Govt asks Google, Facebook, WhatsApp to check rumours, messages inciting unrest

The meeting, which took place on Wednesday, was called to review actions taken so far to prevent misuse of social media sites by undesirable elements or miscreants to spread rumours, cause unrest, incite cyber crimes especially against women and children and other activities detrimental to national interest.

The meeting was attended by representatives of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Whatsapp, YouTube and Instagram as well as officials from the Department of Telecom and various security agencies.(AFP)

Government has asked Google, Twitter, WhatsApp and other social media platforms to take concrete steps to check spread of rumours and messages inciting unrest, cyber crimes and other activities that could be detrimental to the national security, officials said Thursday.

Besides, these platforms, which also include Facebook and Instagram, have also been asked to put in place a system for prompt sharing of information sought by the law enforcement agencies for investigation purposes, officials added.

A number of cases have come to the fore in recent past where social media platforms were used to spread hate messages and rumours inciting violence, including against women, but internet giants -- most of them being headquartered outside India -- have been resisting sharing of customer details and message trails citing privacy issues. However, some social media firms have said they are taking necessary steps to stop misuse of their platforms for spread of fake news, and rumours and hate messages.

In a meeting with asked representatives of various social media platforms, Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba also asked them to nominate India-based grievance redressal officers and to develop a monitoring mechanism for time-bound preventive and other actions for removal of objectionable contents.

“The union home secretary asked them to take concrete steps to ensure a robust and effective system for preventing misuse of their platforms for activities detrimental to national security,” a home ministry official said.

Those who attended the meeting included representatives of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Whatsapp, YouTube and Instagram. Besides, officials from the Department of Telecom and various security agencies were also present. The meeting, which took place on Wednesday, was called to review actions taken so far to prevent misuse of social media sites by undesirable elements or miscreants to spread rumours, cause unrest, incite cyber crimes especially against women and children and other activities detrimental to national interest.

The representatives of social media platforms briefed the government officials about actions taken by them to ensure blocking of websites and for removal of objectionable and malicious contents from public view.

All social media platforms have assured full cooperation with the government, another official said.

Since a review meet held by the union home secretary with social media representatives in June this year, a series of meetings has taken place with law enforcement agencies and social media firms to ensure an effective mechanism to prevent misuse of these platforms by anti-national elements and those involved in proliferation of child sexually abuse material etc.

Focused on security, privacy to help users communicate in everyday life: WhatsApp

WhatsApp also announced its partnership with Invest India to help entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises expand their businesses.

WhatsApp Vice President Chris Daniels Wednesday said the company is focussed on values like security and privacy to ensure that its product remains a utility that helps users communicate in everyday life.

The Facebook-owned company, which has been asked by the Indian government to put in place a mechanism to clamp down fake messages on its platform, also announced its partnership with Invest India to help entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises expand their businesses.

“...we keep the company focused on four values -- simplicity, quality, security and privacy. Everything we do in the company focusses on those values and delivering that value to users and ensuring that our product remains a utility that they can use to communicate in everyday life,” Daniels said.

Out of WhatsApp user base of 1.3 billion people, more than 200 million people are in India -- the single largest market for the popular messaging platform.

The government has been pushing WhatsApp to find a technology solution to trace origin of ‘sinister’ messages, a move that it believes can help curb horrific crimes like mob-lynching emanating from fake news.

WhatsApp, however, had rejected India’s demand for a solution to track the origin of messages on its platform, saying building traceability will undermine end-to-end encryptionand affect privacy protection for users. Emphasising that people use its platform for all kinds of “sensitive conversations”, the US-based firm had said it is focussing on educating people about misinformation.

Speaking about the startup ecosystem in India, Daniels said companies like Ola, Flipkart, Zomato and Makemytrip are making a huge impact on the Indian economy.

“We are extremely impressed by the entrepreneurial tradition in India as well as by companies that we see coming out...We believe in people, we believe in creativity, we believe in entrepreneurship,” he said.

WhatsApp and SMEs in India

The partnership with Invest India will help WhatsApp in driving awareness about its business tools in around 15 states impacting over 60,000 businesses in the coming months through tools such as Startup India ‘Yatra’ programme and other in-person training events.

WhatsApp will invest $250,000 as seed funding to the top 5 winners of the ‘WhatsApp StartUp Challenge’ and an additional $250,000 will be directed to a select few from the entrepreneurial community to promote their WhatsApp business number on Facebook and drive discovery of their businesses.

“India adds over 3 new startups a day, ranking it amongst the top startup nations in the world... Through this partnership with WhatsApp, we aim to support the innovative startups in India and to create solutions not only for India but the entire world,” Deepak Bagla, CEO and MD at Invest India, said.

Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said DIPP is working with the tax department and regulators to ease the rules and laws for startups to support budding entrepreneurs.

China’s OnePlus set to foray into Indian smart TV market

Chinese handset maker OnePlus had recently announced the formation of a new division to develop Smart TVs, which will be spearheaded by OnePlus founder and CEO Pete Lau.

Consumers of India’s growing segment of Smart TVs can expect even better times going forward with China;s OnePlus set to enter the market, intensifying competition in a space which has already been disrupted by the entry of Xiaomi, another Chinese player.

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei told ET that the positioning of TVs has to be the flagship and India will be one of the first markets to get them. "We are good at the flagship segment and user experience.”

Chinese handset maker OnePlus had recently announced the formation of a new division to develop Smart TVs, which will be spearheaded by OnePlus founder and CEO Pete Lau.

The executive said India is a big market, and allows space for multiple companies in the TV space.







“The market is big. There are different segments…while we haven't revealed our product rollout plans, the positioning of TVs has to be the flagship… There is still a lot of work that could be done in terms of user experience,” Pei said.

“We will be able to carve out a space for ourselves in India,” he said.

India's television market is valued at Rs 22,000 crore, growing at 15% a year, with the Smart TV segment a small, but fast growing one. The market recently saw the entry of hardcore smartphone makers such as Xiaomi, Micromax, Intex and other newer brands like Kodak, Thomson, Blaupunkt, Skyworth and TCL.

Xiaomi’s TV has become the top “Smart TV” brand in India in the second quarter of 2018, as per IDC.

“We are very conservative when it comes to new categories. For us, we think Smart TV will be the next big category. We believe this will really replace the smartphone in the coming couple of years,” he said.

OnePlus is launching its latest flagship OnePlus 6T in India and in the US market to further consolidate its presence in the premium segment.

Pei said that the premium segment is still small in India, but is growing fast, and the company is “happy” with its performance. “…consumers now want better products and have disposable income…we just want to focus on what we do best… we are now offering a meaningful upgrade through new phone,” he said. OnePlus maintained its leadership position in India's premium smartphone market in the July-September quarter of this year with 30% market share, driven by strong sales of OnePlus 6 smartphone, as per Counterpoint data.

India is profitable and contributes around one-third of the global revenue for OnePlus. “This year, India is also similar to last year in terms of overall share, which is one-third. But, the entire pie has grown since last year, which means India as a market has grown.”

OnePlus is aggressively investing in India to set up a local research and development (R&D) centre here, and to fuel its offline expansion.

“The new centre will help us work closely with partners, and bring it closer to the users. It will help in localisation and innovation for the local market,” Pei said.

OnePlus is also rolling out its own service infrastructure to have a tighter control over its operations, and is also bringing global contact service operations to India to support markets such as the US and Europe.

Facebook’s background information feature for news articles is now live for India

Facebook will now provide its Indian users with additional details on an article before they decide to read or share it

In 2017, Facebook started testing out a new feature in the US, which provided its users with additional information on the publisher and article which they saw in their news feed. The company said they developed this feature to help its users decide what to read and share, get more information around the news source and could act as a way to cut down on spread of fake news on the platform.

The company has now started rolling out the new feature in India, Germany, France Spain and Poland. The roll-out seems to be phased as we tested it out on two accounts, one of which had received the feature, whereas, the other one did not. This new feature is already available in the US, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, New Zealand, UK and Ireland.

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The feature currently provides Facebook users with publisher’s details, a quick view of the publisher’s recent stories posted on the platform, a view of articles by the publisher shared by any of their friends, domain age and more information about the author.

Author information will include, the author’s Wikipedia description, a follow button and a view of their recent articles. Earlier, this feature was limited to only articles posted online, however, Facebook has expanded it since then to include all links posted on the platform.

The company states that this feature was developed with the help of multiple sets of users and publishers, and will continue to expand the view of this feature with time. The idea behind the background information feature was to help give users more context around a news article, and help them understand the credibility of the news piece and whether they should trust the article source.

Amazon Posts Record Profit, but Disappoints on Revenue and Outlook

Amazon reported another record quarterly profit Thursday, fueled by the growth of online shopping and its cloud-computing service.

But its revenue grew less than Wall Street analysts expected, and Amazon's shares fell after the results were released.

The company, based in Seattle, has boosted its profitability as it expanded far beyond online shopping. For years, the company posted razor-thin quarterly profits, spending most of what it earned on building warehouses and making other investments. But that's changed as its Amazon Web Services unit, which provides cloud computing services to companies and government agencies, has become a major moneymaker for Amazon.

Amazon posted third-quarter profit of $2.88 billion (roughly Rs. 21,100 crores), its fourth straight quarter of profits above $1 billion. A year ago, it reported profit of just $256 million (roughly Rs. 1,870 crores). On a per-share basis, it reported earnings of $5.75, beating the $3.29 per share analyst expected, according to Zacks Investment Research.

Revenue rose 29 percent to $56.58 billion (roughly Rs. 4.15 lakh crores), but that was below the $57.05 billion analysts expected. Shares of Amazon.com, which are up 50 percent so far this year, fell 7 percent to $1,655.98 in extended trading Thursday.

At Amazon Web Services, revenue jumped 46 percent to $6.7 billion. In its "other" category, which is mostly made up of its growing advertising business, revenue more than doubled to $2.5 billion.

Amazon is expected to face higher costs as it boost pay for all its US workers to at least $15 (roughly Rs. 1,100) an hour starting November 1. The company hasn't said how much the wage hikes will cost it, and Amazon's Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky declined to give a specific number when asked during conference calls with reporters and analysts on Thursday. About 400,000 workers at Amazon's warehouses, as well as those at its Whole Foods grocery chain, will receive pay increases.

Looking ahead, Olsavsky said the company is "expecting a strong holiday season." However, its revenue forecast of $66.5 billion to $72.5 billion for the fourth quarter, which includes the holiday shopping season, was below the $73.87 billion that analysts expected.

Rivals are hoping to steal some sales from Amazon by mimicking its fast delivery.

Target, for the first time, will be offering free two-day shipping with no minimum purchase this holiday season. But Amazon has already cemented loyalty with its Prime membership, in which members pay $119 a year or $12.99 a month for fast delivery, access to Amazon's movie streaming service and other perks.

Olsavsky said Thursday that Amazon still has more than 100 million Prime members worldwide, even after raising its membership fees by 20 percent earlier this year.

Windows 10 October 2018 Update Hit by ZIP File Bug Spotted Months Before Release

Windows 10 October 2018 Update Hit by ZIP File Bug Spotted Months Before Release

Windows 10 October 2018 Update has been riddled with bugs si

Windows 10 October 2018 Update has been riddled with bugs since launch

HIGHLIGHTS

• This is one of several bugs found in Windows 10 October 2018 Update
• In the meanwhile, a zero-day vulnerability has been publicly outed
• The vulnerability could be misused by malware authors before a patch

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Windows 10 October 2018 Update's launch was rocky to say the least, with bugs popping up immediately after release, and one severe enough to delete user data upon installation. This caused Microsoft to suspend the rollout until it could fix the issue, and industry-wide outrage at the lack of quality control on part of the Redmond giant in fixing bugs that had already been spotted in preview stages. Now it appears Windows 10 October 2018 Update (aka Windows 10 version 1809) has been hit with another bug related to ZIP archives. In the meanwhile, a security researcher has publicly outed a zero-day vulnerability in Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, and Windows Server 2019. A patch for this vulnerability has yet to be rolled out by Microsoft.

First spotted by a Reddit user, the Windows 10 October 2018 Update contains a bug related to extracting/ pasting files from a ZIP archive when using the native Windows File Explorer tool. If a user tries to extract or paste a file  from inside a ZIP archive into another folder containing another file with the same name , they will not be given an overwrite prompt. Instead, the destination folder file's modified date changes, but the file is not replaced at all.

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While this doesn't sound as serious as the data-loss bug, and doesn't actually overwrite the file, it is severe if one counts the use case where the original ZIP file is deleted by a user convinced they have replaced files. It also misleads users into believing there was no file in the destination folder that matched with files in the ZIP archive. Another Reddit user, who added that the bug also has the Windows File Explorer showing file transfer progress, corroborates the bug.

Notably, as was the case with the data-loss bug, a Windows Insider Preview tester had spotted the presence of ZIP file bug three months ago, and reported it to the Feedback Hub. However, thanks to just a few upvotes on the bug report (as was the case with the data-loss bug, ZDNet notes), it appears to have been overlooked by Microsoft when compiling the Windows 10 October 2018 Update. BleepingComputer adds that this bug was fixed in the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18234 (19H1) release that was pushed to testers a full month before the public rollout of the October 2018 Update. Unfortunately, this fix never made it to general users, but with a fix already in builds, one can expect Microsoft to patch it soon enough.

In light of the data-loss bug and how it was originally caught by testers but missed by Microsoft, the Redmond giant had published a short blog post on how it was changing the manner in which bugs could be reported in the Feedback Hub - bug reporters would now be able to add a severity rating. This, Microsoft hopes, would help ensure Windows 10 developers don't miss out severe reports when fixing bugs in public releases. "We believe this will allow us to better monitor the most impactful issues even when feedback volume is low," Brandon LeBlanc, Senior Program Manager on the Windows Insider Program Team said.

Next up, we have a new zero-day vulnerability reported by a security researcher who for now is just known by their Twitter handle - SandboxEscaper. It was publicly outed on Twitter on Tuesday, and this is not the first time that SandboxEscaper has found a zero-day Windows vulnerability and publicly outed it - the last time was less than two months ago. Microsoft acknowledged August's bug report in a statement to ZDNet, and a fix was rolled out in the September 2018 Patch Tuesday update, but not before PowerPool group used it in a malware distribution campaign.

Getting back to Tuesday's zero-day vulnerability disclosure by SandboxEscaper, a GitHub proof-of-concept has also been published alongside. The bug affects the Microsoft Data Sharing service, known as dssvc.dll in Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, and Windows Server 2019. The vulnerability allows attackers to elevate privileges on a machine they already have access to. While the proof-of-concept exploit only details how an attacker can delete files they don't have permission to, the exploit could be modified to let attackers perform more actions, ZDNet cites several security experts to say. While Microsoft has yet to comment on this latest bug report, such a public disclosure may once again give bad actors a chance to weaponise it into malware campaigns before Microsoft can patch it. A security company called 0patch has in the meanwhile released a micropatch for the vulnerability, which could be used by concerned users before an official fix is released.

Facebook starts rolling out the new and simplified Messenger app

NEW DELHI: Social networking giant Facebook has started rolling out the new Messenger app. The company talked about the app at its annual developer conference F8 in May this year. The company claims that the new Messenger app will offer a simplified experience to the users.

Messenger 4 consists of three tabs with all the important features of the original app. The three tabs are Chats, People and Discover. With the Messenger 4, the company has made it easier for the user to navigate within the app. All the conversations of the users are available under the Chats tab.

Under the People tab users can find their friends and stories and can also see who is active at that time. Then in the Discover tab users can connect with the businesses and get the latest deals, play Instant Games, book next vacation, follow the news and more.

The company also adds that the Messenger 4 also has another way to personalise your conversations with a small but delightful update to chat customisations called colour gradients. With this feature, you can now use multiple colors to customize your chat bubbles in conversations. You can see the colours change from red to blue, for example, as you scroll up and down a conversation. Colour gradients can be changed any time to reflect your mood or topic of conversation.

In an official post the company said, "It can take time to get used to changes in an app you rely on every day, which is why we’re rolling out Messenger 4 in phases. We have a handful of new features we’re planning to introduce in the near future, like Dark Mode, a re-skinned interface that cuts down on the glare from your phone. So take your time, settle in, and we’ll be back with more soon. Welcome to the new Messenger