Articles by Richard Adhikari

Google misdirected a number of private videos that users of its Google Photos app intended to back up to Google Takeout, sending them instead to strangers' archives, 9to5 Google reported Monday The company emailed affected users to inform them that a technical issue caused the error, which incorrectly transferred videos for several days before it w...

The United States Department of Justice on Tuesday filed complaints in two landmark cases calling for temporary restraining orders against five companies and three individuals alleged to have carried hundreds of millions of fraudulent robocalls to American consumers. The defendants in one case are Ecommerce National LLC dba TollFreeDeals.com; SIP ...

The United States Department of Homeland Security last week released a report outlining its plans to combat online counterfeit product sellers The value of counterfeit goods traded internationally rose from US$200 billion in 2005 to $509 billion in 2016, according to DHS. Infringing goods valued at $1.4 billion were seized at U.S. borders in 2018, ...

A digital forensic analysis conducted by Anthony Ferrante of business advisory firm FTI Consulting concludes with "medium to high confidence" that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' smartphone was hacked through a malicious file sent from the WhatsApp account of Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman The malware was in an MP4 file attached to a WhatsAp...

Uber has launched a pilot program in California that lets drivers in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, and Sacramento set their own fares for airport rides Drivers can set a fare multiple on Uber's base, time, and distance rates for UberX and UberXL trips, according to the company....

Google has inked a deal to acquire 6-year-old Ireland-based firm Pointy, reportedly for US$163 million Pointy provides a $900 box with built-in cellular connectivity, which lets brick-and-mortar retailers list their stock online....

Adobe on Monday announced the availability of Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service for B2B and B2C companies of all sizes The service provides "a globally scalable, agile and secure digital foundation that optimizes marketer and developer workflows across the entire content lifecycle, and connects to data insights to deliver personalized exp...

Public relations companies long have been known for reshaping perceptions to favor their clients. Taking that practice to an extreme, some now engage in "black PR" -- that is, the calculated spread of disinformation and misinformation online, according to a Buzzfeed report published Monday. For example, Taiwan-based entrepreneur Peng Kuan Chin's "...

Facebook on Monday promised to remove certain "misleading manipulated media": videos edited or synthesized in ways not apparent to an average person, which likely would mislead viewers to believe that video subjects said words they did not say; products of artificial intelligence or machine learning that merge, combine, replace, or superimpose content onto a video, creating a fake video that appears to be authentic...

Amazon, Apple, Google and the Zigbee Alliance are teaming up on a new Internet Protocol-based standard for smart home device connectivity, they jointly announced Wednesday Connected Home over IP will be an open source project. A working group will define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification.

Amazon third-party sellers will not be able to ship Prime customers' orders using FedEx Ground and FedEx Home, as of Wednesday "We have seen a drop in the delivery performance of FedEx Ground and FedEx Home ship methods for Seller Fulfilled Prime shipments," Amazon told sellers in a note provided to the E-Commerce Times by corporate communications ...

Google on Tuesday released an update to its Chrome browser with a slew of new features that are heavy on security Chrome 79.0.3945.79 has 51 security fixes. It offers improved password protection over earlier versions, real-time phishing protection, and predictive phishing tools....

Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature has made it difficult for online advertisers to use cookies to target Safari users based on their browsing habits, according to The Information, which cited data from The Rubicon Project Third-party cookies "serve as the foundation for almost all advertising use cases," noted Jordan Mitchell, head of ...

Among the highlights of Amazon Web Services re:Invent, ongoing in Las Vegas through Dec. 9, are three Tuesday announcements that strengthen its presence in the enterprise hybrid IT infrastructure market: AWS is teaming with Verizon to deliver 5G edge cloud computing;...

Amazon Web Services on Monday announced Amazon Braket, a fully managed quantum computing service Braket will let scientists, researchers and developers experiment with computers from multiple quantum hardware providers -- D-Wave, IonQ or Rigetti -- in one place....

Google plans to launch checking accounts next year through a project code-named "Cache," The Wall Street Journal first reported on Wednesday "We're exploring how we can partner with banks and credit unions in the United States to offer smart checking accounts through Google Pay, helping their customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting too...

Google on Monday announced plans to use performance badges to warn users of slow-loading websites ahead. It will consider historical load latencies first, and later may expand to signal the likelihood that a page will load slowly based on the user's device and network conditions....

UPS this week announced the first two revenue-generating residential deliveries of prescribed medicines to consumers. Its drone delivered the prescription medications from a CVS pharmacy in Cary, North Carolina, to a consumer's home, and to a customer in a retirement community, both on Nov. 1 ...

Many businesses have been using secret scores created by data brokers to determine how much to charge consumers, whether to allow purchase returns, and what level of service to offer, among other things One such broker, Sift, gave New York Times technology reporter Kashmir Hill a file of more than 400 pages that "contained all the messages I'd ever...

Faire on Wednesday announced it has raised US$150 million in venture capital. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Founders Fund jointly led the Series D funding round. Existing investors Forerunner Ventures, YC Continuity and Khosla Ventures also were involved Faire will use the money to expand into new markets, improve the Faire marketplace, and build...