by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Reports, Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology, World
Washington : Despite assuring users to “remain confident that Google will keep privacy and security paramount”, the search giant is still reportedly allowing third-party app developers scan through Gmail accounts, the Wall Street Journal has claimed.
Google “continues to let hundreds of outside software developers scan the inboxes of millions of Gmail users who signed up for email-based services offering shopping price comparisons, automated travel-itinerary planners or other tools,” the report said late Monday.
Google was yet to comment on the report.
Gmail has nearly 1.4 billion users globally — more users than the next 25 largest email providers combined.
“Google does little to police those developers, who train their computers– and, in some cases, employees — to read their users’ emails,” the report further stated.
According to Google, it provides data only to outside developers it has vetted and to whom users have explicitly granted permission to access email.
According to the report, Google’s own employees read emails only “in very specific cases where you ask us to and give consent, or where we need to for security purposes, such as investigating a bug or abuse”.
“Email data collectors use software to scan millions of messages a day, looking for clues about consumers that they can sell to marketers, hedge funds and other businesses,” the report added, saying data miners generally have access to other email services besides Gmail.
In 2017, Google said its computers will soon stop reading the emails of its Gmail users to personalise their ads.
The Internet giant recently rolled out new features for Android users to make it easier for them to navigate their Gmail accounts and review security and privacy options.
As part of the new updates, Google introduced a new search functionality that enables users to find settings and other info they might be looking for in their account, like how to change the password.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : New features on Google Calendar like “out of office” and customisable “working hours” would let users indicate their work-time availability to others and improve digital presence, the company said on Thursday.
Google Calendar will now be able to automatically decline meetings that would occur during “out of office” period. Users will also have the chioce to customise the “decline message.”
“When creating an event on the web, simply select the ‘out of office’ entry type. The ‘out of office’ object will have a different look on the Calendar grid, signalling to others that you’re unavailable,” the G suite team wrote in a blog post late on Wednesday.
Additionally, with “working hours”, users would be able to “protect their personal time from their work time”.
Users could set their working hours to one interval for all week days, or for each day, separately.
The new features will be available to users of all G suite editions within two weeks.
“Based on your timezone and past scheduling patterns, Google Calendar can now infer your working hours. You may see a prompt asking you to set them, and you can further customise them as needed,” the post added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Technology
San Francisco : Google has reportedly killed the ability of direct Uber ride booking from inside Google Maps without giving any reason.
The feature allowing users to book Uber rides through Google Maps was added in January last year, with which users could enter a location, identify their route, check Uber prices and request a ride without leaving the Maps app.
On one Google Maps Help page, Google simply says “you can no longer book Uber rides directly in Google Maps”, Android Police reported late on Monday.
Uber integration was pulled from Google Maps on iOS earlier then on Android, according to the report.
The ability to book an Uber through Maps allowed users to avoid the official Uber app, which has previously been criticised for its aggressive location tracking.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Withing hours of the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect on Friday, technology giants Google and Facebook have been hit with privacy complaints that could carry fines of up to $9.3 billion in total, a media report said.
With regard to privacy, Google, Facebook and Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram are forcing people to adopt a “take it or leave it” approach which essentially amounts to demanding that users submit to intrusive terms of service, according to the the Austrian privacy-advocacy group Noyb.eu, CNET reported on Friday.
“Tonnes of ‘consent boxes’ popped up online or in applications, often combined with a threat, that the service can no longer be used if user (s) do not consent,” the group was quoted as saying in a statement.
The group is asking regulators in France, Belgium, Germany and Austria to fine the companies up to the maximum four per cent of their annual revenue that the GDPR legislation allows.
This could potentially add up to a $4.88 billion fine for Google parent company Alphabet and $1.63 billion for each of Facebook, and its Instagram and WhatsApp services, if European regulators agree with Noyb.eu and decide to fine the companies the full amount, the CNET report said.
GDPR, designed to designed to give individuals in the European Union (EU) more rights to control their personal information, came into effect on Friday.
Seen as a measure to by European leaders to control the powers of technology companies, GDPR violations can cost companies either 20 million Euros or four per cent of annual turnover.
As a result of the regulation, several US news outlets blocked Europeans on Friday, the report said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : After Facebook and Google, Microsoft has now banned advertisements showing cryptocurrencies and related products from its Bing search engine.
“Because cryptocurrency and related products are not regulated, we have found them to present a possible elevated risk to our users with the potential for bad actors to participate in predatory behaviours, or otherwise scam consumers,” Melissa Alsoszatai-Petheo, Advertiser policy manager at Microsoft, said in a blog post on Wednesday.
“To help protect our users from this risk, we have made the decision to disallow advertising for cryptocurrency, its related products, and un-regulated binary options,” she added.
Bing Ads will implement this change globally in June, with enforcement rolling out in late June to early July.
Google in March announced that it would ban advertisements for cryptocurrencies and other “speculative financial products” across its ad platforms.
The ban on such advertisements would come into force from June.
In January, social media giant Facebook banned all ads promoting cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and ICOs.
According to media reports, Twitter was also likely to ban cryptocurrency, token sales and Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) advertisements on its platform.
—IANS
