Cyber crimes posing threat to digitalization

A soaring cyber crime graph threatens to paralyze the rapid growth in the country’s banking and financial sectors these days. Unless and until an effective mechanism is devised to keep this growing threat at bay, the much hyped growth of digital services has hardly any chance to percolate any benefit to the country’s economy. Cybercriminals are still at work to siphon off crores of money from many accounts with sophisticated digital applications, making online payment system more vulnerable in mobile wallets, forcing the stakeholders to go for a set of tight mechanisms to rein in the threat. A joint survey by Data Security Council of India (DSCI) and PayPal spokes volumes of a slew of measures to firmly deal with this threat to restore the confidence of the investors and customers which include some policy strictures and tight regulations for online payment. The experts in the panel have suggested a tight framework of cyber security management in the companies with an efficient IT set up. The study report strongly feels the need a set of government policies to ensure safety of the public interest, privacy and information transpired with the service providers. Many government agencies and cyber security experts have welcomed the suggestions to avoid the impending cyber threats and the pubic disaster thereof. CERT-In, a reputed government agency has heaped huge praise on the report saying that the recommendations would help the country restore the confidence of the millions of people who have been directly or indirectly bearing the brunt of this escalating cyber threat. Same sentiment echoes in the national cyber security coordinators who are happy with the panel’s stress on infrastructure to ensure a safe and secured digital payments across the country. They, further pined hopes on the prompt initiatives by Visa and Mastercard to make it more convenient.

Facebook admitted of recording calls and SMS details

Facebook recently dropped an another bomb on Monday when it confirmed that its Facebook and Messenger apps collect users calls and SMS details that are sent through a phone. 

However, the company insists that they did it after getting explicit confirmation for it from users. This means that when users click on agree, it allows Facebook to collect and store  details of every call and every SMS . 

The firm clarrified that they did this to enhance user experience, but it is very illogical to store someone's call details and personal messages, to improve users experience they should have done something else. 

In its statement, Facebook says: "Call and text history logging is part of an opt-in feature for people using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android. This helps you find and stay connected with the people you care about, and provides you with a better experience across Facebook... Contact importers are fairly common among social apps and services as a way to more easily find the people you want to connect with."

It is very scary to know that someone is having an eye on all your data without even your consent. Here is a way to turn off your Facebook recording call and SMS details:

How to turn off call and SMS details

On Facebook Messenger: Go to settings > People > Turn off Contact Sync. To delete previously uploaded contacts, go to this page, log into your account and delete contacts.

On Facebook Lite: Go to Settings > Turn off Continuous Contacts Upload. Also turn off Sync Your Call and Text History.


You can also see what all data of yours has Facebook captured until now. 

Step 1: Login to your Facebook through your desktop
Step 2: Click on the settings. Below the General Account Settings option click on ‘Download a copy’ link.
Step 3: Then you will see a ‘Download your information’ page with an option to click on ‘Download Archive’.
Step 4: After clicking on that a dialogue box will appear and ask you to write your password. Once the password is provided, there will be a prompt saying that Facebook will notify you once the data is ready to download.
Step 5: Facebook will send you  notification once it had gathered all the information and download the .zip file on the desktop.
Step 6: After downloading, extract the files and click on ‘HTML’ followed by ‘contact_info’
Step 7: Scroll below and see what all call and SMS data of yours Facebook has gathered over the years.

In this .zip file you can find all kind of information, photos, contact list, friend list, call records, sms details etc.

Snap To Fire 100 Engineers In Its Latest Layoff Round

 

 

 

Snap, the parent company and creator of disappearing messaging app Snapchat, is laying off around 100 employees in order to focus on advertising.

According to news from Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, the additional layoffs represent the last step of the company’s restructuring process, which kicked off in the fourth quarter of 2017.

“Late last year, we asked senior leaders across Snap to look closely at their teams to ensure they had the right resources and organizations to support their missions,’” Imran Khan, Snap’s chief strategy officer, said in a statement to Bloomberg. “Tighter integration and closer collaboration between our teams is a critical component of sustainably growing our business.”

Earlier in March, Bloomberg reported that Snap laid off roughly 120 engineers, saying in an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg that it wanted to keep a high technical standard among its employees. Meanwhile, in January, it laid off around two dozen workers who were involved in the content side of Snap’s business.

Bloomberg noted the layoffs are part of an over-hiring spree Snap engaged in to build an advertising business and roll out new products. As the company introduced a new system for employee performance evaluations, CEO Evan Spiegel told managers there would be some tough decisions ahead. At the same time, Spiegel received a $637 million stock award for taking the company public.

Earlier this month, business news website Cheddar reported the layoffs were imminent, saying the cuts would be announced internally sometime in the next few weeks and would impact less than 10 percent of the engineering department. Cheddar noted that Snap had slowed its hiring rate by 60 percent last quarter and withheld cash bonuses for employees at the end of 2017, when internal company-wide goals were not met. Ever since Snap went public, it has struggled to compete with Facebook and Google in the advertising market.