A British Columbia community college says personal information of some students and employees may have been copied by a cyber attacker earlier this month.

Okanagan College, which has 17,000 students and 1,100 employees across several campuses in southern B.C., said an “unauthorized entity gained access to certain Okanagan College technology systems” around Jan. 9.

As a result, certain information about students and employees “may have been subject to risk,” the college said. Free credit monitoring services are being offered.

Meanwhile, the Vice Society ransomware gang has published notice of an attack against an unnamed Canadian organization, claiming to have exfiltrated more than 850 GB of data. A  blurred photo accompanying that notice appears to be one of an Okanagan College building on the Kelowna campus.

The campuses are in Penticton, Kelowna, Vernon and Salmon Arm. There are also several smaller centres in Revelstoke and Oliver where communities can access educational services like tutoring, English as a Second Language, and Continuing Studies programs

The college has notified the B.C. Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and is in the process of notifying students and staff.

On discovering the attack, the college immediately shut down, and disabled network access across all of the campuses, and has hired external cyber-security experts to assist in its response and investigation.

Restoration of IT services continues, with many systems back online. However, when an ITWorldCanada reporter called the Kelowna campus on Thursday afternoon, a receptionist said that not all phones were working.

For certain IT services, temporary solutions have been implemented. Access to the online Moodle learning platform is available, as well as the ClassFinder app.

The college has extended its fee payment deadline for the winter semester to Jan. 31, 2023.

However, it is currently unable to produce properly formatted official student transcripts for proof of completion of courses. For the time being, graduates and students who request a transcript will be provided with an unofficial transcript that reflects their academic record and a letter of authenticity from the college. An official transcript will be mailed once systems are restored.

The post B.C. college says info of students, employees at risk following cyber attack first appeared on IT World Canada.

In honour of this year’s Data Privacy Day, which takes place Saturday, Apple has unveiled new educational resources to help customers learn how to retain control of their data.

Available now is an entertaining set of four videos, launched Tuesday, entitled A Day in the Life of an Average Person’s Data, which feature Apple TV+ Ted Lasso star Nick Mohammed. In the episodes, an Apple Store specialist accompanies Mohammed as he goes through his day, and explains iPhone privacy features including Mail Privacy Protection, Intelligent Tracking Prevention, App Tracking Transparency, and Wallet and Apple Pay.

The company is also launching a new 30 minute Today at Apple training session on Saturday. Called Taking Charge of Your Privacy on iPhone, it walks customers through iOS features including Mail Privacy Protection, Safety Check, Location Services, and passkeys.

“We created Today at Apple to spark creativity and enable our customers to get the most out of their Apple products and features,” said Tracey Hannelly, Apple’s senior director of retail engagement and marketing.

Customers can register online for a session at their local Apple store.

The post Apple unveils new resources for Data Privacy Day first appeared on IT World Canada.

Many boards don’t make put privacy as one of their organization’s priorities, a survey of professionals suggests.

According to the annual state of privacy survey of members of ISACA (formerly known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association) — released in conjunction with Data Privacy Week — 22 per cent feel their boards don’t put a priority on privacy, A further 20 per cent said they don’t know if their boards adequately prioritize privacy. Fifty-five per cent believe privacy is a priority with their boards.

“It’s not entirely surprising,” Safia Kazi, ISACA principal for privacy practices, said in an interview. “I think a lot of people view privacy as a cost centre. Its something that maybe slows down a project. You acquire a new program or resource and you go ‘Is it GDPR compliant? Do we have to start over again [with a new privacy assessment]?’ I think that’s where some of that comes from. The other thing I found is that 20 per cent of our respondents said they don’t know if their board prioritizes privacy. That could speak to a board that maybe isn’t communicative about it (privacy).”

The 55 per cent who believe their boards do prioritize privacy is slightly higher than the 2021 survey, she added. “I think in general we’re moving in the right direction, but there is some way to go.”

The survey, conducted in the fourth quarter of 2022, saw responses from 1,890 ISACA members who currently work in data privacy or have detailed knowledge of the data privacy function within their organization. Questions were asked on privacy staffing, budgets, program trends, awareness training and breaches, and the use of privacy by design.

Among the results, Kazi noted, is that organizations that practice privacy by design are more likely to have a board that adequately prioritizes privacy and have larger numbers of employees dedicated to setting and enforcing privacy policies.

“The tone really can start at the top,” she said. “When you don’t have that support, it can be really hard to get the resources you need.”

Another noteworthy finding is that 31 per cent of respondents said their organization doesn’t separate privacy and security training for employees. “That was a little disappointing,” Kazi said. “I think the problem is a lot of people [in management] have security training and think, ‘Privacy is close enough. What’s the difference?’ My concern is that, if you are just teaching people security and not privacy, you’re not really building trust with customers. If the organization is collecting too much of someone’s personal information, that’s not necessarily a security issue but it would be a privacy issue.”

“But I also want to point out that organizations have so much they have to do. You can’t be taking up everybody’s time with a thousand security training and privacy training meetings. My hope is that organizations that combine privacy and security training have a specific call-out to privacy and give it the attention and time it needs.”

“One trend that makes me optimistic is it looks like privacy is faring a little bit better than it has in previous years,” she said of other survey results. “Privacy teams are a little bit larger than they were last year and the year before. Also, we’re seeing that members are less likely to say they were understaffed this year compared to last year. That said, understaffing is still a challenge, filling open privacy positions is a big challenge.”

Overall survey results suggest that, “for the most part”, enterprises realize privacy isn’t going away, she said, with many organizations trying to ensure privacy teams have the resources they need.

Among other survey results, 42 percent of respondents said their privacy budget is underfunded, and only 36 percent believe it is appropriately funded. Just over a third of respondents (34 percent) indicate their privacy budgets will increase in 2023.

ISACA offers certifications for information systems governance, control, risk, security, audit/assurance and business and cybersecurity professionals.

To read the survey, click here. Registration required.

The post Many boards don’t see privacy as a priority: Survey first appeared on IT World Canada.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seized the website of the Hive ransomware gang after penetrating the group’s computer networks.

The agency said Thursday it penetrated the networks in July, 2022, leading to the capture of decryption keys. Since then it has quietly offered those keys to 300 victims. In addition, the FBI distributed over 1,000 additional decryption keys to previous Hive victims.

In co-ordination with German law enforcement (the German Federal Criminal Police and Reutlingen Police Headquarters-CID Esslingen) and the Netherlands National High Tech Crime Unit, yesterday it seized control of the Hive website.

In making the announcement, the FBI thanked a number of polices forces, including the RCMP and Peel Regional Police in Ontario.

Related content: Hive takes responsibility for Bell attack

“Last night the Justice Department dismantled an international ransomware network responsible for extorting and attempting to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement this morning.

“Cybercrime is a constantly evolving threat. But as I have said before, the Justice Department will spare no resource to identify and bring to justice anyone, anywhere, who targets the United States with a ransomware attack. We will continue to work both to prevent these attacks and to provide support to victims who have been targeted. And together with our international partners, we will continue to disrupt the criminal networks that deploy these attacks.”

Since June 2021, the Hive ransomware group has targeted more than 1,500 victims around the world and received over US$100 million in ransom payments.

Hive ransomware attacks have caused major disruptions in victims’ daily operations around the world and affected responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, said the FBI. In one case, a hospital attacked by Hive ransomware had to resort to analog methods to treat existing patients and was unable to accept new patients immediately following the attack.

According to a background paper on the group by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Hive’s affiliates often get initial access to victim networks by using single factor logins via Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), virtual private networks (VPNs), and other remote network connection protocols.

In some cases, Hive actors bypassed multifactor authentication and gained access to  Fortinet FortiOS servers by exploiting a known and unpatched vulnerability, CVE-2020-12812. This vulnerability enables a malicious cyber actor to log in without a prompt for the user’s second authentication factor (FortiToken) when the actor changes the case of the username.

Hive actors have also gained initial access to victim networks by distributing phishing emails with malicious attachments.

Separately, today Cyberint released a report on ransomware trends in 2022. Among the conclusions:

The U.S. is still the most targeted area of the world, with 1060 victims, a decline of almost 300 victims since last year, followed by the UK, Canada, and Germany.

While Q2 and Q3 saw major drops in ransomware activity (with 708 and 666 incidents, respectively, down from 763 in Q1), Q4 saw a slight rise to 672. Cyberint analysts describe the Q4 increase as indicative of the new and promising groups established in Q3 and Q4, such as Royal and BlackBasta, gaining ground.

LockBit 3.0’s rise to power and gaining notoriety without the use of Twitter for “PR” like other groups have increasingly done.

Talent for hire in the ransomware world is changing the game: Lockbit’s ‘Bug Bounty Program,’ which demonstrated the group’s arrogance and strength, offered rewards for anyone who found vulnerabilities in their servers.

The rise of Royal in the last months of 2022 saw them achieve a victim count rate already higher than LockBit’s, suggesting competition between the two can be expected in 2023.

The post Breaking news: FBI shuts down Hive ransomware gang’s IT infrastructure first appeared on IT World Canada.

Amazon workers in the UK stage first ever strike, Samsung wallet becomes available in eight new markets including Canada and Shutterstock rolls out generative AI toolkit, following partnership with OpenAI.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Thursday, January 26 and I am your host, Ashee Pamma.

Amazon workers staged their first-ever strike in the U.K. at the e-commerce giant’s warehouse in Coventry, England. Staff complained that they are unhappy with the below-inflation pay increase and difficult working conditions. The GMB Union, representing the workers, said around 300 staff walked out at Amazon’s Coventry warehouse, denouncing a measly 5 per cent pay rise to £10.50 an hour. Workers told the BBC that they are constantly monitored, even when they go to the toilet and upbraided for “idle time” lasting just a few minutes. Another worker said that robots are treated better than workers. A spokesperson for Amazon told the BBC that it has a system “that recognises great performance” and performance is only measured when an employee is at their station and logged in to do their job.

Source: CNBC and BBC

Samsung Electronics today announced Samsung Wallet will be available in eight new markets, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan starting at the end of January. Samsung Wallet is a secure, go-everywhere app on Galaxy phones to organize and use daily essentials. The company says it has gone above and beyond to better safeguard customer data by storing it in a secure environment to help protect it from malware and other potential threats.

Source: Samsung Newsroom

Shutterstock has rolled out a generative AI toolkit to create images based on text prompts, following its partnership with OpenAI. Shutterstock allowed OpenAI to use its libraries to train and feed the algorithm of its image generating platform, Dall-E 2. Now, customers of Shutterstock’s Creative Flow online design platform will be able to create images based on text prompts, powered by OpenAI and Dall-E 2. Interestingly, Shutterstock says the images are “ready for licensing” right after they’re made. According to TechCrunch, this means that  Shutterstock seeks to embrace the use of AI and is setting itself up in opposition to competitor Getty who is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against Stability AI, who allegedly used Getty’s  images to train its AI without the appropriate permission.

Source: TechCrunch

Intel has canceled plans to build its Oregon Research and Design Mega Lab, a 200,000-square-foot facility designed to test data center cooling innovations, Data Center Knowledge reported. The chipmaker said it is exploring the most cost-effective real-estate options as it looks to cut $3 billion in spending in 2023. Pulling back on the data center plans already wipes out from that number,  $700 million announced for the lab in 2022. Facebook also canceled data center builds in Europe but cited changes in AI as the reason. This data center cancelation indicates another roadblock in Intel’s quest to unseat competitor AMD’s dominance in the data center chip space.

Source: Data Center Knowledge

A new study demonstrates that scientists have created robots that can shapeshift between solid and liquid states, enabling them to perform feats such as jumping, climbing and even oozing out of cage, Vice reported.The shape and movements of the machines are controlled by magnetic fields, an approach that may lead to new biomedical and engineering technologies, such as targeted drug delivery, circuit assembly, or the creation of universal screws. The dynamic shapeshifting powers of the robots could also be adapted to serve many functions, especially in biomedicine, including delivering medications to specific organs, or extracting dangerous objects from the body. The ability to switch between solid and liquid states could also be useful in accessing any confined or hard-to-reach spaces.

Source: Vice

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Ashee Pamma.

The post Hashtag Trending Jan 26th-Amazon workers strike, Samsung wallet, Shutterstock embraces AI first appeared on IT World Canada.

How fans watch sports, and how coaches gauge the performance of individual players – and the team as a whole – is about to head in an entirely new direction following the launch yesterday of a research and development program called SportsX by MLSE Digital Labs and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Humza Teherany, chief technology and digital officer at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), described it as a “new incubator in collaboration with AWS, rooted in research, applied sciences and product development.”

The debut of SportsX follows an announcement from the two organizations, made last February, of the two innovating to “transform how some of Canada’s best-known sports franchises – Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto Football Club (FC), and Toronto Argonauts – create and deliver extraordinary sports moments and enhanced fan engagement.”

As part of the agreement, MLSE selected AWS as its official cloud provider, as well as its official provider of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and deep learning cloud services.

The company said it will use AWS’ portfolio of cloud capabilities, including ML, advanced analytics, compute, database, and storage services to “to support their teams and lines of business. Innovating together, MLSE will build solutions that will support how teams play on the ice, court, pitch, or field; how players stay healthy; how fans connect with each other and experience games; and how sports franchises operate internally.”

Eric Gales, country manager for AWS Canada, said that just as the company is “democratizing technology by giving businesses of all sizes” access to the same cloud and AI offerings, “MLSE and AWS will give anyone, from organizations to superfans, the opportunity to take their amazing idea and transform the sport they love.”

On Monday night at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, media were introduced to two pilots – Immersive Basketball Experience (IBX) and NHL Extended Reality Stats Overlay – both of which provided examples of the direction SportsX is heading in.

One took place in the Raptors’ practice facility and is based on augmented reality technology that combines “optical tracking body pose data, 3D models and a video game development engine to deliver the experience to any mixed reality headset.”

That experience means that, through the headsets, users can experience a basketball game from the perspective of fans who are sitting at courtside, coaches on the bench, or even the players themselves on the floor.

The other, demonstrated during the Maple Leafs’ tilt with the New York Islanders, provided a whole new way to watch a live hockey game via real time stats from NHL Edge, the league’s Puck and Player tracking technology which is currently deployed in all of the 32 NHL arenas and used in all NHL games. Through the use of AR glasses, SportsX created an overlay that allows fans to access data from NHL Edge, which, according to a fact sheet, “takes viewers deeper into the play on the ice.

“Infrared technology embedded in pucks and on players provides dozens of new insights for fans on things like puck possession, speed and distance travelled. The system has the ability to generate nearly one million 3D coordinates and data points over the course of a regulation game.

“The technology is demonstrated live using AWS Multi-Access Edge Compute (MEC) infrastructure. The tracking technology adds a new digital fan experience while pushing the boundaries of technology by giving fans access to information about the game in real-time.”

The program, a release states, is designed with a “bottom-up approach to capture, analyze, and build out the best ideas from key stakeholders, which include coaches, fans, partners, and employees. Chosen ideas will be evaluated for viability, developed, and tested in the MLSE environment with the goal of creating solutions that can benefit the sports industry at large.

“A dedicated SportsX web portal accompanies the launch, where interested stakeholders can join the collective and receive updates regarding idea submission openings.”

In an interview with IT World Canada, Teherany described this week’s announcements as the start of an “innovation partnership” in which not only MLSE and AWS will be involved, but potentially an entire fan base.

He said the SportsX web portal will allow anyone from sports fans to academics to submit recommendations on what they would like to see, and more importantly, how it can be achieved. “The next great idea,” said Teherany, “could come from anywhere.

“There’s really nothing like this in sport and I think over time we are going to discover some incredible tech enablers for sports and entertainment.

“Where do we think that NHL technology will go? And where do we think the NBA technology will go? We actually don’t know at this point, but to have a research and development mindset and to have the two entities together, working on it along with the rest of other smart people from academia, research and other places, there’s really nothing like this that exists in sports.”

Meanwhile, Christian Magsisi, vice president of technology and digital at MLSE, said there are three primary goals associated with the SportsX initiative, the first being to create experiences for fans that they have never had before.

“The second one obviously, is you want to create a competitive edge for teams, and with the help of AWS and the R&D program that SportsX has created, it will help us do that. And the third, and probably most important, is we want to create a positive social impact – environmental and social.”

The post SportsX: MLSE, AWS team up to launch unique R&D initiative first appeared on IT World Canada.

The Competition Bureau has said it will not be appealing the Federal Court’s decision after its motion to block the Rogers-Shaw merger was rejected yesterday.

“We are truly disappointed that the Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed our appeal of the Competition Tribunal’s decision in Rogers-Shaw,” said Matthew Boswell, commissioner of competition. “Although today’s developments are discouraging, we stand by the findings of our investigation and the decision to challenge the merger.”

The verdict was clear-cut and overwhelmingly backed the Competition Tribunal’s decision, which the bureau argued to be legally flawed.

Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor conveyed their satisfaction with the verdict in a joint statement. “We welcome this clear, unequivocal, and unanimous decision by the Federal Court of Appeal. We continue to work with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to secure the final approval needed to close the pro-competitive transactions and create a stronger fourth wireless carrier in Canada and a more formidable wireline competitor.”

The Federal Court’s decision and the bureau backing down means that the C$26 billion merger deal can now proceed to Minister François-Phillipe Champagne for his final approval.

However, independent internet service provider (ISP), TekSavvy is still hoping that the merger will go to the CRTC for more scrutiny before the Minister gives his verdict. The ISP said in a tweet yesterday that the court’s decision does not change the fact that “the Rogers-Shaw merger is based on an unlawful side deal with Videotron that will kill competition and raise consumer prices.” TekSavvy’s appeal to the CRTC to block the merger, announced last week, was introduced by the Bureau as additional evidence, which the Federal court rejected.

Today, the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, who previously issued a study suggesting that the merger should not proceed, is holding hearings to investigate competition concerns with the deal.

It is, however, unlikely that today’s hearings will affect Champagne’s decision, Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa said in a blog post.

“He’s [Champagne] likely to tout the conditions on the deal, promise Competition Act reform, and announce his approval late on a Thursday before a holiday week so there are no questions to answer in the House of Commons. But if this is the path he chooses, Canadians must recognize that it is a choice.”

There is ample evidence that the merger should not proceed, Geist said, including the bureau’s and TekSavvy’s applications, as well as “the undeniable frustration of Canadians over communications competition and pricing.”

“Minister Champagne and the government can choose to stand up for Canadian consumers and say this deal doesn’t go ahead on their watch. Or they can stand with big telecom companies and choose to make matters even worse. It’s Champagne’s choice,” Geist stated.

The post Rogers-Shaw merger: Competition Bureau gives up the fight, House of Commons begins its scrutiny first appeared on IT World Canada.

Early this morning customers worldwide, with the exception of those in China, lost access to Microsoft Azure, as well as to services such as Outlook, Exchange Online, and Teams. The company traced the issues to an update to its global wide area network (WAN), which it rolled back.

Microsoft’s Azure status history notes that the incident occurred between 07:05 UTC and 09:45 UTC (2:05 am – 4:45 am Eastern time), when, it says, “customers experienced issues with networking connectivity, manifesting as network latency and/or timeouts when attempting to connect to Azure resources in Public Azure regions, as well as other Microsoft services including M365 and PowerBI.”

It says that after final network equipment recovery occurred, most impacted services automatically recovered, and technicians then restored the remaining services.

The company has promised a preliminary post incident report in three days, which will discuss the initial root cause and repair items. It will follow up in 14 days with a final report in which, it says, it will “share a deep dive into the incident.”

The post Microsoft suffers global Azure outage first appeared on IT World Canada.

Data Privacy Week advice, terrible patching statistics and more

Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Wednesday, January 25th, 2023. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com and TechNewsday.com in the U.S.

This is Data Privacy Week. My stories with advice for businesses are posted on ITWorldCanada.com. For individuals wanting to improve their privacy online, here’s a few tips: Say as little about yourself on social media as possible. No one online needs to know your birthday, or that you bought a new house, new car or jewelry. When you register for an internet service or buy anything online, find out how much personal data is collected. Is it really necessary for the transaction? What will the website do with your personal data? When you get a mobile app for your smartphone, before installing pay attention to what it accesses. Does it need to access your contact list, the phone’s camera or microphone? When you go to some websites they offer ads. Can you opt out of the ads? You should be told when website data-collecting cookies are being used and given the choice of not allowing them. Finally, privacy is related to your cybersecurity practices. So create safe passwords. Use a different password on every site. Use a password manager to keep track of them. And keep the operating systems of your computers and smart phones up to date by installing the latest patches. Don’t forget to patch your home WiFi router. For more information go to StaySafeOnline.org and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Encrypted backups made by users of GoTo Central, GoTo Pro, Hamachi and RemotelyAnywhere were stolen by a hacker in an incident last November, GoTo has admitted. Worse, the hacker got an encryption key for some of the encrypted backups. The scrambled backups were stolen from a third-party cloud storage service used by GoTo. The affected information, which varies by product, may include account usernames, salted and hashed passwords, a portion of multifactor authentication settings, as well as some product settings and licensing information. In addition, while GoTo Rescue and GoToMyPC encrypted databases were not copied, multifactor settings of a small subset of their customers were. GoTo is resetting the passwords of affected users and reauthorize multifactor authentication settings where applicable.

Hackers love exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities. One reason is companies are slow to install fixes. How slow? According to Orange Cyberdefense, a division of the European cellular provider called Orange, only 20 per cent of its customers are installing security patches in 30 days or less after fixes are released. Even some critical vulnerabilities aren’t fixed until six months after a patch is issued. And some vulnerabilities aren’t discovered or patched at all. The report, given to The Hacker News, doesn’t explain why it can take so long for some holes to be dealt with.

Two vulnerabilities in Samsung’s Galaxy App Store have been discovered by researchers at NCC Group. One could have allowed a hacker to automatically install a malicious app on a device without the owner’s knowledge. This problem only affects devices running Android 12 or lower. The other problem could have allowed an app store user to go to an attacker-controlled domain. Samsung has released a new version of the Galaxy App Store. All Samsung mobile devices users should open the app store on their devices and, if prompted, download the latest version of the store.

Attention users of the Dashlane, Bitwarden and Safari browser password managers. Make sure you’re running the latest versions. Google says it has discovered a vulnerability allowing usernames and passwords to be automatically filled into untrusted web pages without the user having to enter their master password and launch the password manager.

Finally, users of the WordPress education plugin called LearnPress are being warned to update to the latest version. This comes after researchers at Patchstack discovered several critical vulnerabilities. This plugin allows WordPress customers to create and sell courses online. The fix was published in December but many users may not have heard.

Follow Cyber Security Today on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or add us to your Flash Briefing on your smart speaker.

The post Cyber Security Today, Jan. 25, 2023 – Data Privacy Week advice, terrible patching statistics and more first appeared on IT World Canada.

The US Department of Justice files an antitrust lawsuit against Google’s ad business, Microsoft looks to find out the number of unsupported Microsoft Office installed on Windows PCs and China leads in exports of face recognition technology.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Wednesday, January 25th. And I am your host, Ashee Pamma

The US Department of Justice has filed its second antitrust lawsuit against Google, in just over two years, this time seeking to break up its advertising business. Google’s advertising business has drawn critics, CNBC explained, because the platform operates on multiple sides of the market — buying, selling and an ad exchange. The company has long denied that it dominates the online advertising market, pointing to the market share of competitors including Meta’s Facebook.The states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia joined the DOJ in the latest lawsuit. The Department’s earlier lawsuit, filed in October 2020 under the Trump administration, accused Google of using its alleged monopoly power to cut off competition for internet search through exclusionary agreements. That case is expected to go to trial in September.

Source: CNBC News

  Microsoft intends to find out how many out-of-support copies of Office are installed on Windows PCs, by pushing a patch through Microsoft Update, the Register wrote. The update, quietly mentioned in a support post, is targeting Office 2007 and 2010 versions which have been out of service for several years. Office 2013 is also being asked after as it’s due to lose support this coming April. “This update will run one time silently without installing anything on the user’s device,” Microsoft said, followed by instructions on how to download and install the update, which Microsoft said has been scanned to ensure it’s not infected by malware. Microsoft’s Show or Hide Updates troubleshooter for Windows 10 and 11 can be used to disable undesired ones from being installed but the unforeseen consequences are unknown.

Source: The Register

According to a report by academics at Harvard and MIT, China is the world’s biggest face recognition dealer. The report finds that Chinese companies account for 201 face recognition export deals, followed by US firms with 128 deals. China also has a lead in AI generally, with 250 out of a total of 1,636 export deals involving some form of AI. The second biggest exporter was the US, with 215 AI deals. The report argues that these exports may enable other governments to perform more surveillance, potentially harming citizens’ human rights. In recent years US lawmakers and presidents have expressed concern that China is gaining an edge over the US in AI technology. The report seems to offer hard evidence that the shift has already occurred, Wired reported.  

Source: Wired

SpaceX Starlink has entered into a coordination agreement with the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to mitigate light pollution, emanating from its satellite network and interfering with ground-based astronomy observations. The agreement was enforced by the Biden FCC, which wouldn’t give approval for Starlink’s 30,000 satellite launches until such a deal was struck. As part of that agreement, Starlink said it would continue to work to dim its satellites to no brighter than the 7th magnitude, making them invisible to the naked eye and reducing, but not eliminating, their effect on sensitive astronomical instruments. The agreement is voluntary, since beyond the FCC requirement for such an agreement there is no law or policy requiring SpaceX or other satellite operators to mitigate the effects of their constellation on astronomy.

Source: Space News

According to LiveMint, nearly 80,000 Indian IT professionals on H-1B and L1 visas are now jobless and scrambling to find solutions to stay in the U.S., following mass layoffs at Google, Microsoft and Amazon last week. Workers on these non-immigrant visas now have to find a new job in the stipulated few months time allowed or change their visa status. Those on H-1B visas have to find a new job within 60 days or head back to India. Global Indian Technology Professionals Association (GITPRO) and Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS) launched a community-wide effort to try and help these IT professionals by connecting job seekers to job referrers. They also seek to influence policymakers and decision-makers of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Source: LiveMint

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Ashee Pamma.

The post Hashtag Trending January 25th- DOJ files lawsuit against Google, Microsoft checking for out-of-support of Office and China leads in face recognition export first appeared on IT World Canada.