Google cracks the whip on fake reviews, ratings on Play Store

By tech2 News Staff /  30 Nov 2016 , 14:45

Not many would consider buying a product, service, app or even watch a movie without referring to expert/consumer reviews. Our lives are dependent on online reviews, at least most of us would agree. It simply means gauging from the experience of people who have been there, done that. But, what if these reviews are a part of a foul-play, wherein a product seller or app developer is adding reviews to popularise his or her product.

Google has now announced some major improvement in the backend that will help identify fake reviews. It has basically improved the ways in which it identifies and removes fake reviews and ratings. Now, it can identify as well as remove more fake reviews and ratings with greater accuracy, Google claims.

Google wants app developers to promote their apps, but using legitimate promotion practices. So, the thumb rule is simple – reviews should come from genuine users, and developers cannot use techniques to manipulate it.

It is in line with the announcement on 31 October. “From time to time, we observe instances of developers attempting to manipulate the placement of their apps through illegitimate means like fraudulent installs, fake reviews, and incentivised ratings. These attempts not only violate the Google Play Developer Policy, but also harm our community of developers by hindering their chances of being discovered or recommended through our systems. Ultimately, they put the end users at risk of making wrong decisions based on inaccurate, unauthentic information,” Google had said.

This isn’t something new. In October 2015, Amazon sued over 1000 people for writing fake reviews. The lawsuit emphasised on how the false reviews damaged brand reputation and were inauthentic. Amazon said there were 1,114 defendants, termed “John Does” offering false review service for as little as $5 (£3.24) on the website Fiverr.com, with most promising five-star reviews for a seller’s products. It should be noted that Amazon sued the people, and not Fiverr.

In May 2014, Italy’s anti-trust board had fined TripAdvisor $600,000 over failure to stop fake reviews. TripAdvisor argued how it has process in place to detect fraudsters and also automated tools and algorithms that work against people trying to cheat the system. The extent at which we rely on online reviews, duping people into paying for something by calling it the best is nothing but a scam.

Meizu M3X and Pro 6 Plus Geekbench benchmark listing leaked online

By tech2 News Staff /  30 Nov 2016 , 12:46

Looks like Meizu is on track to release its latest smartphones – the Pro 6 Plus and the M3X. Both have been spotted on Geekbench according to a latest leak.

Image: Geekbench

The Meizu Pro 6 Plus is expected to come with an unknown chipset (alleged to be Exynos 8890 according to GizChina) with an octa-core processor clocked at 1.48GHz, 4GB RAM and Android 6.0.1 out of the box. The phone will most likely come with the latest Flyme UI atop the Android OS. As seen in the benchmark, the Meizu Pro 6 Plus scores 1462  on the single-core test and 3693 on the multi-core test. These numbers aren’t really a representative of a high end device.

Image: Geekbench

The other phone that was leaked online is the Meizu M3X. This shows the presence of a MediaTek MT6757 chipset with an octa-core processor which was clocked at 1.64GHz during the test. The M3X is expected to come with 3GB RAM and will have Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow preloaded. The Meizu M3X shows strictly mid-range numbers in the test screenshot.

It looks like Meizu is working on many phones simultaneously. The Meizu X is expected to be launched today in China. It comes with a blue coloured body that resembled the Honor 8. It is expected to come with MediaTek Helio X20 which has a 10-core processor inside. It is also expected to come with 6GB RAM and 128GB of storage.

There is no word on when Meizu plans to launch the Meizu X in India. So we will have to wait and watch.

Apple will make these four Mac products obsolete in 2017

The file photo of Macbook Air. Image: Reuters

By tech2 News Staff /  30 Nov 2016 , 11:47

Apple is known to add products to its list of Vintage and obsolete products, and 2017 will see the addition of four more products. The list will soon include Mac from 2009 to 2011. Among the product there are 15-inch MacBook Pro (early 2011), 17-inch MacBook Pro (early 2011), Mac mini (early 2009) and 13-inch MacBook (mid 2009).

Once added to the list, either vintage or obsolete, these products will no longer be eligible for repairs and part replacements from Apple or any other authorised service providers. Unless, if they were bought in the US or Turkey until 31 December, 2018 (read more in the exceptions part later). This announcement shouldn’t affect many, but if you still own one of these products then its time to get it repaired/fixed before the year-end.

Apple describes vintage products as those that have not been manufactured for more than 5 and less than 7 years ago. Apple has discontinued hardware service for vintage products, but there are a few exceptions that can be read here.

Obsolete products are the ones that were discontinued more than seven years ago. And, Apple has discontinued all hardware service for obsolete products with no exceptions.

Moreover, service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products. All Apple Retail Stores and the Canadian, European, Latin American, and Asia-Pacific operating regions follow the US product list, but make no distinction between vintage and obsolete. When applied to Apple Retail Stores and these operating regions, products on the US vintage list (all models) are considered obsolete.

Some of the other obsolete products include the iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, iPod nano 4th generation, iPod Shuffle second gen, to name a few. See the complete list here.

Intel creates Automated Driving Group following partnership with Delphi and Mobileye

Image Credits: REUTERS

By tech2 News Staff /  30 Nov 2016 , 10:58

Intel has created a new organisation dedicated to autonomous driving technologies, called Automated Driving Group (ADG). The move follows close on the heels of an announcement that Intel chips would be used in self-driving cars being made by Delphi and Mobileye. ADG will be creating the next generation of driver assist systems and other solutions needed for autonomous vehicles.

Doug Davis, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the ADG group

Intel has appointed Doug Davis as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the ADG group. Davis has been working at Intel for over 30 years, and has been at the forefront of some of the most disruptive technological innovations at the company. Davis started his career at Intel in the Military Division, and has worked with the Embedded Microcomputer Division, the Network Processor Division, the Infrastructure Processor Division and the Embedded and Communications Group over the course of his career. Davis has extended his retirement to take up the position. Most recently, Davis was the General Manager of the Internet of Things group.

Davis will be assisted by Kathy Winter. Winter was previously the Vice President of Software and Services for Automated Driving at Delphi. Winter is now the Vice President and General Manager of the Automated Solutions Division (ASD) at Intel. Winter will be working on solutions for automated driving. Winter was recognised for the first cross country drive in an autonomous vehicle in 2015. Before Delphi, Winter had worked in senior positions at Motorola Mobility.

Cyber attacks in China and Hong Kong grew 969% from 2014 to 2016, says survey

Image credit: Reuters

  30 Nov 2016 , 10:53

Cyber attacks on Chinese companies have soared in the past two years, according to a survey, with new technologies that connect household items to the internet and allow them to receive and send data seen as particularly vulnerable.

The average number of cyber attacks detected by companies in mainland China and Hong Kong grew 969 percent between 2014 and 2016. The number of attacks averaged more than 7 a day for each of the survey’s 440 China-based respondents – around half of the global average of 13.

However, the average number of attacks fell by 3 percent globally over the last two years, and 30 percent since 2015, in contrast to the rise in China.

China’s rapid adoption of new consumer and industrial technology for the ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’ era may be part of the reason. PwC said such connected devices are the leading targets of cyber-attacks.

“IoT devices in general have not paid attention to cyber security,” said Marin Ivezic, a partner on cyber security at PwC in Hong Kong.

“In China and Hong Kong … we have more adoption than anywhere else in the world,” he said, noting China was also one of the biggest manufacturers of these items.

Chinese-made connected home devices such as webcams with security loopholes that gave way to botnet malwares were blamed by security researchers for a massive cyber attack in the US last month that temporarily paralyzed major internet sites.

The Chinese companies surveyed had cut their cybersecurity budget by 7.6 percent in 2016 compared with flat global spending. Thirty four percent of them identified competitors as a source of attacks, a rate higher than anywhere else in the world.

The PwC survey does not track the country of origin of the attacks, which Ivezic said is “almost impossible”. The drop in the global number of cyber attacks did not reflect a safer environment, he said, but was rather the result of more sophisticated cyber criminals who more selective in who they targeted.

Reuters

Deutsche Telekom attack part of global campaign on routers

Representational Image

  30 Nov 2016 , 09:59

A cyber attack that infected nearly 1 million routers used to access Deutsche Telekom internet service was part of a campaign targeting web-connected devices around the globe, the German government and security researchers said on Tuesday.

The revelation from the German Office for Information Security, or BSI, stoked fears of an increase in cyber attacks that disrupt internet service by exploiting common vulnerabilities in widely used routers, webcams, digital video recorders and other web-connected devices.

Security researchers said the infections spread to countries including Brazil, Britain and Ireland using a technique similar to one that stopped millions of people in the United States and Europe from reaching websites including PayPal Holdings Inc , Twitter Inc and Spotify on Oct. 21.

The BSI said that German government networks were also targeted in Sunday’s attack on Deutsche Telekom customers, though authorities said they succeeded in keeping systems online.

Deutsche Telekom, Germany’s largest telecom company, said internet outages hit as many as 900,000 of its users, or about 4.5 percent of its fixed-line customers.

Deutsche Telekom and the German government did not identify other victims, though cyber security firm Rapid7 Inc said it observed the attackers trying to infect routers across the globe.

Irish telecom operator Eir and Vodafone Group Plc in Britain use routers that were vulnerable to same kind of attack, said Rapid7 security research manager Tod Beardsley.

Flashpoint, a second U.S. cyber security research firm, said it routers were infected in Brazil, Britain and Germany.

Eir said in a statement it was aware of potential vulnerabilities in broadband modems from Taiwan’s ZyXel Communications Corp used by about 30 percent of Eir customers.

“We have deployed of a number of solutions both at the device and network level which will remove this risk,” Eir said. It reported the incident to Irish regulators.

Vodafone declined to comment on whether it customers had been infected, but said it was aware of a vulnerability in routers that enables attackers to mount denial-of-service attacks.

The Brazilian National Computer Emergency Response Team told Reuters it was analyzing the impact of the attack on Brazil, but declined to say how many computers had been infected.

Mirai Botnet

The attacks were launched with software known as Mirai that seeks out vulnerable connected devices, then turns them into remotely controlled “bots” for mounting large-scale attacks that disrupt access to websites and computer systems.

Deutsche Telekom executives apologized for the outages, saying the company had provided details about the attack to other network operators and security agencies.

Security experts said the problem affected Deutsche Telekom customers using three types of routers manufactured by Taiwan’s Arcadyan Technology, which created a software patch that was pushed out to users on Monday.

Arcadyan did not reply to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Security experts said attributing blame for the attacks may prove impossible because the Mirai software had been released on the internet. It is relatively easy to use, which means hackers with relatively few technical skills could be to blame for follow-on attacks, they said.

Reuters

Facebook Messenger launches Instant Games: allows you to play Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Galaga

By tech2 News Staff /  30 Nov 2016 , 09:46

Facebook has launched an HTML5 based Instant Games feature, that allows users to play games through Messenger or in the News Feed. Facebook has tied up with some of the best publishers to get games on the platform.

The developer partners at launch include Bandai Namco, Konami, Taito, Zynga, King and Gamee. The games available include classics such as Pac-Man, Galaga, Arkanoid and Space Invaders. There are brand new titles available as well, including Brick Pop and Shuffle Cats Mini.

Koichi Ishii, president at Taito Corporation said, “Back in 1978, the first game in the world which the enemy character attacks the player character was named, Space Invaders. This new cross-platform gaming experience combined with us, one of the oldest game companies in the world, will create a new formula for all game fans. We are very happy and excited about this partnership to let game players around the world play Space Invadersagain.”

Kimihiro Horiuchi, head of global marketing at Konami Digital Entertainment said, “We believe this new cross platform gaming experience provides a new and unique discovery surface for our games and will delight and entertain our players around the world.”

There are seventeen titles available at launch. Competitive play and single player mode is supported. The games can be initiated in group chat as well. A controller icon appears below the text input field, to start playing the game. Once a round is played, users can be challenged for a rematch, or you can post and share your scores. You can play solo in the News Feed. The games can be searched for in the Facebook Messenger search field. The Instant Games feature is a follow up on the Basketball and Soccer games previously released on Messenger.

The games support leaderboards for multi-user chat within Messenger. The games are HTML5 based, and are loaded on demand. This does not increase the file size of messenger, but there is a delay every time a title is started.

Facebook says new titles and new ways of playing are coming soon. For the developers, Instant Games is a closed Beta program, and interested parties who want to bring their gaming content to Facebook Messenger or News Feed can do so by registering here.

In October last month, Telegram had launched an HTML5 based games on its instant messaging platform.

Gamee is one of the few developers providing gaming content on both conversational platforms. Telegram features persistent leader-boards in group chatting and solo play as well, but did not manage to partner with the major publishers that Facebook has got on board.

The update is supposed to be available in thirty countries around the world from today, but the rollout does not seem to have reached India as yet. We will be keeping a watch to try out the new games ourselves.

Tags: Chatbots, Facebook, Games, HTML5, Messenger, news feed