Via LLRX – Scam Baiting: An Innovative Approach to Combating Online Fraud – The thesis of Kyra Strick‘s instructive paper promotes a proactive approach to a rapidly increasing online security crisis. Strick states that in the dynamic landscape of cybersecurity, scam baiting has emerged as a captivating and unconventional approach to combating online fraud. Scam baiting is… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
Toward a durable, dictator-proof Washington Post
Via LLRX – Toward a durable, dictator-proof Washington Post – David H. Rothman’s timely, outside the box commentary addresses the growing wave of news outlets abruptly closing down their websites, laying off staff, and in some cases, eliminating access to their respective archives. Rothman proposes an alternative to “how do I charge them enough” to… Continue Reading
Axel Springer vs. Google
Fortune: “Axel Springer is at Google’s throat again. The German news-publishing giant (for which I worked in my days at Politico) has a long history of battling Google over the issue of so-called ancillary copyright fees—payments for carrying snippets of text and thumbnail images in search results. But now it’s waging war on another front:… Continue Reading
The Best VPNs to Protect Yourself Online
Wired – “It won’t solve all of your privacy problems, but a virtual private network can make you a less tempting target for hackers. A virtual private network (VPN) is like a protective tunnel you can use to pass through a public network, protecting your data from outside eyes. Whether you’re worried about hiding your… Continue Reading
Amazon’s Big Secret
The Atlantic [unpaywalled] – “…Nearly 30 years after the company was founded, we still don’t really know where its profits come from. The answer will loom large in the antitrust case against it. Under SEC rules, public corporations must file quarterly reports disclosing revenue, expenses, profits, and other metrics. Initially, only company-wide data were required.… Continue Reading
How to stop your devices from listening to you
PopSci: “Our smartphones and smart speakers can listen for specific voice commands and take action accordingly, but maybe you don’t want your devices always having one digital ear open. Aside from privacy concerns, the smart assistants inside our gadgets can be triggered accidentally–by someone else in the house or even someone speaking on television. Turning… Continue Reading
Google Chrome’s new AI can finish your sentences for you
The Verge: “Google has started rolling out “Help me write” — an experimental Gemini-powered generative AI feature for its Chrome browser that aims to help users write or refine text based on webpage content. Following the stable release of Chrome M122 on Tuesday, the new writing assistant is now available to try out on Mac… Continue Reading
FTC Order Will Ban Avast from Selling Browsing Data for Advertising Purposes
“The Federal Trade Commission will require software provider Avast to pay $16.5 million and prohibit the company from selling or licensing any web browsing data for advertising purposes to settle charges that the company and its subsidiaries sold such information to third parties after promising that its products would protect consumers from online tracking. In… Continue Reading
How Google is killing independent sites like ours
And why you shouldn’t trust product recommendations from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google. “Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline. At HouseFresh,… Continue Reading
Is Google Getting Worse?
Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search Engines. Janek Bevendorff, Matti Wiegmann, Martin Potthast, and Benno Stein.”Many users of web search engines have been complaining in recent years about the supposedly decreasing quality of search results. This is often attributed to an increasing amount of search-engine-optimized but low-quality content. Evidence… Continue Reading
Does anyone even want an AI search engine?
Fast Company: “You’ve probably already noticed your search engines are starting to evolve. Google and Bing have already added both AI-generated results and conversational chatbots to their respective search engines. The Browser Company, a startup that made a big early splash thanks to its mission statement of building a better internet browser, has launched an… Continue Reading
Amazon hides cheaper items with faster delivery, lawsuit alleges
Ars Technica: “Amazon rigged its platform to “routinely” push an overwhelming majority of customers to pay more for items that could’ve been purchased at lower costs with equal or faster delivery times, a class-action lawsuit has alleged. The lawsuit claims that a biased algorithm drives Amazon’s “Buy Box,” which appears on an item’s page and… Continue Reading
