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    Facebook to list all WhatsApp security issues on a new dedicated website

    Facebook will launch today a new web page where the company plans to list all the vulnerabilities that have been identified and patched in the WhatsApp instant messaging service.
    The app maker regularly publishes WhatsApp release notes on the iOS and Google Play Store pages; however, these changelogs don’t go into detailed descriptions of the patched security bugs, most of which are described only as “security fixes.”
    Facebook says this is “due to the policies and practices of app stores,” but hopes the new page will effectively work as a security-focused changelog for interested users.
    Details that will be listed on Facebook’s new WhatsApp security advisories page will include a short description of the bug, and a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifier, where possible.
    CVE numbers are meant for security researchers who want to track bugs, possible exploitation attempts in the real-world, or for security firms that want to issue security alerts to their own customers.
    Facebook said that bugs listed on this page don’t necessarily mean they have been exploited in the wild. All the vulnerabilities listed on the site are bugs that have been recently patched, and the new page should stand as an example and warning to why users need to keep the WhatsApp app up-to-date at all times in order to prevent future attacks.
    In addition, the new WhatsApp security advisories page will also list bugs patched in libraries used by the app.
    If these bugs have a broader impact, outside of the WhatsApp app, then Facebook said it would also notify the developers of those libraries and mobile OS makers.
    “We are very committed to transparency and this resource is intended to help the broader technology community benefit from the latest advances in our security efforts,” Facebook said today.
    “We strongly encourage all users to ensure they keep their WhatsApp up-to-date from their respective app stores and update their mobile operating systems whenever updates are available.” More

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    Apple mocks people's carelessness and it's a hollow laugh

    So sad.
    Screenshot by ZDNet
    You’re so silly, you.

    Apple in the Enterprise: A Strategic Guide
    Once a pariah in the enterprise, Apple has quietly emerged as a darling of executives and professionals because of the ease of use of the iPhone and the iPad. We look at how the influx of Apple devices is changing the tech landscape in business.
    Read More

    You spend all day on your phones and laptops and you have no idea just how much of what you say and do via these things simply isn’t private.
    You just don’t care, do you? 
    It’s like walking up to strangers and shouting your credit card number. Or telling them your heart rate. Or revealing that you’re trying to divorce your ever-loving spouse.
    You have to laugh, don’t you?
    Well, Apple does. Its latest ad is a vertiable litany of humanity’s sins, as it blithely tosses privacy to the winds. In favor of immediacy, convenience and sheer laziness.
    Here we see people going through their everyday lives, exposing themselves on the subway, in a restaurant, on the street and even in a restroom.
    Exposing their private information, that is.
    Buy an iPhone and your life will be private, says the ad. Wait, or does it?
    [embedded content]
    Well, what’s interesting here is that there are no phones in the main part of the ad, so we have no idea whether at least some of these people might actually be iPhone users.
    Moreover, Apple’s promise at the end is carefully worded: “Some things shouldn’t be shared. iPhone helps keep it that way.”
    Helps is correct. Apple does try harder to preserve what’s left of human dignity.
    Yet, as a blisteringly depressing Washington Post article last year revealed, in one week with an iPhone thousands of trackers — mostly in apps — merrily sent on the user’s identifiable information to others.
    There’s little hope of actual privacy when the whole tech ecosystem is built on stalking.
    That’s what recently led a top LG executive to dump Chrome for Brave.
    The vast majority of people, however, can’t be bothered. If they think about tracking at all, they think it’s inevitable. If they think about privacy at all, they vaguely remember it used to exist.
    For Apple, of course, marketing privacy is a way of suggesting its brand is more purely attuned to humanity’s needs and feelings.
    The snag is, of course, that humans are very good at ruining themselves without any help at all. More

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    European ISPs report mysterious wave of DDoS attacks

    More than a dozen internet service providers (ISPs) across Europe have reported DDoS attacks that targeted their DNS infrastructure.
    The list of ISPs that suffered attacks over the past week includes Belgium’s EDP, France’s Bouygues Télécom, FDN, K-net, SFR, and the Netherlands’ Caiway, Delta, FreedomNet, Online.nl, Signet, and Tweak.nl.
    Attacks lasted no longer than a day and were all eventually mitigated, but ISP services were down while the DDoS was active.
    NBIP, a non-profit founded by Dutch ISPs to collectively fight DDoS attacks and government wiretapping attempts, provided ZDNet with additional insights into the past week’s incidents.
    “Multiple attacks were aimed towards routers and DNS infrastructure of Benelux based ISPs,” a spokesperson said. “Most of [the attacks] were DNS amplification and LDAP-type of attacks.”
    “Some of the attacks took longer than 4 hours and hit close to 300Gbit/s in volume,” NBIB said.
    The DDoS attacks against European ISPs all took place starting with August 28, a day after ZDNet exposed a criminal gang engaging in DDoS extortion against financial institutions across the world, with victims like MoneyGram, YesBank India, Worldpay, PayPal, Braintree, and Venmo.
    While ZDNet does not yet have any evidence that the two series of incidents are connected, the DDoS attacks against financial services subsided right as the attacks against European ISPs got underway.
    Furthermore, sources tracking the extortion group told ZDNet that just before attacking financial services, the same gang had also targeted several ISPs in Southeast Asia just weeks before.
    In addition, several security experts have also told ZDNet that the massive CenturyLink outage that took place over the weekend is believed to have been the result of an initial DDoS attack. In separate reports, both Cisco and CloudFlare said the outage was caused by a bad Flowspec rule, a typical tool usually deployed when mitigating DDoS attacks. More

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    New Python-scripted trojan malware targets fintech companies

    A well-resourced hacking operation has deployed newly-developed trojan malware in a campaign targeting financial tech organisations with the aim of stealing email addresses, passwords and other sensitive corporate information – and the malicious code is bundled inside code ripped from legitimate applications.
    Known as Evilnum, the advanced persistent threat (APT) group first emerged in 2018 and one of the reasons for their success is how often they’ve changed tools and tactics as they take aim at targets related to Fintech mostly located in Europe and the UK, although some victims are located in the Americas and Australia.
    Evilnum’s activity has been varied, with reports of it using different components written in Javascript and C#, and now it has deployed another new tool for attacks. This time, it’s a Python-scripted remote access trojan (RAT) which emerged in recent weeks alongside a new spate of targeted attacks.
    Uncovered by cybersecurity researchers at Cybereason who’ve dubbed it PyVil RAT, the trojan allows attackers to secretly steal corporate information through the use of keylogging and taking screenshots, as well as the ability to collect information about the infected system, including which version of Windows is running, what anti-virus products are installed and whether USB devices are connected.
    Previous Evilnum attacks have begun with highly targeted spear phishing emails and the PyVil delivery campaign is similar, although rather than delivering Zip archives like before, the compromise begins with emails containing an LNK file masquerading as a PDF.
    The phishing emails claim to contain identification documents associated with banking, including utility bills, credit card statements and even drivers license photos.
    SEE: A winning strategy for cybersecurity (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)  
    If opened, the file will start a sequence which ultimate sees the compromised machine connected to Evilnum’s command and control servers and the trojan malware dropped on the system – and able to to provide instructions and potential additional functionality to PyVil – all while staying hidden from the victim.
    One of the reasons the new trojan is able to do this is because the malicious code is obfuscated behind many different layers, including being bundled inside code from legitimate software which has somehow been plucked and wrapped around the malware.
    “This tactic works to their advantage in several ways, including avoiding detection and maintaining persistence – the abuse of legitimate code is more common with more sophisticated actors,” Tom Fakterman, threat researcher at Cybereason told ZDNet.
    While it remains unclear who the cyber criminals behind Evilnum ultimately are, the highly targeted nature of the attacks combined with the way in which they’re constantly changing their tactics leads researchers to believe that it’s a highly professional, well-resourced campaign.
    Evilnum is thought to remain active and it’s likely only a matter of time before the group changes it’s tools and techniques for targeting organisations in the Fintech space once more.
    “We still see samples of the malware pop up and we see that the threat actors infrastructure is still active. The best way of protection is education, improving security hygiene and teaching employees not to be duped into opening phishing emails and not downloading information from dubious websites,” Fakterman said.
    READ MORE ON CYBERSECURITY More

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    MIT SCRAM: a new analysis platform for prioritizing enterprise security investments

    MIT has debuted a new platform designed to help the enterprise decide how to invest in cybersecurity. 

    On Thursday, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) launched the Secure Cyber Risk Aggregation and Measurement (SCRAM) cryptographic platform (.PDF), which aggregates data to show the weakest spots in security — and those leading to the worst financial losses. 
    According to the researchers, at a time when many organizations are restructuring and cutting costs due to the disruption caused by COVID-19, a technological solution that is able to quantify an organization’s security posture and recommend what areas to prioritize is valuable. 
    See also: Lazarus group strikes cryptocurrency firm through LinkedIn job adverts
    SCRAM, developed by Taylor Reynolds, technology policy director at MIT’s Internet Policy Research Initiative (IPRI), economist Professor Andrew Lo and cryptographer Vinod Vaikuntanathan, does not require users to reveal sensitive corporate data, but instead, builds its recommendations based on existing security incidents without accessing the finer points of each event. 
    The team says that the platform has three goals: to quantify how secure an organization is, how their security compares to rival companies, and to evaluate whether or not cybersecurity is being given the right budget — and if not, what priorities should be changed.  
    CNET: Best Android VPNs for 2020
    During tests, internal data was received by seven enterprise companies averaging 50,000 employees with annual revenue of $24 billion. SCRAM then aggregated data from 50 security incidents at the participating companies using Center for Internet Security Sub-Controls, allowing researchers to analyze the attack vectors and what steps could have potentially prevented each one. 
    By using multi-party computation (MPC), the team was able to perform calculations in tandem with the CIS controls, without reading or unlocking the confidential information they were sent. Once analyzed, the participating companies received individual cryptographic keys to unlock each report privately. 
    TechRepublic: North Korean hackers are actively robbing banks around the world, US government warns
    “The power of this platform is that it allows firms to contribute locked data that would otherwise be too sensitive or risky to share with a third party,” Reynolds says.
    The MIT CSAIL team found that the most expensive financial losses, exceeding $1 million, were caused by failures to prevent malware infections; unauthorized communication over ports, and failure to log and manage security incident records.

    In the future, the researchers hope that more companies will participate; in particular, from the electricity, financial, and biotech industries. If 70 to 80 companies representing these areas join up, MIT believes it will be able to “put an actual dollar figure on the risk of particular defenses failing.”

    Previous and related coverage
    Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More

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    Vulcan Cyber study finds serious problems with vulnerability management

    The majority of IT departments are underestimating the maturity of their vulnerability remediation programs by a wide margin, according to a study from Vulcan Cyber. 
    The company said it was surprised that most organizations think that they are much further along in their work in patching known vulnerabilities yet they have barely begun the work required.
    “What caught us off guard was that the vast majority of respondents felt their programs were already mature,” said Yaniv Bar-Dayan, co-founder and CEO of Vulcan. “Given the amount of breaches caused by known, unpatched vulnerabilities, we discovered a surprising disconnect that merits a closer look.”

    Most organizations are only at Stage 1 in Vulcan Cyber’s maturity model
    Vulcan Cyber
    The study asked 100 computer security and IT executives about how they manage vulnerability remediation. It found that 84% reported having “mature” remediation programs. But on further questioning they were found to have only completed very basic tasks and were many stages away from a “mature” program. 
    Most had completed these basic activities: vulnerability scanning (72%); use of remediation tools (49%); and prioritization of vulnerabilities (44%).
    But these tasks were less mature: collaborative remediation (48%); automated remediation (48%); and business alignment around cyber objectives (31%).
    Vulnerability remediation can be a problem because there is often no one directly responsible for the program. For example, security teams will identify vulnerabilities and then turn it over to IT teams to complete the patch. Or, they share the work without anyone being clearly responsible for its completion. The work is further slowed by extensive testing that’s required to make sure the remediation doesn’t break any critical IT processes.
    The study reflected this organizational problem with 89% of respondents saying that their security and IT teams spend considerable time working together with cross-functional teams; and for nearly half of them (42%) reporting that it is “a lot”  of time; with 7% complaining that it is “too much” time.
    Judging by the lack of progress in vulnerability remediation programs, the meetings and the lack of a clear process seem to be getting in the way of the work.
    “Vulnerability scanning and prioritization are essential functions, but they are the bare minimum — not what constitutes a mature program,” Bar-Dayan said. ” In our experience, program bottlenecks are further along in the remediation lifecycle, stemming from inefficient cross-team collaboration. Changing the status quo requires organizations to update and automate their remediation processes. It’s a heavy undertaking.”
    Vulcan says that the reward for reorganizing how remediation is handled will be far stronger computer security for the enterprise. Most data breaches use known vulnerabilities that haven’t been patched. 
    The Vulcan SaaS platform identifies and prioritizes vulnerability remediation. Additional results from the study can be found here: Vulcan Cyber whitepaper and infographic More

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    What is the quantum internet? Everything you need to know about the weird future of quantum networks

    It might all sound like a sci-fi concept, but building quantum networks is a key ambition for many countries around the world. Recently the US Department of Defense (DoE) published the first blueprint of its kind, laying out a step-by-step strategy to make the quantum internet dream come true, at least in a very preliminary form, over the next few years. 
    The US joined the EU and China in showing a keen interest in the concept of quantum communications. But what is the quantum internet exactly, how does it work, and what are the wonders that it can accomplish?

    WHAT IS THE QUANTUM INTERNET?
    The quantum internet is a network that will let quantum devices exchange some information within an environment that harnesses the weird laws of quantum mechanics. In theory, this would lend the quantum internet unprecedented capabilities that are impossible to carry out with today’s web applications.
    SEE: Managing AI and ML in the enterprise 2020: Tech leaders increase project development and implementation (TechRepublic Premium)
    In the quantum world, data can be encoded in the state of qubits, which can be created in quantum devices like a quantum computer or a quantum processor. And the quantum internet, in simple terms, will involve sending qubits across a network of multiple quantum devices that are physically separated. Crucially, all of this would happen thanks to the whacky properties that are unique to quantum states. 
    That might sound similar to the standard internet. But sending qubits around through a quantum channel, rather than a classical one, effectively means leveraging the behavior of particles when taken at their smallest scale – so-called “quantum states”, which have caused delight and dismay among scientists for decades. 
    And the laws of quantum physics, which underpin the way information will be transmitted in the quantum internet, are nothing short of unfamiliar. In fact, they are strange, counter-intuitive, and at times even seemingly supernatural. 
    And so to understand how the quantum ecosystem of the internet 2.0 works, you might want to forget everything you know about classical computing. Because not much of the quantum internet will remind you of your favorite web browser.
    WHAT TYPE OF INFORMATION CAN WE EXCHANGE WITH QUANTUM?
    In short, not much that most users are accustomed to. At least for the next few decades, therefore, you shouldn’t expect to one day be able to jump onto quantum Zoom meetings.
    Central to quantum communication is the fact that qubits, which harness the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics, behave very differently to classical bits. 
    As it encodes data, a classical bit can effectively only be one of two states. Just like a light switch has to be either on or off, and just like a cat has to be either dead or alive, so does a bit have to be either 0 or 1.
    Not so much with qubits. Instead, qubits are superposed: they can be 0 and 1 simultaneously, in a special quantum state that doesn’t exist in the classical world. It’s a little bit as if you could be both on the left-hand side and the right-hand side of your sofa, in the same moment. 
    The paradox is that the mere act of measuring a qubit means that it is assigned a state. A measured qubit automatically falls from its dual state, and is relegated to 0 or 1, just like a classical bit. 
    The whole phenomenon is called superposition, and lies at the core of quantum mechanics. 
    Unsurprisingly, qubits cannot be used to send the kind of data we are familiar with, like emails and WhatsApp messages. But the strange behavior of qubits is opening up huge opportunities in other, more niche applications.
    QUANTUM (SAFER) COMMUNICATIONS
    One of the most exciting avenues that researchers, armed with qubits, are exploring, is security. 
    When it comes to classical communications, most data is secured by distributing a shared key to the sender and receiver, and then using this common key to encrypt the message. The receiver can then use their key to decode the data at their end.
    The security of most classical communication today is based on an algorithm for creating keys that is difficult for hackers to break, but not impossible. That’s why researchers are looking at making this communication process “quantum”. The concept is at the core of an emerging field of cybersecurity called quantum key distribution (QKD).
    QKD works by having one of the two parties encrypt a piece of classical data by encoding the cryptography key onto qubits. The sender then transmits those qubits to the other person, who measures the qubits in order to obtain the key values. 
    SEE: The UK is building its first commercial quantum computer
    Measuring causes the state of the qubit to collapse; but it is the value that is read out during the measurement process that is important. The qubit, in a way, is only there to transport the key value.
    More importantly, QKD means that it is easy to find out whether a third party has eavesdropped on the qubits during the transmission, since the intruder would have caused the key to collapse simply by looking at it.
    If a hacker looked at the qubits at any point while they were being sent, this would automatically change the state of the qubits. A spy would inevitably leave behind a sign of eavesdropping – which is why cryptographers maintain that QKD is “provably” secure.
    SO, WHY A QUANTUM INTERNET?
    QKD technology is in its very early stages. The “usual” way to create QKD at the moment consists of sending qubits in a one-directional way to the receiver, through optic-fibre cables; but those significantly limit the effectiveness of the protocol. 
    Qubits can easily get lost or scattered in a fibre-optic cable, which means that quantum signals are very much error-prone, and struggle to travel long distances. Current experiments, in fact, are limited to a range of hundreds of kilometers. 
    There is another solution, and it is the one that underpins the quantum internet: to leverage another property of quantum, called entanglement, to communicate between two devices.
    When two qubits interact and become entangled, they share particular properties that depend on each other. While the qubits are in an entangled state, any change to one particle in the pair will result in changes to the other, even if they are physically separated. The state of the first qubit, therefore, can be “read” by looking at the behavior of its entangled counterpart. That’s right: even Albert Einstein called the whole thing “spooky action at a distance”.
    And in the context of quantum communication, entanglement could in effect, teleport some information from one qubit to its entangled other half, without the need for a physical channel bridging the two during the transmission.
    HOW DOES ENTANGLEMENT WORK?
    The very concept of teleportation entails, by definition, the lack of a physical network bridging between communicating devices. But it remains that entanglement needs to be created in the first place, and then maintained. 
    To carry out QKD using entanglement, it is necessary to build the appropriate infrastructure to first create pairs of entangled qubits, and then distribute them between a sender and a receiver. This creates the “teleportation” channel over which cryptography keys can be exchanged.
    Specifically, once the entangled qubits have been generated, you have to send one half of the pair to the receiver of the key. An entangled qubit can travel through networks of optical fibre, for example; but those are unable to maintain entanglement after about 60 miles. 
    Qubits can also be kept entangled over large distances via satellite, but covering the planet with outer-space quantum devices is expensive. 
    There are still huge engineering challenges, therefore, to building large-scale “teleportation networks” that could effectively link up qubits across the world. Once the entanglement network is in place, the magic can start: linked qubits won’t need to run through any form of physical infrastructure anymore to deliver their message. 
    During transmission, therefore, the quantum key would virtually be invisible to third parties, impossible to intercept, and reliably “teleported” from one endpoint to the next. The idea will resonate well with industries that deal with sensitive data, such as banking, health services or aircraft communications. And it is likely that governments sitting on top secret information will also be early adopters of the technology.
    WHAT ELSE COULD WE DO WITH THE QUANTUM INTERNET?
    ‘Why bother with entanglement?’ you may ask. After all, researchers could simply find ways to improve the “usual” form of QKD. Quantum repeaters, for example, could go a long way in increasing communication distance in fibre-optic cables, without having to go so far as to entangle qubits.
    That is without accounting for the immense potential that entanglement could have for other applications. QKD is the most frequently discussed example of what the quantum internet could achieve, because it is the most accessible application of the technology. But security is far from being the only field that is causing excitement among researchers. 
    The entanglement network used for QKD could also be used, for example, to provide a reliable way to build up quantum clusters made of entangled qubits located in different quantum devices.
    Researchers won’t need a particularly powerful piece of quantum hardware to connect to the quantum internet – in fact, even a single-qubit processor could do the job. But by linking together quantum devices that, as they stand, have limited capabilities, scientists expect that they could create a quantum supercomputer to surpass them all.
    SEE: Guide to Becoming a Digital Transformation Champion (TechRepublic Premium)
    By connecting many smaller quantum devices together, therefore, the quantum internet could start solving the problems that are currently impossible to achieve in a single quantum computer. This includes expediting the exchange of vast amounts of data, and carrying out large-scale sensing experiments in astronomy, materials discovery and life sciences.
    For this reason, scientists are convinced that we could reap the benefits of the quantum internet before tech giants such as Google and IBM even achieve quantum supremacy – the moment when a single quantum computer will solve a problem that is intractable for a classical computer.
    Google and IBM’s most advanced quantum computers currently sit around 50 qubits, which, on its own, is much less than is needed to carry out the phenomenal calculations needed to solve the problems that quantum research hopes to address. 
    On the other hand, linking such devices together via quantum entanglement could result in clusters worth several thousands of qubits. For many scientists, creating such computing strength is in fact the ultimate goal of the quantum internet project.
    WHAT COULDN’T WE DO WITH THE QUANTUM INTERNET?
    For the foreseeable future, the quantum internet could not be used to exchange data in the way that we currently do on our laptops.
    Imagining a generalized, mainstream quantum internet would require anticipating a few decades (or more) of technological advancements. As much as scientists dream of the future of the quantum internet, therefore, it is impossible to draw parallels between the project as it currently stands, and the way we browse the web every day.
    A lot of quantum communication research today is dedicated to finding out how to best encode, compress and transmit information thanks to quantum states. Quantum states, of course, are known for their extraordinary densities, and scientists are confident that one node could teleport a great deal of data.
    But the type of information that scientists are looking at sending over the quantum internet has little to do with opening up an inbox and scrolling through emails. And in fact, replacing the classical internet is not what the technology has set out to do. 
    Rather, researchers are hoping that the quantum internet will sit next to the classical internet, and would be used for more specialized applications. The quantum internet will perform tasks that can be done faster on a quantum computer than on classical computers, or which are too difficult to perform even on the best supercomputers that exist today.
    SO, WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?
    Scientists already know how to create entanglement between qubits, and they have even been successfully leveraging entanglement for QKD. 
    China, a long-time investor in quantum networks, has broken records on satellite-induced entanglement. Chinese scientists recently established entanglement and achieved QKD over a record-breaking 745 miles.
    The next stage, however, is scaling up the infrastructure. All experiments so far have only connected two end-points. Now that point-to-point communication has been achieved, scientists are working on creating a network in which multiple senders and multiple receivers could exchange over the quantum internet on a global scale.
    The idea, essentially, is to find the best ways to churn out lots of entangled qubits on demand, over long distances, and between many different points at the same time. This is much easier said than done: for example, maintaining the entanglement between a device in China and one in the US would probably require an intermediate node, on top of new routing protocols. 
    And countries are opting for different technologies when it comes to establishing entanglement in the first place. While China is picking satellite technology, optical fibre is the method favored by the US DoE, which is now trying to create a network of quantum repeaters that can augment the distance that separates entangled qubits. 
    In the US, particles have remained entangled through optical fibre over a 52-mile “quantum loop” in the suburbs of Chicago, without the need for quantum repeaters. The network will soon be connected to one of the DoE’s laboratories to establish an 80-mile quantum testbed. 
    In the EU, the Quantum Internet Alliance was formed in 2018 to develop a strategy for a quantum internet, and demonstrated entanglement over 31 miles last year.
    For quantum researchers, the goal is to scale the networks up to a national level first, and one day even internationally. The vast majority of scientists agree that this is unlikely to happen before a couple of decades. The quantum internet is without doubt a very long-term project, with many technical obstacles still standing in the way. But the unexpected outcomes that the technology will inevitably bring about on the way will make for an invaluable scientific journey, complete with a plethora of outlandish quantum applications that, for now, cannot even be predicted.

    Innovation More

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    An LG executive dumped Google's Chrome for a surprising reason

    Chrome doesn’t exactly have a velvet touch, when it comes to privacy.
    Are browsers an emotional issue for everyone?

    More on privacy

    Or just for those who’ve had Microsoft’s Edge descend upon them like a guillotine from the sky?
    Many people seem to just accept a certain browser and live with it for far longer than they really should.
    But then there’s LG’s global corporate communications chief Ken Hong. I happened upon his strong feelings as I was browsing Twitter, desperate for a feeling of hope.
    Hong was responding to a tweet emitted by gadget reviewer Ben Sin.
    Sin mused: “Seriously is wild how I googled a foldable bike once or twice a couple weeks ago and I’ve been getting bike ads on Facebook, IG, everywhere. the level to which these companies all team up and know everything about us is wild.”
    This is something that’s become wildly normal in digital life. Brands follow you around in the belief that they can pester you into submission. Because that’s how marketing works, right?

    I had a similar eye-opening incident like that happen 2 years ago which led to me deleting my FB account and dumping Chrome for Brave. https://t.co/hsNJjAPYou
    — Ken Hong (@visitken) September 1, 2020

    Hong, though, made a dramatic declaration. He replied to Sin: “I had a similar eye-opening incident like that happen 2 years ago which led to me deleting my [Facebook] account and dumping Chrome for Brave.”
    It was only in 2018 that Hong noticed how these companies make dramatic incursions into our personal lives?
    Still, there’s something truly uplifting about a senior figure in technology saying “enough is enough.” There’s something heartbreakingly hopeful when one considers that Chrome is the default browser on, oh, most LG products.
    Yet Hong, I suspect, is still very much in the minority. Chrome enjoys an almost 50 percent market share, despite having become increasingly memory-sucking and slow.
    Perhaps many people just fall into a browser habit and put up with the stalking. They believe it’s everywhere. Some, I fear, are even flattered by it.
    See also: Pick privacy-friendly alternatives to every Google service | Brave deemed most private browser in terms of ‘phoning home’ | Startpage private search engine now an option for Vivaldi browser | Brave to generate random browser fingerprints to preserve user privacy
    Sin himself explained he was at peace with tech companies following him around.
    He said: “For the record I don’t even mind too much. I think consumers complain way too damn much about stuff they don’t pay for. Like the way I see it, you wanna be on always connected in this day and age you gotta accept tech brands know all our info.”
    Ah, it’s all about the money. If you don’t pay for it, don’t whine. Even if you actually pay for it by giving your whole life away.
    Sin added: “Either live like a disconnected hermit life, or accept there ain’t no such thing as privacy in 2020. Google knows more about us than our partners and mom.”
    What a choice the tech industry has given us. Either live like a hermit or let us creep into your every pore.
    They call this progress? More