Search results for "digital privacy"

Faxes and email: Old technology slows COVID-19 response

By FRANK BAJAK AP Technology Writer On April 1, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emailed Nevada public health counterparts for lab reports on two travelers who had tested positive for the coronavirus. She asked Nevada to send those records via a secure network or a “password protected encrypted file” to […]

Google affiliate scraps plan for Toronto smart-city project

By ROB GILLIES Associated Press TORONTO (AP) — Google abandoned its smart-city development in Toronto on Thursday after more than two years of controversy over privacy concerns and amid economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic. A unit of Google’s parent company Alphabet had been proposing to turn a rundown part of Toronto’s waterfront into a […]

UK develops COVID-19 contact-tracing app to help ease lockdown

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, new applications have been developed all over the world, to help slow the course of coronavirus. The contact-tracing app is one way to achieve this goal. First trials are underway in several countries, including Britain. Council and healthcare workers in the Isle of Wight will be the first to try […]

Cyprus backs voluntary tracking app use to halt virus spread

By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS Associated Press NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The government of Cyprus is encouraging the voluntary use of a locally developed cellphone application designed to locate people who may have come into contact with someone carrying the coronavirus. The country’s Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy said Saturday that the COVTRACER app, […]

Tech companies step up fight against bad coronavirus info

By AMANDA SEITZ and BARBARA ORTUTAY The Associated Press CHICAGO (AP) — Potentially dangerous coronavirus misinformation has spread from continent to continent like the pandemic itself, forcing the world’s largest tech companies to take unprecedented action to protect public health. Facebook, Google and others have begun using algorithms, new rules and factual warnings to knock […]

Apple, Google to harness phones for virus infection tracking

By FRANK BAJAK and MATT O’BRIEN AP Technology Writers Apple and Google fueled hopes for digital technology’s promise against a fast-moving, invisible killer, announcing a joint effort to help public health agencies worldwide leverage smartphones to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. New software the companies plan to add to phones would make it easier to use […]

Surveillance applications – the new normal

It has been widely circulated lately, that governments in countries around the world have been using anonymized and aggregated phone tracking to help combat COVID-19. The next wave of technology is digital contact tracing. At the moment, these are optional applications that combine Bluetooth’s Relative Signal Strength Indicator, a duration timer and a masked identifier […]

ToTok introduces new feature, ToTok Pay

ToTok, an instant messaging, video call, and voice chat app, released ToTok Pay on March 17th for Android users. With this new feature, users can make payments through a QR code contactless system, as well as send money to their contacts through their ToTok chat, achieved through partnership with licensed financial institutions. The app has […]

How operators can overtake OTT with RCS messaging

OTT (Over the Top) Messaging apps such WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage and WeChat have driven the decline of the conventional SMS text services. Instant messaging supposedly overtook SMS in 2012 and since then, Global SMS revenues have fallen accordingly. Person to Person SMS revenues will have fallen by around 42% between 2017 and 2022. Operators […]

How to take back control of your data in 2020

Chief Operating Officer of Crown Sterling, Joseph Hopkins says “There’s hardly a week that goes by these days where we aren’t confronted about another data breach or critical data loss which impacts millions of people”. Such a statement has been made evident by the news reporting that agency, Equifax, will have to pay out $650 […]