Meta is fined US$1.3 billion, the largest ever for violating GDPR privacy rules, Microsoft sounds the alarm on email fraud and China’s AI answer to ChatGPT likened to Winnie the Pooh Why is it banned from talking about?
These top tech news stories and more for Tuesday, May 23, 2023 I’m your host Jim Love, CIO of IT World Canada and Tech News Day in the US.
European regulators have fined Meta US$1.3 billion for allowing the transfer of European user data to the US – the largest fine in the history of the GDPR for a privacy breach.
The European Data Protection Board has ordered Meta to bring its data transfers into compliance with the GDPR and to delete any “unlawfully stored and processed data within six months”.
The order apparently applies to Facebook user data and not Instagram and WhatsApp, which were not subject to the order.
Andrea Jellinek, chairman of the Data Protection Board, claimed that the Meta breach had been “systematic, repetitive and continuous”. he further said that ,Facebook has millions of users in Europe, so the amount of personal data transferred is enormous. The unprecedented fines are a strong signal to organizations that serious breaches have far-reaching consequences.
Meta is appealing the ruling, calling it “unfair and unnecessary”.
Sources include: hacker news
Last week, Apple announced a new ChatGPT app for iPhone. And according to the Wall Street Journal, an internal memo declared that Apple employees were not allowed to use ChatGPT for their work.
Apple also banned Copilot’s use of GitHub. GitHub is owned by Microsoft.
Apple isn’t the only company to ban ChatGPT and other generative AI models for use, concerned that data could be leaked from their organizations.
There is some basis for their concerns. In March, a bug in ChatGPT temporarily allowed users to view other users’ chat history.
After that issue, ChatGPT added an option to let users turn off their chat history and not contribute to the training of AI models with their interactions.
But in an abundance of caution, fearing another bug or critical data being leaked in some other way, Apple has joined a list of other big companies that have banned access, including Samsung, Verizon, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon. given or restricted – Although Amazon has its own proprietary AI toolset.
Apple, alas, does not.
While Siri appears to be conversational, the “back end” is actually a database of expected questions and answers, much less the generative AI models of its competitors. In fact, Apple employees are reported to have expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the inadequacies arising from Siri’s current structure.
Tim Cook has praised the potential of AI, but also said that “there are issues that need to be resolved.” Still, Apple’s AI tool is rumored to be working on CodenaMade Bobcat that will bring generative AI to Siri. According to 9 to 5 Mac, Apple is experimenting with this new feature when Siri tells jokes. It’s unclear when the company plans to expand the AI functionality.
Meanwhile, Apple’s AI will be a joke. Ouch! He was tough.
Sources include: 9 to 5 Mac
And HP, which took some heat last month when it appeared to block the use of cheap non-HP ink cartridges, has another issue on its hands. According to an article in Bleeping Computers, a recent firmware upgrade is bricking office jet printers the world over.
Affected models are reported to be the HP OfficeJet 902x models, which includes the HP OfficeJet Pro 9022e, hp officejet pro 9025e, HP OfficeJet Pro 9020e All-in-One, HP OfficeJet Pro 9025e All-in-One Printer
The upgrade, which is triggered automatically, causes these devices to display a blue screen of death with an error displayed on the touchscreen.
HP told Bleeping Computer that “”Our teams are diligently working to resolve the blue screen error affecting a limited number of HP Officejet Pro 9020e printers.
Those not affected can try making sure their printers are not connected to the Internet until a fix is available.
Sources include: bleeping computer
Microsoft is warning of a rise in business fraud in a new report titled “The Confidence Game.” The report states that the FBI has received more than 21,000 complaints with damages totaling more than $2.7 billion.
According to the report, Microsoft says they have seen “an increase in the sophistication of tactics, including disguising Internet addresses so that they appear to be local and do not trigger certain alerts that detect and block their login attempts and other” suspicious activity. Are. ,
One of the drivers of this increased activity is the availability of Evil Proxy, Naked Pages and Caffeine “as a service tool” and increasingly called BulletProfitLink. This latest offering allows relatively unsophisticated users to efficiently create “malicious email campaigns on an industrial scale”. As per the report, “BulletProfitLink sells end to end service.including template, Hosting and Automated Services. Cybercrook customers receive credentials and the IP address of the victim.
Attackers also use the IP/proxy services that marketers use for research to measure these attacks, Microsoft notes that an “IP service provider has 100 million IP addresses that can be rotated or changed every second.”
The report urges companies to maximize security settings, flag unknown users, set up strong authentication and train users to be very suspicious of any warning signs of potential fraud, and of email invoices. Implement a secure payment portal instead, or at least, verify any instructions with a phone call or other secure confirmation,
Sources include: Microsoft reports “the confidence game”
And a report in the New York Post claims that a Chinese ChatGPT rival known as Ernie has opposed Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Apparently the new AI, which was billed as a “better alternative to the threats posted by OpenAI’s ChatGPT,” is programmed to avoid any mention of Shee and Winnie the Pooh.
post reports that when a reporter asked “what’s the relation between Shea and Winnie the Pooh,” not only did she have no answer, but the reporter’s access to Ernie was disabled.
Since Ernie wasn’t available, we asked the Bard – no Burt no, the Bard and got the following uncensored version of Scandal.
In 2013 critics compared a picture of Pooh and his friend Tigger to pictures of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama, which was deemed offensive. The fictional bear was banned in China because of Xi Jinping’s resemblance to Winnie the Pooh, as well as films, TV series and stuffed toys being banned in the country. A meme comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh gained significant popularity among Western users on Reddit, Twitter and other online platforms in 2019.
To which all we can say is ta ta for now
That’s the top tech news for today. We air five days a week with a daily newscast In the form of a special weekend interview with an expert on topics related to today’s tech news.
Follow trending hashtags on Google, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. And you can even get us on your Alexa or Google smart speaker. You can also find us on YouTube, only we are called TechNewsDay.
We love your comments. You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or on Mastodon as @therealjimlove on our Mastodon site at technews.social. or if it’s too many, just leave one Comment under the text version on itworldcanada.com/podcasts and you can find all the links in those text versions.
I’m your host, Jim Love. Have a wonderful Tuesday!
