Search Results for: "DATA"

Worried About Online Security? Go Online in Sierra Leone.

June 13, 2023 by noemi

How worried are you about your security when you go online? AVG, one of the most recognized names in anti-virus protection and Internet security in general, recently conducted a study on the state of online security in various countries. Involved in the study were 144 countries and 127 million systems. AVG collected data relating to virus and malware attacks on these computers and collated their findings.

The results?

African countries did very well in the survey – seven of the 10 safest countries hail from the continent. Sierra Leone tops this list with an average of one attack per 692 users who surf the Web. Next in line is Niger, with one attack per 442 users who surf the Web. Other countries in the top 10 are Togo and Japan. Here are the details for each continent (attack per number of users)

North America: 1 in 51
Europe: 1 in 72
Asia: 1 in 102
Africa: 1 in 108
South America: 1 in 164.

Basically, South America is the safest while North America is the most dangerous.

However, if the stats are broken down per country, the most dangerous countries are (first one being the most dangerous):

Turkey (1 in 10)
Russia (1 in 15)
Armenia (1 in 24)
Azerbaijan (1 in 39)
Bangaladesh ( 1 in 41)

Roger Thompson from AVG is quick to point out, however, that this data does not exactly pinpoint which regions are completely safe from virus and malware attacks due to their nature – they are not really hindered by geographic boundaries. He also notes that the results of the study may not be applicable in the near future as viruses and attacks do change over time.

One interesting thing that Thompson mentioned is how this data can be of use to travelers:

However, our research should also serve as a warning to all travelling abroad and using the internet. If you are travelling without your computer and use a public machine or borrow a friend or colleagues, ensure that when accessing web -based services like email, that you log out and close the browser when you have finished your session and that you don’t agree to store any passwords or log-in information on that machine.

If you are taking your laptop with you ensure you have backed up your data and removed any sensitive information from your machine.

If you don’t want the hassle of worrying about security, just take a vacation in Sierra Leone. 😉

Photo credit: highwaycharlie

Google’s History: The Timeline of The Search Engine

June 12, 2023 by franky

Our colleagues over at The Blog Herald once more sat down to research the data for another awesome infographic and analysed the history of Google this time. The result was Google History and Timeline. Here’s a preview for our Dailybits readers.

Is Your Geotag Function Disabled?

June 9, 2023 by noemi

Tech-savvy individuals would know all about geotags. Initially, the whole idea can make you overly excited. When you hear about what happened to Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame), though, you might think twice about enabling thing function.

Basically, geotagging allows data to be embedded in different media such as photos and videos. For example, when you use your iPhone to take a picture, the longitude and latitude can be included in the file. When uploaded to a web site, anyone who views the file can extract that data.

That’s what happened to Adam Savage, who posted a photo of his ride to work on Twitter. As a caption, he wrote “Now it’s off to work in my beast. Wait…How’d that DOG get in there?”

Nothing’s wrong with that, right? Think again. The photo included details on the exact location of his home (where it was taken). His caption also revealed the information that the house might be empty in the next several hours. You see where I am going with this?

You’d think that someone like Adam Savage would have known better than to do something like this, but he salvaged the situation quite well by saying that he was not at all concerned about the issue as he is not famous enough to be stalked. Now I am not so sure about that…Oh, and yeah, he moved to another house.

Anyhow, even if you are not a public figure like Adam Savage, you might want to disable that geotag function. After all, you know how ingenious unscrupulous individuals can get.

Photo from The New York Times

TechCrunch Claiming iPhone to Verizon in January – What if?

June 8, 2023 by Sinjin Sterling

There’s an interesting post up on TechCrunch that makes a pretty bold claim. From the site:

Smartphones like the iPhone are built from a collection of components, which are sourced individually from suppliers—e.g. the iPhone 4’s cellular baseband (the core chipset used in mobile phones to handle voice and data communications) comes from Infineon and its GPS chipset from Broadcom.

Component purchases and manufacturing starts don’t typically reveal strong links to individual handset OEMs. But in some cases components have a DNA which is traceable through the supply chain. For example, iPad rumors became much more concrete when we knew Apple was procuring large LCD screens.

The CIA and Google Team Up to Predict the Future

June 6, 2023 by noemi

Remember the movie Minority Report? Yeah, that was a pretty cool movie, but we all know that it’s “just” science fiction. There is no way that it can happen in real life, right?

Think again. It seems that the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States and Google are planning on creating something that will make the possibility of predicting events as reality. There’s this company called Recorded Future, and this is what they do (from their web site):

1. Scour the Web
We continually scan thousands of news publications, blogs, niche sources, trade publications, government web sites, financial databases and more.

2. Extract, rank, and organize
We extract information from text including entities, events, and the time that these events occur. We also measure momentum for each item in our index, as well as sentiment.

3. Make it accessible and useful
You can explore the past, present and predicted future of almost anything. Powerful visualization tools allow you to quickly see temporal patterns, or link networks of related information.

In short, the company monitors the information that can be found online – as much of it as they possibly can – using what they call a temporal analytics engine.

How is this different from what Google and other search engines do now? The key is in the linking of information. What the temporal analytics engine does is to find patterns and relationships amongst documents, web sites, files, etc. Related names, entities, and events will be connected via the engine, and people can analyze the data and connections to somehow piece that past together or even predict the future.

Naturally, the project – and the entities involved – has drawn various reactions. There are those that are quite excited about the possibilities, and there are those who are afraid of the potential dangers this kind of technology brings.

Personally, I think that the dangers are definitely there, but that we really can’t stop the CIA from engaging in this kind of activity. We do need control and transparency, and we can only hope that it will be so. You?