Summer’s back! Quick, everyone outside… But not before you load our latest edition of Tech News up on your preferred device. This week we talk Amazon, pro-Kremlin trolls, a Banksy hack, tattleware and a huge GDPR fine...
As part of a global recruitment drive, Amazon is planning to hire 55,000 staff in corporate and technology jobs. This is in no small part due to the COVID-19 pandemic fueling a boom in online retail, digital advertising and cloud computing.
Andy Jassy, the Amazon CEO who took the reigns from Jeff Bezos in July, said the company wants to drive rapid growth - hence the hiring across multiple worldwide locations.
The majority of the positions will be in the US, where 40,000 of those new roles will be located. The UK will see 2,500 created and the remaining roles will be spread across India, Germany and Japan.
Amazon said it would hire the new UK staff for its offices in London and Manchester, as well as its “tech hubs” in Cambridge and Edinburgh.
Comments on news sites coming from Pro-Kremlin trolls according to research
The reader comments on sites such as The Times, the Daily Mail and Fox News have been infiltrated by Pr-Kremlin trolls as part of a 'major influence operation' a new body of research has claimed.
A unit at Cardiff University that specialises in exposing disinformation conducted the analysis - but were unable to say definitively who was behind the posts based on evidence, but it said the actions were "indicative of a Russian state operation".
"This report highlights the threat to our democracy of Russian state-backed misinformation on the internet. The UK is working closely with international allies to stand up to the Kremlin trolls peddling lies." said Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.
The team behind artist Banksy, was warned his website had a security flaw a week before a hacker scammed a fan out of $336,000 (£242,000).
On Tuesday, the website unveiled its first NFT (non-fungible token) of Banksy's work. A British collector won the auction to buy it, before realising it was a fake.
A warning from a cyber security expert stating that the website could be hacked, was ignored.
Think you’ve got it bad? Spare a thought for David*, whose team were introduced to a digital surveillance platform called Sneek.
Sneek would capture a live photo of David and his workmates via their company laptop webcams. The (slightly creepy) headshots would then be displayed digitally, and clicking on a face would launch that person into a video call. Lucky enough to catch something incriminating? You could then send it to the rest of the workforce via Slack integration.
"We know lots of people will find it an invasion of privacy, we 100% get that, and it’s not the solution for those folks,” says Sneeks founder. “But there’s also lots of teams out there who are good friends and want to stay connected when they’re working together.”
A €225m (£193m) has been handed to WhatsApp by Ireland's data watchdog for breaching privacy regulations
It is the largest fine ever from the Irish Data Protection Commission, and the second-highest under EU GDPR rules.
The fine relates to a 2018 investigation, about whether WhatsApp had been transparent enough about how it handles information. One issue cited was whether WhatsApp supplied enough information to users about how their data was processed and if its privacy policies were clear enough.
WhatsApp said it disagrees with the decision, and the severity of the fine, and plans to appeal.
