BlackBerry planning to shut down Sweden operations

NEW DELHI: BlackBerry is considering closing its offices in Sweden, a move that would result in the loss of up to 100 jobs, a company spokesperson told Reuters.

"At this time, we are considering the closure of our offices in Sweden. Since this may impact approximately 100 employees, we are now initiating consultations with the employees' trade unions," the spokesperson said in an email.

BlackBerry had about 7,000 people as of September 2014, according to the its website.

The company's Toronto-listed stock closed little changed at C$12.62 on Friday.

Read more at: http://www.techgig.com/readnews.php?category=Other+Technology+news&tgnews_link=http%3A%2F%2Ftimesofindia.feedsportal.com%2Fc%2F33039%2Ff%2F533923%2Fs%2F45ba6576%2Fsc%2F21%2Fl%2F0Ltimesofindia0Bindiatimes0N0Ctech0Ctech0Enews0CBlackBerry0Eplanning0Eto0Eshut0Edown0ESweden0Eoperations0Carticleshow0C470A484220Bcms%2Fstory01.htm&tg_type=rss&tgnews_id=55162

E-commerce companies flood internet with ads

BENGALURU: Thejesh GN, a Bangalore-based technologist, does not have a Facebook app on his phone, often browses on incognito mode and has installed a tool that detects and blocks spy ads and trackers.

All this is to escape from the pervasive ads that have now begun to invade his online presence. But Thejesh knows it's of little use.

Given the proliferation of e-commerce companies in India, the barrage of ads are unlikely to stop. "It's an everyday fight. There is no way to get rid of all these ads," said Thejesh, co-founder of data science community Datameet. Thejesh represents a growing population of internet users who are becoming aware of the risks that come with their online habits -- specifically, having each data point of their everyday lives collected by companies and tech startups.

This includes an individual's IP address, browser type, pages viewed, and the date and time of use. On mobile, the data collected could be more elaborate and accurate -- including a user's location, device type and contact list.

Where does all this data go? Some are sold to brands via ad networks, and others are used by companies to streamline the ads shown to specific users.

In India there are no rules or guidelines explicitly regulating online behavioural advertising, and thus it is not clear what practices different companies and internet service providers (ISPs) undertake, what information is collected, how the information is used, how long the information is stored for, and what access law enforcement has to this information, the Center for Internet and Society said in a report titled 'Consumer Privacy'.

Siddharth Shankar, a student of statistics from Patna University, who is also learning ethical hacking, is of the view that few people care about privacy in India. "Their simple reply: What will they do with our data?" said Shankar, who takes steps similar to Thejesh to protect his privacy online. More people seem to be waking up to the fact that privacy is important and that ads are intrusive. Of the 50 million users who block ads using AdBlock Plus, about 1.2 million are from India. AdBlock Plus, a mobile and browser tool, recently won a case against two publishers in Germany who wanted it to stop blocking ads on their websites. Most digital products, including apps and content, are free.

Read more at: http://www.techgig.com/readnews.php?category=Other+Technology+news&tgnews_link=http%3A%2F%2Ftimesofindia.feedsportal.com%2Fc%2F33039%2Ff%2F533923%2Fs%2F45b9bd0e%2Fsc%2F21%2Fl%2F0Ltimesofindia0Bindiatimes0N0Ctech0Ctech0Enews0CE0Ecommerce0Ecompanies0Eflood0Einternet0Ewith0Eads0Carticleshow0C470A478370Bcms%2Fstory01.htm&tg_type=rss&tgnews_id=55161

Net neutrality: Telcos warn of six-fold hike in data tariffs

NEW DELHI: Mobile operators on Friday said that they may have to increase data tariffs by up to six times to remain viable if the proposed regulations did not offer a level-playing field with net-based services such as Skype and WhatsApp.

Although they "supported" net neutrality and launched a campaign to link the unconnected to the internet, they said that high data rates would become unaffordable for a large number of people, denying them access to the Internet.

Click here to send an e-mail to Trai in favour of net neutrality

Pitching for same regulation for all communication services, COAI, the GSM industry group, said operators are required to ensure a level of service quality, share revenue with the government and intercept communication for preventing any terrorist act, but these rules are not applicable on Internet-based messaging and calling applications.

"If same rules are not to apply, then the only way this industry can be viable is data rate will be 6x from where they are there today. After that, you can do what you want. But if you take data rate to 5x or 6x, a lot of people in India will never be able to access the Internet," COAI vice-chairman and Bharti Airtel India MD Gopal Vittal said. Vittal said telecom operators want same set of rules to apply on same kinds of services.

Read more at: http://www.techgig.com/readnews.php?category=Other+Technology+news&tgnews_link=http%3A%2F%2Ftimesofindia.feedsportal.com%2Fc%2F33039%2Ff%2F533923%2Fs%2F45ba6579%2Fsc%2F21%2Fl%2F0Ltimesofindia0Bindiatimes0N0Ctech0Ctech0Enews0CNet0Eneutrality0ETelcos0Ewarn0Eof0Esix0Efold0Ehike0Ein0Edata0Etariffs0Carticleshow0C470A462630Bcms%2Fstory01.htm&tg_type=rss&tgnews_id=55163

Global customers warn Indian IT companies

CHENNAI: The world's largest buyers of technology such as Cargill, Target Corp and Lowe's have advice for India's biggest software firms: Adapt new technology and transform fast or become irrelevant.

At an exclusive session with ET, the technology heads of several global companies said Indian IT firms need to overhaul their businesses and strengthen in areas such as digital, analytics and cloud, particularly as many of the clients are building their own capabilities in advanced computing.

"If you see, areas such as digitization are largely not being outsourced right now," said Arindam Sen, senior vice president at Schneider Electric India.

Companies globally are channeling efforts into developing in-house expertise in areas such as analytics and cloud computing to stay ahead of their competition, also because large IT firms haven't been nimble enough to build capabilities in emerging technology more efficiently.

"Over a period of time, over 8-10 years, GICs (global in-house centres of companies) have built leadership maturity, credibility within the organization and high level of business value... it is this that has changed the game," said Nitin Seth, country head at Fidelity Worldwide Investment.

American retailer Target, for example, outsourced projects to large Indian software firms such as TCS and Infosys for nearly a decade. Now, the 113-year-old firm is building more technology capability at its captive centre in India than ever before.

Last year, the Minneapolis-based company launched a corporate accelerator program to tap into India's emerging startup ecosystem for talent and technology solutions that it hopes will help it survive the battle against new-age competitors such as Walmart and Amazon.

"For Indian tech vendors, rather than coming to us and saying this is what we can do, they should come to us and say these are your business problems and we have these solutions for you. Also, Indian IT firms should not view captives as threats, but should view them more as partners," said Narayan Ram, managing director of Lowe's India, the domestic arm of the American home improvement chain.

"The big question is are vendors ready to change and evolve? The answer to that question will determine what happens next," said Navneet Kapoor, managing director of Target India. "I think we are facing the highest levels of disruption in our history. If we don't change and adapt, we won't be around a few years from now."

Traditional Indian software services firms are struggling to make the transition towards newer business models that are very different from the classic 'pyramid model', where revenue growth was directly linked to manpower addition. Whereas over the years, companies' in-house technology centres have evolved to more than just vendor-management centres.

"What we tell our people in Bengaluru is 'don't think like we think' — because that's why we've brought them in, because we're looking to make improvements and changes that you've never thought of before," said Kathy Fortmann, business unit president of US agricultural conglomerate Cargill.

Fred Giron, vice president and research director at Forrester Research, said companies want IT firms to function more like consultants and advisers.

"Customers now are looking for trusted advisers to tell them what they need to do — and that requires a completely different mindset from a service provider point of view," said Giron.

"Moving away from this order-taker mentality and moving to a trusted adviser role is what Indian IT firms need to do now."


Read more at: http://www.techgig.com/readnews.php?category=Other+Technology+news&tgnews_link=http%3A%2F%2Ftimesofindia.feedsportal.com%2Fc%2F33039%2Ff%2F533923%2Fs%2F45b1bf7f%2Fsc%2F28%2Fl%2F0Ltimesofindia0Bindiatimes0N0Ctech0Cit0Eservices0CGlobal0Ecustomers0Ewarn0EIndian0EIT0Ecompanies0Carticleshow0C470A366160Bcms%2Fstory01.htm&tg_type=rss&tgnews_id=55142

Woman sues Google after in-app purchases drain her bank account

One day last August, Susan Harvey tried to download a previously purchased app onto a second mobile phone, only to have Google's dashboard tell her that - yikes! - there were 109 transactions on her account.

Clicking on another tab on Google's site led her to find that, even worse, there were about 650 transactions listed, most of which she says she didn't recognise.

Her bank records told the tale: between April 2013 and May 2014, her account had been drained of thousands of dollars.

According to The Register, the California woman last week filed a lawsuit against Google in the Eastern California District Court, alleging that the search company's inadequate security enabled crooks to run up thousands of dollars in charges on her Google Play account that were then debited electronically without her sign-off.

Harvey also accuses Google of first refusing to reimburse her, then backing down and agreeing to refund the money, but ultimately failing to pay up as promised.

At first, Google claimed that the transactions in question did, in fact, belong to Harvey.

Both her bank - Bank of America - and Google requested police reports, which Harvey's lawsuit says she submitted. Still, neither the bank nor Google reimbursed her.

Harvey took matters into her own hands, getting in touch with the vendors listed in the transactions.

Nearly all of them told her that they didn't recognise the transaction numbers as being part of their own billing. The vendors said that the transactions were, in fact, Google transactions, and that Google itself was receiving the money.

When she relayed her findings to Google, the company acknowledged that Harvey hadn't made the transactions, but it still refused to reimburse her.

After more complaining, Harvey says Google's legal department contacted her and told her the refund was in the works.

But as of the time of the filing, not only hadn't she seen her money, but some of the transactions identified as fraudulent had disappeared from her account.

From the filing:

After plaintiff repeatedly complained and advised Google of her findings, Google's legal department contacted plaintiff and advised her that all transactions would be reimbursed.
To date, all transactions unauthorized by plaintiff have not been reimbursed and notably, some transactions previously identified as fraudulent have been erased from plaintiff's account.

Harvey is claiming that there must have been a flaw in Google Play that allowed thieves to post bogus transactions to her account, that Google acted negligently by allowing her personal information to be breached and her identity to be stolen, and that Google broke breach notification law by not telling her about the problem.

She's also claiming that Google allowed electronic fund transfers - some recurring - to go through without her authorization.

She's requesting a jury trial and monetary damages.

Google declined to comment when contacted by The Register.

Regardless of the lawsuit's outcome, it's a good reminder of why we should all be keeping a close eye on our bank account statements.

Spotting the first unrecognizable transaction can help stop hemorrhaging of funds to swindlers before you lose thousands, whether the criminals are coming in from Google Play or anywhere else.

Read more at:
http://www.techgig.com/readnews.php?category=IT+Security&tgnews_link=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F~r%2Fnakedsecurity%2F~3%2FHtWiGkqT7Fc%2F&tg_type=rss&tgnews_id=55063

IS THE INTERNET REALLY MAKING US SMART?

The Internet has wrought incredible changes to learning, both in what we can learn and the way that we learn it. Not only is the information of the world largely available (free of charge) at our fingertips, but we also increasingly have access to new ideas and bright minds from around the world.

Is all of this actually making us smarter though? There has been a great deal of discussion over the years on the impact of the Internet on our brains, with respected voices ranging from Nick Carr to Susan Greenfield suggesting that the web is actually making us dumber.

Whilst this may seem hard to understand given the tremendous opportunities the web affords us, a recent Yale-led study suggests they may have a point.

The study, which consisted of nine separate experiments, found that when we obtain knowledge online, we perceive our knowledge as much greater than we do when the knowledge is obtained through other channels.

“This was a very robust effect, replicated time and time again,” the researchers say. “People who search for information tend to conflate accessible knowledge with their own personal knowledge.”

For example, two groups were tasked with finding out how zippers work. One group looked online, whilst another were given more tangible resources to search in.

When the participants from the two groups were asked afterwards how good their knowledge was of unrelated domains, those from the online group believed their knowledge was far superior to that of the offline group.

Intriguingly, when the same participants were quizzed prior to the experiment, no such differences were present.

What’s more, this effect was so pronounced that people even had an inflated sense of their knowledge having answered the question incorrectly.

“The cognitive effects of ‘being in search mode’ on the Internet may be so powerful that people still feel smarter even when their online searches reveal nothing,” the authors reveal.

They go on to suggest that this sensation of the web being almost an appendage of our brain is particularly pronounced among younger people, where there could be a considerable distortion to our perceived knowledge levels caused by the degree with which we’re plugged into the net.

Read more at:
http://www.techgig.com/readnews.php?category=Technology%2F+Skill+News&tgnews_link=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.dzone.com%2F~r%2Fdzone%2Ffrontpage%2F~3%2FnOIEr0OuT_o%2Fis_the_internet_making_us_smart.html&tg_type=rss&tgnews_id=55107

One in six Android apps is a malware, says study

BENGALURU: One in every six Android applications is a malware, according to a study by technology security company Symantec. The study also found that 36% of all Android applications are Graywares, which are not malicious by design but do annoying and inadvertently harmful things like tracking user behaviour.

In what could be seen as a warning to the large number of startups emerging in India, the study said cyberattackers are focusing more on small- and mid-sized business firms now since these are the ones that are increasingly creating intellectual property. It said 60% of all targeted attacks struck such organizations in 2014.

"The attackers know that a large portion of intellectual properties are generated from smaller companies. With hundreds of startups coming up every day in India, the number of attacks are likely to rise as companies give more importance to bringing a product to market quickly than on security," Tarun Kaura, director of Symantec's technology sales for India & Saarc, told TOI.

Symantec said the research was conducted on 6.3 million Android applications. "We found that roughly 17% of all the apps come right under the classification of malware. Also, 2.3 million apps that are available today track the users' behaviour," said Kaura. The study also found that nearly one million malwares are created every day across the globe. "Around 317 million malwares were created in 2014. This was a 26% rise from 2013," Kaura said.

Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kochi are the cities that came most under cyberattacks last year. Among the various business sectors in India, those dealing with critical infrastructure like banking, telecom, transport and energy were subjected to the most attacks. India is among the top 10 infected countries in the world.

India is also ranked second after the US under social media scams, the report said. One of the major social media scams was a click-bait video link inviting Facebook users to watch the farewell message of late Hollywood actor Robin Williams which he allegedly shot before committing suicide on August 11 last year. Williams had never recorded a farewell message, and the link led to a malware. The post was automatically shared too by the ones who clicked on the link, thus reaching to more vulnerable users.

Symantec said the study is based on empirical data collected by its global intelligence network. It said the study tracked 8.4 billion emails every month and 1.8 billion websites every day in 157 countries using 57.6 million attack sensors.

Read more at:
http://www.techgig.com/readnews.php?category=Other+Technology+news&tgnews_link=http%3A%2F%2Ftimesofindia.feedsportal.com%2Fc%2F33039%2Ff%2F533923%2Fs%2F45a65179%2Fsc%2F23%2Fl%2F0Ltimesofindia0Bindiatimes0N0Ctech0Ctech0Enews0COne0Ein0Esix0EAndroid0Eapps0Eis0Ea0Emalware0Esays0Estudy0Carticleshow0C470A213260Bcms%2Fstory01.htm&tg_type=rss&tgnews_id=55109