2 grams of dietary fiber, and 10 percent of your daily iron.
One ¾-cup serving of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes with one-half cup of 2% milk, by comparison, gives you 185 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, 17 grams of sugar, 5 grams of protein, 1 gram of dietary fiber, and 25 percent of your daily iron.
Even in cookie form, teff can provide a start--or middle or end--to your day on par with as what Tony the Tiger offers. And with companies like Love Grain moving into the market, expect more nutritional goodness where this came from.
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6bc3e2d7e6100113da5e1fed2ff0d247 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinegustafson/2016/12/07/it-just-became-incredibly-easy-to-grow-marijuana-at-home-meet-leaf/ | Startup Launches Automated System It Claims Makes It Easy To Grow Marijuana At Home | Startup Launches Automated System It Claims Makes It Easy To Grow Marijuana At Home
LEAF with app (Credit: LEAF)
With last month’s election, the U.S. reached a tipping point in the long fight to decriminalize cannabis. More than half of states have now declared pot legal, either for medical or recreational use. Seven states plus the District of Columbia have now legalized recreational pot, and 21 others allow it to be taken as medicine.
It’s perfect timing for the appearance of a high-tech game-changer for regular marijuana users: LEAF, a smart, self-contained, single-purpose grow-chamber that enables anyone to grow cannabis (or food and herbs) in their own home.
The sleek machine the size of a smallish fridge launches today with an asking price of close to $3,000 (pre-orders being accepted with a $300 deposit). The price tag fits the sophisticated nature of this “plug-n-plant” system: LEAF has smart-phone-operated humidity and temperature controls, automatic nutrient dosing, and a smell-dampening carbon filter. It also offers a drying mode to turn fresh leaves into something … a little more useful.
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The company was founded in April of last year by Yoni Ofir, an Israeli military veteran who uses medical marijuana to treat his anxiety. He started growing his own pot to be assured the stuff he was using was free from chemicals and pesticides, but found he could really use some automated help with the cultivation.
LEAF CEO Yoni Ofir (Credit: LEAF)
“Growing cannabis yourself is not easy—it’s very time-consuming and requires a lot of knowledge and daily upkeep,” he says. “As I learned more about growing, I came up with the idea to automate it with smart home technology.”
After building the first unit for himself, he received “an overwhelming number of requests” to create more of them for other marijuana enthusiasts, especially after he posted info about LEAF on Reddit. He spent months perfecting the machine, and is now ready to take his invention to the general public.
I caught up with Ofir to ask a few questions about his unusual—and sure-to-be-popular—venture.
KG: What are some of the particular challenges you've faced with this product because it is made for producing a controlled substance?
YO: The biggest challenge I’ve faced with LEAF is dealing with federal regulations. Although cannabis legalization is happening (and has already happened both medicinally and recreationally in many states), there are still many issues on a federal level.
For example, the legal cannabis industry is currently worth billions of dollars, but state law-abiding businesses do not have access to bank accounts or credit card processing due to federal banking regulations. Even though we are a company that doesn’t “touch the plant” or sell the actual cannabis in any way, it took us a while to get approved for credit card processing for LEAF, which delayed us in getting units to our customers.
Hopefully, as time goes on and cannabis becomes more mainstream, these unnecessary regulations will disappear.
KG: Will you sell this to anyone, or are there restrictions? As in, are you going to require proof of medical marijuana prescription to buy a unit? Can people in states with legal recreational marijuana use LEAF?
YO: We require proof of a medical marijuana prescription in states where it’s only legal for medicinal use and we require confirmation that customers are 21 or older in states where it is legal recreationally. Customers who provide these types of documentation get access to the cannabis grow instructions and recipes in the LEAF app.
However, because LEAF is also great for growing herbs and plants such as cherry tomatoes, basil, spinach, kale, mint, strawberries, wheatgrass and peppers, we do ship units to states where marijuana is not currently legal and to customers without prescriptions in states with legal medical marijuana. These customers do not get access to our cannabis-related content in the app, and are responsible for obeying the local laws and regulations in their state.
At this time LEAF only allows orders from people over the age of 21, regardless of their state.
KG: Is it difficult to use, and what inputs does it need?
YO: The entire point of LEAF is that it makes growing high-quality cannabis, vegetables and herbs easy for anyone and everyone. You don’t need any prior growing experience, or a natural “green thumb,” to successfully use LEAF.
LEAF nutrients (Credit: LEAF)
LEAF automates the most difficult tasks of growing, including climate control, nutrient dosing, pH balancing and more in an easy-to-use device interface and mobile app. LEAF plugs into any electrical socket. If you’d like, you have the option to connect LEAF to your home’s water and sewage systems for truly automatic growing.
KG: Are there any similar systems already on the market?
YO: There are a few other startups in the space but we’re really competing against the DIY method of trying to do this on your own at home.
The other units we’ve seen are too small to handle the size of a mature cannabis plant, but LEAF is large enough to accommodate a full plant. LEAF is the first of its kind to offer customizable climate control, automatic water changes, automatic nutrient dosing, automatic pH balancing, and recipe creation and syncing through the app.
KG: How can someone reserve one?
YO: You can pre-order your own LEAF starting today at www.getleaf.co.
LEAF (Credit: LEAF)
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e6002e443dd591976495d5f572eaa6c7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehignett/2020/12/22/new-coronavirus-strain-will-vaccines-still-work-on-variant-found-in-the-uk/ | New Coronavirus Strain: Will Vaccines Still Work On Variant Found In The U.K.? | New Coronavirus Strain: Will Vaccines Still Work On Variant Found In The U.K.?
Countries around the world have closed their doors on the UK following the discovery of a new coronavirus variant. The variant—known as “B.1.1.7”—appears to have spread rapidly through London and the south-east of England.
Although it appears to be more contagious than other known variants of the virus, scientists don’t think it's likely to cause more serious disease. But will it still respond to the three main vaccines?
Thankfully, scientists think it’s very likely the vaccines will work on this new variant. This is because the part of the virus targeted by the Pfizer/BioNtech, Moderna and Oxford/Astrazeneca shots hasn’t changed much.
Spike protein
These vaccines work by inducing an immune response to the “spike protein” of SARS-CoV-2: the virus that causes Covid-19. “The new variant has 17 mutations within it, of which 8 are affect the gene that codes for the spike protein,” Dr Olivia Szepietowski from Covid-19 testing company Medic Testing told me.
But, “relative to the size of the protein, the new variant still harbours few changes,” Professor Martin Michaelis of the University of Kent’s School of Biosciences said.
Immune responses, he added, tend to target multiple sites of a protein. So these changes aren’t expected to have a substantial impact on how well the vaccines work. But he cautioned: “only time and more research will provide a definitive answer to this question.”
Adapting vaccines
When proteins change substantially there’s a chance the immune system will stop recognising them, reducing the protection offered by vaccines. But vaccine manufacturers can respond and adapt their shots to these kinds of changes. Flu shots, for example, are updated every year to provide protection against a combination of influenza strains.
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The shots from Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna are “messenger RNA” vaccines, which may be easier to adapt to new variants in the future, DNA expert François Paillier from DNA mapping company CircaGene told me. “The mRNA vaccines are only ‘recipes’ given to the human body to help it produce the appropriate immune response,” said. Modifying these vaccines, he added, is like editing the text of the recipe.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, the first UK museum to host ... [+] a COVID-19 vaccination centre, as BioNTech boss Ugur Sahin says he is confident vaccine will work on UK variant. (Photo by Danny Lawson/PA Images via Getty Images) PA Images via Getty Images
It's normal for viruses to mutate, and this was expected for SARS-CoV-2, Dr David Thompson from Medic Testing told me: “Careful monitoring of variants internationally means we can be better prepared to tackle these variants and any issues they bring, whether that be transmission or disease severity.”
Prof Michaelis from the University of Kent said this new variant doesn't change much about the virus or our response to it — so long as it doesn't impact vaccine protection. But, "it is rather a strong and timely reminder to up our game and to be more careful,” he said.
His thoughts were echoed by François Paillier from CircaGene, who added: “As each country starts to roll out their vaccination program, we must do our bit to reduce the virus population, replication and potential mutations. Our vaccinations will build immunity, but we need to avoid crowds and follow national guidelines on wearing a mask, washing hands and social distancing.”
Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus
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ae19acb343dbc99a6d61377f4ed72346 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherineparkermagyar/2019/07/28/the-6-best-hotels-in-positano/ | The Six Best Hotels In Positano | The Six Best Hotels In Positano
This story was written in collaboration with Forbes Finds. Forbes Finds covers products and experiences we think you’ll love. Featured products are independently selected and linked to for your convenience. If you buy something using a link on this page, Forbes may receive a small share of that sale.
View from the Hotel Poseidon on a summer day along the Amalfi Coast in Positano Hotel Poseidon
Henry James famously declared that there are no two words in the English language more beautiful than “summer afternoon.” Actually, there are no sweeter words on a summer afternoon than “Amalfi coast.” This slice of Italian shoreline has become less of a destination than a mindset among travelers to the region. And there’s no town more iconic—or more Instagram-able—than Positano.
La dolce vita along the Amalfi Coast Hotel Poseidon
Think Jackie O in silk scarves yachting off the coast of Capri, fluorescent Aperol spritzes and enough striped beach umbrellas to inspire a lifetime of Gray Malin photography. Read on for the best hotels to book in Positano in order to make your holiday dreams a reality.
Villa Franca
Scenes from Li Galli restaurant at Villa Franca Villa Franca
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The Villa Franca is a boutique hotel property tucked into the Positano hillside offering stunning views of the seaside village and Mediterranean below. Il Galli, the onsite restaurant, capitalizes on this with floor-to-ceiling windows that are perfect for watching the sun set into the sea. An afternoon of sunning and swimming by the cliffside pool is a must, as is examining the local artwork that decorates the hotel’s reception area. Though Villa Franca offers privacy and seclusion, the piazzas and beaches of Positano are within walking distance.
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Hotel Conca d’Oro
Dining al fresco at C'onca d'Oro C'onca d'Oro
The sunset matches the decor at the Hotel Conca d’Or, a property that was an ancient villa before it opened as a hotel in 1949. The family-owned lodging underwent a massive renovation in February 2018 that preserved its Baroque-style architecture. Each room comes with Vietri tiles and ocean views, while the poolside terrace offers a perfect respite.
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Villa Gabrisa
The view from Da Gabrisi Restaurant Vito Fusco © All Right Reserved
Villa Gabrisi is another ancient villa. Its da Gabrisa restaurant offers vegetarian and vegan dishes, while the wine store serves local wines and cheese. Scooter rentals are available during the wintertime. Limousine service is available year-round. The hotel will also arrange a private charter to sail along the coast.
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Hotel Poseidon
The pool tucked into the hillside at the Hotel Poseidon Hotel Poseidon
This Positano paradise stands out from the crowd for one-of-a-kind experiences that can’t be replicated. Case in point: the opportunity to drive the hotel’s 1970s convertible Beetle up and down the windy Amalfi roads free of charge. Or the chance to explore real limoncello factories and take a cooking class in an Italian home. Additionally, the onsite L’Onda Beauty Center offers couples and singles treatments and is available to non-hotel guests as well.
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Casa Albertina
The hotel from above Casa Albertina
This family-owned hotel is notable for offering a more intimate feel, ambiance fostered by the warmth of its owners, the Cinque family. While it’s a bit tucked away from the beaches and downtown, excursions are planned by land or sea. But part of this hotel’s charm is spending time within its walls, including learning Neapolitan cuisine at the Casa Albertina restaurant.
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Hotel Pasitea
The reception hall at the Positano Art Hotel Pasitea WWW.SAVERIOFORTE.IT
The Positano Art Hotel Pasitea is the best place to stay for the artistically inclined traveler. Exploring the extensive gallery within the hotel is a treat. Afterward, enjoy an aperitivo in the Bruschetta Cafe’s ornate bar. The hotel was named after Pasithea, a goddess associated with meditation and relaxation, and it’s not difficult to unwind in this idyllic overlook.
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da35df0245456c5055369d5f852eb61f | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherineparkermagyar/2019/08/26/how-to-spend-a-salty-weekend-in-newport-rhode-island/ | How To Spend A Salty Weekend In Newport, Rhode Island | How To Spend A Salty Weekend In Newport, Rhode Island
Dusk on the Newport Pell Bridge The Chanler
Newport represented an escape from duty into an atmosphere of unmitigated holiday-making. Edith Wharton, The Age Of Innocence
It has been nearly a century since Edith Wharton first published those words in her novel, The Age of Innocence. Though the Newport of the author's Gilded Age youth has evolved over the years, her sentiment remains true to this day.
Rosecliff was the setting of the Grace Kelly film 'High Society' John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images
One of the oldest resort towns in America, Newport, Rhode Island, is known as the Sailing Capital of the World and as the Queen of Summer Resorts. Yet, there is more to Newport, Rhode Island than meets the eye—though, of course, what greets you when you cross the Pell Bridge is endlessly appealing to all of the senses. A mere 4-hour drive from New York City and an hour and a half from Boston, this seaside city along the southern tip of Aquidneck Island has long been a favored weekend getaway for urban travelers hailing from the East Coast.
Newport, Rhode Island is a boating enthusiast's dream LightRocket via Getty Images
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Yet its charms are not limited to those who frequent New England. Thanks to its proximity to T.F. Green Airport in Providence (a mere 40-minute taxi ride away), the city is waiting to be discovered by travelers nationwide. And planning your Ocean State revelries needn't be restricted to travel in the summer months. Why not visit in the shoulder season, when the water remains warm (and the prices start to cool) in the fall? Or the wintertime, when Snow Polo and Gilded Age Christmas festivities beckon? From decadent mansions to breathtaking cliff walks, read on for your guide to Newport, Rhode Island.
View of the Castle Hill Inn from the water Castle Hill Inn
Stay
From castles on a hill to lighthouses on an island, there's no shortage of luxurious accommodations awaiting the discerning traveler in Newport, Rhode Island. The historic Hotel Viking in downtown Newport is a local institution, offering travelers easy access to the bars and restaurants of Thames Street while still providing an elegant respite from the bustling city streets.
Curious travelers should sign up for a tour of these iconic estates—we recommend The Elms, The Breakers, or Rosecliff (the setting of the Grace Kelly film, High Society.)
Hoping to experience an oceanfront retreat that's removed from the action of downtown Newport? Look no further than the rooms available at the Beach Cottage at Castle Hill Inn. Perched on the sand dunes overlooking the hotel's private coastline, these cottage rooms are also walking distance from the hotel's popular bar and restaurant—but more on that later.
The exterior of the Chanler The Chanler
Travelers looking to be removed from their daily lives—and awakened to the struggles of how life was lived in another time—should consider booking a stay at the Rose Island Lighthouse. This lighthouse is set upon an 18-acre island located one mile off Narragansett Bay—just book quickly: There are only five rooms available in total.
Visitors who appreciate a happening nightlife scene (while also enjoying an oceanfront view) should travel closer to shore for our next option: Gurney's Newport Resort & Marina. This Rhode Island outpost of Gurney's Montauk is also home to another New York institution that's sure to appeal to Manhattanites: The mouthwatering Italian restaurant, Scarpetta.
From 2019 to 1873: Our final selection, The Chanler at Cliff Walk, was first built as a summer home for Congressman John Winthrop Chanler and Margaret Astor Ward. The 20-room, European-inspired hotel offers a taste of how the other half once lived, and is just steps from the historic Cliff Walk—but more on that in our next section.
International Tennis Hall of Fame Visit Rhode Island
Explore
Newport is an intoxicating mix of historic architecture blended with dramatic coastal cliffs, and nowhere is this better appreciated than along the city's famous Cliff Walk. This path begins at The Chanler and winds along the coastal edge of the lavish properties that were built for America's aristocracy at the turn-of-the-century.
Curious travelers should consider signing up for a tour of these iconic estates—we personally recommend exploring the interior of The Elms or The Breakers, though the grounds of Rosecliff (the setting of the Grace Kelly film, High Society) are the most breathtaking. Travelers visiting in the fall should purchase tickets to the Newport Wine & Food Festival, which will be held from September 19th to 22nd at The Elms, Rosecliff, and Marble House.
A match is in session Newport Polo
Visitors during the wintertime have the opportunity to witness the palatial estates resplendent in Christmas lights and decorations during the holiday season. The Newport Winter Festival, meanwhile, is slated to occur from February 14th to the 23rd and will feature an eternally-popular wintertime polo match on Sachuest Beach in Middletown.
Visitors can enjoy both the beach and the event in the summertime, as well, of course: Newport Polo is a classic afternoon activity, while Sachuest Beach (locally referred to as "Second Beach") is a known surfer hangout, and is the most social of Newport's public beaches—owing, perhaps in no small part, to the Del’s Lemonade truck. The beverage is a Rhode Island staple—but more on Newport cuisine in a bit.
Summer mansion on the Cliff Walk Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty
Speaking of summertime attractions, the expansive lawns of Fort Adams plays host to both the Newport Jazz Festival and the Newport Folk Festival in late July and early August. When you arrive at the venue, look out to sea to witness an impressive raft-up of sailboats, motorboats, kayaks, and all manner of watercraft. Newport locals and regular visitors would rather paddle-board to the beach than pay for a walk-in ticket.
Other activities include visiting the grass courts at The International Tennis Hall of Fame, flying a kite at Brenton Point State Park on Ocean Drive, or—for the truly adventurous—signing up for an afternoon above the clouds with Skydive Newport.
If you're not touring the mansions, rainy days should be spent catching a show at the historic Jane Pickens theatre or perusing the British styles on display at the Royal Male. Finally, a sunset sail on the Schooner Adirondack II is a must-do for any visitor: You haven't experienced Newport until you've experienced it by sea, after all.
Brick Alley LightRocket via Getty Images
Eat & Drink
When it comes to lunch, Flo's Clam Shack, next to First Beach, is a staple for its fried seafood and delightfully irreverent ambiance. Order Flos' Fiery Stuffed Quahog (locally known as 'stuffies') and the New England clam chowder. Travelers headed out towards Third Beach in Middletown should consider a stop at Sweet Berry Farm, if only to admire the impressive hydrangea bushes that line the perimeter of the café's parking lot. While there, order the ice cream, and the chicken curry salad (trust us).
For other casual dining options, the Brick Alley Pub is a Newport institution on downtown Thames Street that is beloved by visitors and locals alike. The White Horse Tavern is also perfect for a historic pint (or three)—George Washington once stayed within its hallowed walls. The Newport Lobster Shack offers a quick and easy option for a seafood dinner, while the homey environment of Scales & Shells is perfect for a group meal with friends.
Castle Hill Lighthouse LightRocket via Getty Images
Head to the patio of The Black Pearl for a mudslide (a favorite sailor's drink) before visiting the Clarke Cooke House for dinner. When it comes to an evening out on the town, there is no topping the three-story wonderland of the Clarke Cooke House—also nicknamed "The Candy Store." Word to the (sartorially wise): Men must wear collared shirts to enter, and blazers are required for the Sky Bar, the elegant banquet on the restaurant's top floor. Travelers in the mood for Motown music and espresso martinis will find themselves in the right place.
A sunset sail is a must for any visitor: You haven't experienced Newport until you've experienced it by sea.
Visitors looking for a more low-key night should visit the IYAC (the International Yacht & Athletic Club). The tiny bar is a favorite amongst old salts: Sailors who don't feel like throwing on a collared shirt. Be ready for a crowd with many stories to tell—as the sailing capital of the world, Newport draws a broad array of seafarers and explorers. (And now: You, too, as well).
The Claiborne Pell Bridge, Newport, RI Corbis via Getty Images
Transportation
The Pell Bridge is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and though the city is certainly more accessible than it's been in the past (when it was only reachable by boat) travelers seeking a direct route to their destination are at a bit of an eternal loss. While you can fly into Providence or take the Amtrak train to Kingston, both methods of transport require a taxi or ride-share to convey you to your final locale.
Driving remains the only direct method for reaching this seaside town. Travelers escaping New York City should consider the journey part of the vacation. Trading a decades-old Jeep Cherokee for a brand-new Lincoln Nautilus made the Friday afternoon traffic far more manageable. When arriving in the town that's the setting for High Society, why not make your entrance in style? So, go ahead: splurge on that business class ticket or Black Label luxury. It's all about attitude, after all.
Sailboats Everywhere Sheldon Kralstein
The (seemingly infinite) delays of Route 95 North are nothing in comparison to the endless summer that awaits once you cross the bridge to Aquidneck Island. In the words of frequent Newport visitor (and exceedingly prolific novelist) Henry James:
“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
The best part? Newport exudes that blissful energy in all seasons. So, go ahead, and book your trip, and discover for yourself what it is about this coastal town that's captured America's imagination for over a century.
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bfe6b3d381a1a9620b8d16e24af87ad2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherineparkermagyar/2020/05/27/scuba-diving-in-curaao-the-original-social-distancing/ | Scuba Diving In Curaçao, The Original Social Distancing | Scuba Diving In Curaçao, The Original Social Distancing
The author scuba diving in Curacao Turtle + Ray Productions
I exhaled into my breathing tube and descended into the cobalt waters off the coast of Curaçao. I was 30 feet beneath the surface, and the silence was all-encompassing, save for the alien sounds of my breath. My ominous respiratory patterns into my mouthpiece sounded like Darth Vader. The cacophony of my humble efforts at staying alive felt like they could be coming from anywhere in that endless expanse of blue. I was scaring myself. Diving into the darkness, my bubbling grew louder, the distorted sounds of an unseen villain in a horror movie—or the desperate gasps of their dying victim.
Which was not the most comforting of sounds to hear on my very first descent—in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, scuba diving is just "another great activity where your main goal is not to die." So I doubled down on the business of staying alive. "Just keep living," I repeated like a mantra in my head, adopting the wisdom of another great American prophet (Matthew McConaughey, of course.) Just keep breathing, I reminded myself. Remember to breathe. Just Relax. But my Zen was to be short-lived.
An Eagle Ray swims in the turquoise waters of Curacao Turtle & Ray Productions
When I spotted a fluorescent lilac fish emerge from beneath an Elkhorn Coral, I dove down deeper to follow its trail. Catching sight of my instructor, Ivo, in my peripheral vision, I instinctively opened my mouth to ask for the species' name, and—in so doing—dropped my mouthguard in the water, my regulator floating away in the murky depths alongside me. Grasping for my regulator, I tried to inhale for more oxygen, swallowing another mouthful of the Caribbean Sea. My lungs filled with salt water. I couldn't breathe.
Purple tube sponge, Curacao Turtle + Ray Productions
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Panicked, I inflated my device, flailing my arms, and kicking my legs as I rushed up for air. The surface was so far away, and my flippers felt heavy as stone. I felt my life flash before my eyes—I wish I could say my final thoughts were profound, but instead, they were frighteningly self-centered (not to mention egotistical.) You're going to die on a practice dive. And you'll have perished from this earth without even getting your certificate yet. (The ostensible mission of my trip.)
There's no honor in trying (and fatally failing) to follow simple instructions: Remember to breathe, and, whatever happens, don't panic. But there's no glory in trying to be a hero, either. I was reminded of both by my instructor once I was safely floating upon the surface. Stay calm, motion for help, and—crucially—try to relax. Why couldn't I master these simple rules? Though I felt entirely isolated underneath the water—unable to communicate (I'd yet to master the art of scuba sign language) and responsible for my immediate well-being (read: intake of oxygen)—I was also part of a team with my fellow divers. They were to be my life-lines in the face of mortal panic.
Cowfish, Curacao Turtle & Ray Productions
Though I didn't know it then on Monday morning in early March, my days spent in silence and self-reliance in the Caribbean Sea would prepare me well for my months of isolation upon returning home. (Ten weeks and counting—though, who's counting when each morning feels exactly like the last?) The first case of Covid-19 was reported in Curaçao the day before I flew home to JFK. It's therefore fitting that my final adventure as a travel writer in 2020 would be mastering the art of keeping calm and carrying on in a darkened echo chamber of my own intrusive thoughts and belabored breaths. Trust me, breathing underwater is at least as unnatural as participating in a government-enforced mandatory lockdown.
Dive instructor Ivo Leijen Turtle & Ray Productions
To thrive in either scenario—with nothing to distract you from the paranoia of your fatalistic thoughts—requires a supernatural level of Zen. Both activities also require a superhuman confidence and innate trust in your fellow divers/isolators to do the right thing in the time of emergency. Though, of course, the most important rule when assisting a panicked diver is to not needlessly endanger yourself first. In the immortal words of Lady Gaga, I was far from the shallow now.
The most important rule when assisting a panicked diver? Never needlessly endanger yourself. SSI Scuba Schools International
Queen Angelfish Turtle & Ray Productions
The Life Aquatic
But, let's start our story at the very beginning—on solid ground—shall we? I'd arrived in Curaçao only the day before, checking into the Lions Dive Beach Resort, and signing up for Dive SSI training with Ocean Encounters Curaçao. My lessons were held every morning at the resort's private beach; a supremely convenient arrangement made all the more so by its proximity to Hemingway's Beach Bar, where I'd toast my accomplishments every afternoon. The outdoor patio was tantalizingly close to the water's edge, tempting me with its promise of endless Pina Coladas (not to mention sufficient oxygen) during my practice dives.
The author underwater in Curacao TURTLE&RAY PRODUCTIONS
Though learning to dive had been a goal of mine for years, I'd always been slightly intimidated by the entire procedure—not to mention somewhat lackadaisical in my pursuit of lessons and certification. (As I'm sure many travelers/ would-be oceanic adventurers can relate.) Aside from demonstrating adept underwater techniques, students are required to pass a written examination as well—and a vacation embodies the exact opposite of studying and homework for a reason.
But, at Ocean Encounters, guests can prepare for the written exam in advance and begin their four-day open-ocean course the day they arrive—which is precisely what I did during my stay. Starting your lessons on a Wednesday morning and receiving your certification by Saturday afternoon? What other aspect of life offers such immediate satisfaction and wish-fulfillment?
Frogfish, Curacao Turtle + Ray Productions
Additionally, Curacao is world-renowned for its gorgeous, crystal-clear waters and legendary dive sites—not to mention its unique cultural heritage, spectacular Baroque architecture, and delicious cuisine. In short, if you're going to learn to dive anywhere in the world, why not schedule your lessons on an island where "everything is dushi’? (A Papiamento phrase, the island's native language, that means 'everything is sweet, beautiful, wonderful—all the above.)
I'd arrived in Curacao with a mission in mind: To earn my open-water certification. I was determined to make 2020 the year I finally learned to dive. A life-changing snorkeling excursion with Galápagos sea lions months before had piqued my interest in what lies beneath the ocean's surface, while learning to surf in Barbados the previous winter (a skill I'd never thought I'd master given my lack of coordination) gave me the self-confidence to believe I could conquer any and all aquatic adventures in the Caribbean Sea.
Green Turtle, Curacao Turtle & Ray Productions
In hindsight, my self-confidence was slightly delusional (per the aforementioned ill-advised ascent) and the coordination entirely unnecessary. Scuba diving is, blessedly, the laziest sport in existence. The excursion may be mentally and emotionally taxing (Do I have enough oxygen? Where on earth did my instructor disappear to just now? Am I all alone down here? etc.), but the physical element is practically non-existent. Any extraneous movement of the body aside from the occasional kick of your flippers (rhythmically, so as not to disturb the coral reef) is both unnecessary, and—more importantly—embarrassing.
Parrotfish, Curacao Turtle & Ray Productions
There's no quicker way to identify yourself as a beginner to your fellow seahorses and sharks and scuba-enthusiasts than by attempting to propel yourself forward via some make-shift interpretation of high school breaststroke. (I would know.) You needn't be an expert swimmer to be an adept diver. All you really need—aside from the SSI-certified equipment, your open-water license, a reliable scuba buddy, and (if possible) an infinitely-patient Dutch instructor named Ivo—is the ability to breathe. In and out, in and out, at a steady pace.
Sounds easy enough, right? Well, maybe for practitioners of transcendental meditation, but for this vaguely neurotic (and somewhat chaotic) New Yorker—the tics come with the zip code—slowing down was the hardest part. Surrounded by a veritable wonderland of tropical wildlife, I found it challenging to remain focused on my inhales and exhales.
Banded Shrimp Turtle & Ray Productions
Unfortunately, it's painfully apparent to everyone involved if you're not able to regulate your breathing, as you float up with every inhale, and descend with every exhale. Held your breath in awe as a squid slithered along the sand? Up to the surface, you go. Of course, that's why your diving equipment includes a set of minimal weights—especially helpful for the easily distracted novice. Expert divers barely need any weights at all. Another embarrassing revelation? Fat floats. While this may not be news to you, dear reader, it was to me when I was saddled with an extra five pounds of weight on my last day—the cumulative result of a week's worth of Pina Coladas at Hemingway's. (Worth it, in case you were wondering.)
Scuba Diving: Another great activity where your main goal is to not die. Jerry Seinfeld
Underwater with Ocean Encounters Curacao Turtle & Ray Productions
The Last Quiet Place
Similar to quarantine, the experience of diving is entirely solitary and singular, yet inextricably intimate. The world feels foreign and strange, and—-though we may be navigating it alone—-we’re ultimately reliant on one another. Needlessly endangering oneself is the equivalent of needlessly endangering your friend. And yet, somehow, by the final day, I mastered the art of scuba-induced serenity—remaining calm despite every instinct in my body frantically insisting otherwise.
I controlled the regularity of my breath to such an extent that I could hover motionless above the ocean floor, suspended in the saltwater like a genie. I removed my mask and mouthpiece underwater and didn’t panic when I couldn't see or breathe, trusting my fellow divers to save me if I needed saving—and confident I wouldn't need saving if I stayed calm. I suddenly understood what yoga teachers had meant when they insisted I find my center. (A much more difficult proposition in a boutique fitness studio in midtown Manhattan.) Centering yourself, I’ve learned, is much easier when your life (quite literally) depends on it.
Seahorse, Curacao Turtle & Ray Productions
And this sudden focus on your breathing (Blair Witch sound effects notwithstanding) has a meditative effect. Suddenly, you are thoroughly, consummately, living in the present. Engulfed in the aquatic sounds of silence, unable to communicate aside from signaling the capacity of my diving tank, I discovered an entirely separate world lurking beneath the water. And I wasn't able to comment on what I was seeing; to hyper-narrate my every thought (either in writing or conversation)—a rarity for me.
And, while you can head to the Bahamian island of Bimini for hammerhead sharks or journey hours off the coast of Ecuador for penguins, scuba diving in Curacao, I discovered, is all about the little things. The vibrantly-hued animals feeding off the coral reef (and the giant coral itself) is fascinating to observe up close. (Just make sure to wear mineral-based sunblock in order not to damage the reef while diving.) I spent that first hour in a daze while watching the reef brim with daily life in miniature. A Common Seahorse bobs up and down beside a Banded Shrimp. A Spotted Moray Eel snakes its way above the Fire Coral in search of its next meal.
Tugboat, Curacao Turtle & Ray Productions
Looking up, I saw a silvery grey creature—or, rather, monster—slowly approach in the violet water. It was the largest animal I’d seen all day, its enormity barely obscured by the hazy beams of light casting shadows in the water. Was it a shark? Do Great Whites exist in the Caribbean Sea? I was terrified but fascinated, and couldn’t help but swim towards it, unsure if the creature was dangerous, but certain it was a predator. It was late afternoon and the sunlight reflected from the water’s surface, obscuring my vision. I stared into the hazy mist for an indeterminate length of time. Drawing closer, I was able to make out the outline of a shark’s snout, or, rather, a silver bullet. Maybe it was an underwater weapon. Or a cage? There looked to be creatures swirling around within, oversized and captive.
I was nearly at the glass before I realized it was my own reflection staring back at me—and saw the hands waving from within. A submarine filled with tourists, out on a sightseeing expedition. And now I was the one being watched. It was the most surreal presence in the water: Threatening and intimidating. How out of place, I thought. How abnormal and strange. Humans, it seemed quite clear to me, didn’t belong in this world, even as visitors.
The author with her friend, Mimi Anthony, in Curacao Turtle & Ray Productions
It was an upside-down world—indeed, the underwater mountains resemble cliffs into the abyss. In this alternate universe, Amphibian namesakes of above-ground creatures populated my underseas safari: Lionfish (a top predator like its African namesake—spiky, invasive, poisonous), Frogfish (an unattractive blob likely to be passed over for a Disney Prince), Cowfish (leopard-print, very stylish), Goatfish (cliquey in small schools), Parrotfish (as colorful as their feathered counterpart), and more.
It was my first glimpse into the last true wilderness on earth, its final frontier. Though water takes up 72% of the earth's surface (a fun fact I learned while studying for my exam), this underwater tableau seemed only to hint at the depths of its mysteries. I felt invigorated by this vast universe in which I was an utter stranger; inspired by the wonders I've yet to behold.
BlueRoom Curacao Turtle + Ray Productions
If your time to you is worth saving, then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone. Bob Dylan
This hyper-immersion into my immediate environment (not to mention my behavior moonlighting as a fish) reminded me of David Foster Wallace's famous speech, "This is Water." He discusses the near-impossibility of maintaining this level of consciousness in daily life: "It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: 'This is water, this is water.' It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out."
When I boarded my flight home, I already missed the parrotfish, the silence, the rhythm of my breaths beneath the sea. Though I wasn't sure then when I'd be able to return, Curaçao gave me a gift I'll keep with me: An appreciation for the vast unknowns of this planet and the realization that "Just keep breathing" is as sound a motto as any for how to live. (Particularly in these panicked times.) Diving in Curacao taught me to be present, to be aware of my fragility, and to be in awe of the world around me. We may be in isolation, but we remain connected to a world far greater than we could ever imagine. Maybe everything is dushi, after all.
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4448d7a38aad0daba56cd2a7658fc03a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinerestrepo/2017/05/11/north-carolina-senate-budget-forces-certificate-of-need-debate/ | North Carolina Senate Budget Keeps Certificate Of Need Debate Alive | North Carolina Senate Budget Keeps Certificate Of Need Debate Alive
The North Carolina Senate has just released its $22.9 billion budget plan for fiscal years 2017-2019. The Senate proposed spending $5.2 billion of that total on all Health and Human Services (HHS) functions.
Under HHS, an important issue is Certificate of Need, a law in which hospitals and other medical providers must ask the state permission to expand patient services, construct new facilities, or update major medical equipment.
In the special provisions section of the budget are six pages of language that call for a complete phase-out of the law’s 25 regulated services and facilities by 2025, along with recommended reforms in the interim. For example, exempting physicians from the law’s lengthy review process would make it easier for them to engage in a joint venture with a local hospital to operate a surgery center or to invest in one on their own. Community hospitals with fewer than 200 beds would be freed from filling out costly applications to purchase another MRI machine. Ophthalmologists could finally perform glaucoma and cataract surgery for Medicare patients in their in-office surgical suites and get paid a facility fee – a much more cost-effective option for patients.
Kudos to the Senate for keeping the CON debate alive. For years, legislators have been battling to shift oversight of critical health care investments away from state bureaucrats and into the hands of local health care providers who have a stronger sense as to what’s “needed” for the patients in their communities. Despite efforts by key supporters of CON reform, repeal fell short amidst the final budget negotiations at the close of the 2015-2016 legislative session.
Why, then, is there a “need” for CON? Not having CON certainly has the potential to lower health care costs and bring better technology and increase access to care to patients living in rural areas of the state.
Over 40 years ago, the federal government mandated that states establish CON under the flawed logic that centralized state planning is the answer for health care resources to be equally distributed across the nation. CON was a strategy to prevent an over-investment of underused facilities and slow the growth of runaway health care spending. However, the law proved to be ineffective, which prompted the federal government to make CON an option for states to enforce.
Yet, to this day, health care planners who work for North Carolina’s Division of Health Service Regulation are still responsible for ensuring that not too many (or too few) hospitals or long-term care facilities are built. There needs to be the “right number” of outpatient surgery centers, inpatient hospice facilities, kidney dialysis units, and other pieces of life-saving medical technology.
The “need” determination process is complex, even requiring hospitals to use, for example, population growth and a projected increase in MRI scans to justify why it makes financial sense to transition from renting an MRI machine to buying one outright.
What largely stands in the way from further movement on repeal is the powerful hospital lobby. They’re equipped with the resources and political clout to persuade legislators to maintain the status quo. Recently, the North Carolina Hospital Association (NCHA) incorporated Partners for Innovation in Health Care, a nonprofit advocacy arm that will work to preserve existing CON law. NCHA argues that limiting competition is necessary for them to remain financially afloat because hospitals are required by federal law to treat all non-paying patients who enter their doors.
There are fiscal benefits from CON reform. North Carolina lawmakers initiated some small-scale CON reform in 2005, allowing gastroenterologists to perform colonoscopies in their own endoscopy units. The state saved roughly $225 million in Medicare payments within six years, largely because these procedures performed in smaller outpatient settings are reimbursed at a lesser rate than those performed in full-service hospitals.
Lastly, consider the financial relief the State Health Plan would gain if CON eliminated the cap on the number of ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). Under the assumption that 20-35 percent of government employees would shift from accessing outpatient treatment in hospitals to lower-cost ASCs, the North Carolina Orthopedic Association projects that taxpayers could save an additional $800 million over eight years.
Let’s hope that the House Republican leadership is receptive to the Senate’s plans. Now is the opportune time to phase out a law that hasn’t succeeded in managing rising health care costs, improving the quality of health care, and preserving rural health care infrastructure. And, it’s always an opportune time for state lawmakers to make health care a more competitive market to the extent that they can.
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c7b2428b059aabb727ac57d4389498da | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinerestrepo/2017/07/27/as-senate-gop-continues-health-reform-debate-telemedicine-delivers-on-improving-health-care-access/ | As Senate GOP Fumbles Health Reform, Telemedicine Delivers Better Access To Health Care | As Senate GOP Fumbles Health Reform, Telemedicine Delivers Better Access To Health Care
The U.S. Senate’s push to tackle health reform is far from over, and the struggle is real.
While the Congressional GOP has good intentions to restore more health freedom at the state level, they have so far failed to reach a consensus. Meanwhile, market forces and the states are already working to make health care access more convenient, price transparent, and affordable.
Telemedicine, for example, is a multibillion dollar industry and a leading innovation in the health care arena. Defined as “the use of technology to deliver health care, health information, or health education at a distance,” telemedicine helps people connect more quickly to their primary, specialty, and tertiary medical needs. Patients can submit questions about non-urgent health issues and receive responses from a distant medical provider within hours without having to sacrifice quality of care. Online vision tests can be just as accurate as an in-person optometrist appointment, and renowned Centers of Excellence are partnering with rural hospitals to assist in monitoring their intensive care units (ICUs).
Telemedicine’s ability to expedite the delivery of care has proven to fill in some of the health industry’s pervasive gaps, such as the ongoing rural provider shortage. The Health Resources and Services Association (HRSA) reports that 20 percent of Americans reside in rural areas, and just 11 percent of the nation’s physicians practice rural medicine. North Carolina alone has documented 145 primary care shortage areas across the state.
That’s where telemedicine apps like RelyMD come in to cover this void. Founded in 2015 by an independent emergency physician group in North Carolina, RelyMD’s board-certified physicians offer 24/7 virtual doctor appointments to their users in exchange for a $50 per-visit fee. Patients can seek medical consultation or treatment in the comfort of their own homes via a computer, smartphone, or tablet in a matter of minutes. Not only is RelyMD convenient for a busy parent with a sick child who cannot wait an average 19 days to be seen in-person by a family physician, but the cost is also a significant discount compared to an urgent care visit or a minimum $1,000 trip to the ER. Other apps that offer similar services at varying price points are Teladoc, LiveHealth Online, DoctorOnDemand, HealthTap, and more.
RelyMD is now working with North Carolina’s community health centers to extend after-hours care when these facilities are closed. The partnership began in 2016 with Piedmont Health’s Scott Community Health Center in Burlington, NC. One year later, RelyMD expanded its presence and is currently available to patients who frequent all ten of Piedmont’s locations spread across the central region of the state.
Large employers see the value in telemedicine as well. According to the Wall Street Journal, surveys highlight that 75 percent of firms offer telemedicine services as an additional benefit option for their employees. North Carolina’s Onslow Memorial Hospital and Well Care Home Health have done so with the state’s home-grown telemedicine startup – a potential way to reap savings on health care claims and enjoy greater workforce productivity.
Patients want more of this, stat. Market research shows a 20 percent increase in the use of virtual visits from 2015-2016. And for others who are not familiar with telemedicine, surveys indicate that they are open to seeking this method of care for multiple reasons, including less travel time for minor ailments and not having to take off work for an in-person appointments. The uptick in demand has also driven insurance companies to embrace telehealth coverage. In 2015, UnitedHealthcare began offering virtual medical provider visits to their policyholders. Meanwhile, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina has covered telemedicine services for psychiatric care, psychotherapy, health behavior assessments, and diabetic counseling as early as the mid 1990s.
But even if insurers didn't cover such benefits, price-transparent telemedicine companies are marketing the fact that basic health care doesn’t have to be expensive when paid for out of pocket. Congress should at least agree on this point and permit states to let their carriers appeal to more policyholders by offering products that don’t always include ‘excessive’ benefits.
In spite of whatever Congress does or doesn’t do, telemedicine continues to reach and care for more patients. And states are finding solutions to advance the industry’s footprint even further. In 2014, the North Carolina Medical Board revised its position on telemedicine so that physicians could prescribe medications to a patient virtually without being required to conduct an initial in-person exam. This past week, Governor Roy Cooper signed off on pivotal legislation that will allow nurses to obtain a single, multi-state license so they can deliver telehealth to out-of-state patients. The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, sponsored by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), is also working to expand telehealth by expediting the process for physicians to become licensed in Compact states.
All of these initiatives are enabling telemedicine to spread scarce resources to patients in both underserved and urban areas. As telemedicine continues to evolve, it’s inevitable that there will be more laws regulating the booming industry. Hopefully reason will prevail and governments at every level will do everything they can to let this market run unfettered.
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aca7b324e84b6927d73e04eeaf1969ea | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherynthayer/2014/10/17/secrecy-shrouded-tpp-leaks-alarm-internet-freedom-advocates/ | Secrecy-Shrouded TPP Leaks Alarm Internet Freedom Advocates | Secrecy-Shrouded TPP Leaks Alarm Internet Freedom Advocates
The latest threat to digital innovation and free speech online sounds innocuous. And it is a threat that lives in the details, in pages upon pages of leaked documents, still being parsed by legal experts and internet policy advocates.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, frequently referred to as "TPP", is a trade agreement initiated in 2005 and attended by US, Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and Brunei Darussalam. Every few years, more information is leaked, and with every leak, open Internet activists and free speech advocates become more alarmed at the threat to civilian rights and public best-interest. Leaked details routinely demonstrate the group is extending corporate intellectual property rights, and corporate partners are invited into proceedings while the general public is excluded.
Leaked documents from ongoing negotiations show every sign of killing innovation. Copyright law will be more strictly enforced, giving internet users less freedom of expression and creative repurposing of mainstream media. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation describes leaked provisions as showing "a profound disconnect with the reality of the modern computer," and warns that, "As drafted, the related provision creates chilling effects not just on how we behave online, but also on the basic ability of people and companies to use and create on the Web."
The provisions would also extend copyrights and criminalize infringements. An author's copyright could extend 2 lifetimes; a corporation's claim to copyright could stretch 120 years. The most recent leak suggests all countries will have to abide by the same minimum term. In previous leaks of the document, more country-by-country flexibility was anticipated.
Intellectual property is important. Creators deserve to be cited and compensated when their work is reproduced or put to commercial use. But the TPP interpretation seems behind the times. The "share economy" idea is not limited to Lyft and Airbnb. We live in a world where artists like Radiohead, or more recently, Aphex Twin, choose to distribute their work for free. A whole genre of artists--DJs-- play other artists' songs instead of creating their own. Platforms such as Soundcloud, Tumblr, and Ello enable viral sharing and audience involvement, but cloud attribution. Museums, such as Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, are putting their entire catalogues online and encouraging casual browsers to download and appropriate famous artwork into works of their own.
Copyrights can protect creators, but only with reasonable enforcement. unfortunately, enforcement often manifests as an attack on freedom of speech, and the TPP drafts appear to favor our most conservative interpretations of copyright law. Cynthia Khoo, an OpenMedia volunteer and community member, explains some of the technicalities here:
“If popular user-driven websites such as eBay, YouTube, or WordPress receive a copyright infringement notice, they must take down the offending content or risk being sued. The problem is that anyone can send a notice, and nobody confirms if the claim is legal or reasonable before taking action. As a result, Internet content disappears rapidly, amounting to wide-scale censorship of what is normally protected speech.”
Advocacy groups such as OpenMedia are particularly concerned with the lack of citizen engagement on these issues. Though the group has found the majority of internet users value free expression and a democratic process for creating copyright rules, little has been done to open these TPP negotiations to the public.
“We’re hugely concerned about how these far-reaching proposals are being negotiated in total secrecy”, says Meghan Sali from Internet freedom group OpenMedia. “The TPP could stifle free expression and change how we use the Internet for ever, yet citizens have been completely excluded from the talks. It’s indefensible that governments are avoiding having these tough conversations with their citizens and instead engaging in secret negotiations.”
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2b08a37ccbf7b86a8ffc57f6bb80285f | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherynthayer/2016/12/12/why-this-architect-is-spending-10-years-building-a-swimming-pool/ | Why This Architect Is Spending 10 Years Building A Swimming Pool | Why This Architect Is Spending 10 Years Building A Swimming Pool
Rendering of + POOL. Designed by PlayLab & Family. Image courtesy Friends of + POOL.
Oana Stanescu, one of the 4 architects behind an audacious plan to engineer a public, water-purifying swimming pool to float in New York City’s East River, is poised to spend 10 years of her career working on this project. But she describes its origins as a happy accident. “People just reacted to it.” She says, “There were so many positive comments and feedback, we thought we owed it to people.”
What Stanescu says started as a “silly” “doodle” posted online is now on its way to becoming very real. Stanescu and her collaborators have created a nonprofit and raised almost $1 million. They learned how to test and clean river water. They’ve won the support of State Senator Daniel Squadron, High Line cofounder Joshua David, New Museum Deputy Director Karen Wong and many more.
Oana Stanescu. Credit: © Brigitte Lacombe
The project started in 2010, when Stanescu, Dong-Ping Wong, Jeff Franklin and Archie Lee Coates circulated a design for a plus-shaped, Olympic-size swimming pool to float on and clean water from the East River. Their concept was to make a filtration system that would remove bacteria, contaminants and odors to make water swimmable and pump over 500,000 gallons of clean water back into the river daily. Within a year, a small Kickstarter campaign raised a little over $40,000 to put towards the project. Developers started reaching out about building it, but weren’t interested in the full depth of the vision.
Stanescu says, “They just wanted a plus-shaped pool as an amenity for their condos. We had no interest in that. But responding to that made us think about what’s important to us.”
The internet origins of the project gave the founding members a sense of commitment to their first fans. “Kickstarter campaigns and public support were such a big part of it, I wouldn’t want it to be something I couldn’t have access to. We felt like this should be for everyone, like Central Park.”
So they started a nonprofit. Though it’s a “whole different job,” than anything they’d done before, a nonprofit allowed them to act as their own client, and preserve the environmental, social goals they originally envisioned.
Stanescu explains, “Typically, design starts with a client and a budget and approaches. He’ll probably first buy the land and figure out what he wants to do, then he approaches the team, puts a team together, then looks for a design. What we did was the opposite. We started off with a design, and now we’re going through site selection, now we’re putting a team together.”
By creating their own nonprofit, the team was able to keep the difficult elements of their plan — like building a filtration system that could purify river water and kicking off a program to teach kids to swim.
She says the team often wonders, “If we were to wait for a client to ask us to build the world’s first self-filtering swimming pool, it would just never happen, right?”
She has a high level of confidence in the project, but there are still plenty of challenges ahead. +POOL plans to finalize and announce the site for the pool by summer 2017, and then has budgeted out 2 years to complete all the permits for a completely new type of public amenity. Stanescu estimates it will take another 5 years to complete the project.
In the meantime, Stanescu and Wong’s firm, Family, continues to work on other projects amenable to the design freedoms and social responsibilities the architects have enjoyed with +POOL. These range from work for friends -- like Need Supply Co. -- to submitting pieces to design competitions and exploring a self-sustaining suburb project near Wong’s hometown in San Diego.
They often get asked what large-scale projects they’ll do next. Stanescu says, in her mind, “the idea is to find different ways of initiating projects where you’re not relying on a client. It’s basically just looking around and thinking about what other resources does the city have that aren’t being used and what other issues are happening in the city. How can we make this place even better?”
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d5183a090996ef1ef8082176ee337049 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherynthayer/2017/04/05/project-include-has-a-simple-starting-point-for-workplace-diversity-better-data/ | Project Include Has a Simple Starting Point for Workplace Diversity: Better Data | Project Include Has a Simple Starting Point for Workplace Diversity: Better Data
The cofounders of Project Include Kapor Center/Ashleigh Richelle
The underrepresentation of women and minorities is a documented issue in the tech industry, yet many workers have trouble seeing it.
Women (47% of the total U.S. labor force) fill 28% of tech sector jobs, and African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans (31% of workforce) fill 12-15% of tech sector jobs, according to Intel and Dalberg.
Yet 83% of tech employees say they work at diverse companies, and 94% gave the tech industry, their companies and their teams a passing grade for diversity, according to Atlassian’s 2017 State of Diversity Report.
Project Include, launched last May, is a group that hopes to help the industry get more realistic — and more accountable — with diversity assessments. The 8 cofounders, who include notable inclusion advocates such as Tracy Chou and Ellen Pao, have made a mission of compiling resources to help CEOs and management teams diversify.
One of the group’s core recommendations is for companies to track a set of metrics, included below, that addresses not just hiring, but also workplace issues like bonuses, equity and conflict resolution.
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” cofounder Ellen Pao said over email. The group hopes to make public diversity reports standard practice, and Pao points out that official reports can help companies sideline negative rumors and assumptions. “Diversity reports allow companies to be judged on facts and not on what people will assume by their absence or on word of mouth.”
These are the metrics Project Include recommends leaders track by demographic:
Employees overall, by function, seniority, and tenure Employee status (full-time / part-time / contractor) Management and leadership Employees reporting to female managers Employees reporting to managers from underrepresented groups Salary Raises and bonuses Equity, for all-time and 12 months trailing Employee equity pool, for all-time and 12 months trailing Investor equity pool Vesting rates Board of Directors Candidate pools and hiring funnels, by role Voluntary and involuntary attrition rates Promotion rates Complaints (formal and informal) Complaint resolution status
For more recommendations and insights, visit the Project Include website.
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