Technology

As George Floyd protests continue, Amazon, Google pledge millions to racial justice organizations

As America enters a second week of nationwide protests against police brutality, Google and Amazon announced grants totaling $22 million to activist and racial justice organizations.

“We acknowledge that racism and violence may look different in different parts of the world, so please use this as a moment to reflect on those who have been lost in your own country or community at a time that works for you,” said Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, referncing a planned 8 minute and 46 second moment of silence among the company’s workers worldwide on Wednesday, in a statement.

“The length of the moment of silence represents the amount of time George Floyd suffered before he was killed. It’s meant to serve as a visceral reminder of the injustice inflicted on Mr. Floyd and so many others,” Pichai added.

Protesters raise their fist in front of Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the New York mayor, during a protest Tuesday, June 2, 2020, in New York over the death of George Floyd, who died May 25 after he was pinned at the neck by a Minneapolis police officer. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

YOUTUBE EXPANDS FACT-CHECK PANELS AMID WIDESPREAD CORONAVIRUS MISINFORMATION

Google is donating $12 million to groups working against racial inequities, including to groups the tech giant has partnered with before: the Center for Policing Equity and the Equal Justice Initiative. The company has already donated $32 million to racial justice causes and groups over the last five years, according to the blog post.

Amazon is donating $10 million to a range of groups working the racial justice space, including the Brennan Center for Justice, the ACLU Foundation, NAACP, National Urban League, Year Up and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, among others.

“Solidarity with our Black employees, customers, and partners, and are committed to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear,” said Amazon in a statement.

AMAZON EXTENDS FRONTLINE WORKER BONUS PAY, BUT WILL END IT IN JUNE

However, critics of Big Tech were quick to point out how both companies had contributed to the current conditions in America and worked to assist police departments or the U.S. military.

Over the last few years, Amazon has been blasted by civil liberties groups and its own employees for its facial recognition software having been sold to hundreds of police departments as well as Immigration and Customs Enforement.

Google, which ended its controversial Project Maven military AI program after protests from its employees and outside critics, announced last month that it will build security and app-management tools for the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in a reported one-year, seven-figure deal. The Mountain View, Calif., company has also taken heat for allowing the spread of white supremacy and conspiracy theories on YouTube and Googel Search.

New Army ‘Team Ignite’ force prepares for future wars

Tanks controlling air-ground robots, AI-enabled targeting and reconnaissance, attacking in milliseconds, vehicle and aircraft-fired lasers, self-guiding ammunition, morphing swarms of autonomous drones and fast, real-time, multi-domain networking are all anticipated elements of warfare in 2040.

These prospects, involving a wide swath of overlapping factors, are now capturing the attention of a special group of “Future Concepts” experts at Fort Eustis, Virginia, with Army Futures Command. They are now analyzing the kinds of operational environments, weapons, technologies and warfare maneuvers expected to characterize warfare decades from now.

Army Futures Command Combat Capabilities Development Command calls it “Team Ignite,” a special future-oriented force of scientists, weapons technology experts and warfare strategy and concept developers. The idea is, fundamentally, not to just explore how new technologies will arrive — and there are many paradigm-changing systems in early development — but how will new technology intersect with new concepts of war? … [C]hanging maneuver formations, multi-domain attack and forcing major adaptations to mechanized warfare?”

SOLDIERS USE AI TO FIRE PRECISION GRENADES, GUIDE DRONE ATTACKS

“It is not a standing organization but a cross functional team between my technologists, my scientists and my concept writers at our Futures and Concepts Center. This forces the people who are thinking about future concepts to take technology into account because the technologists are right there with them,” Gen. John Murray, commanding general of Army Futures Command, said in an interview for Warrior.

File photo – U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment watch as CH-47 Chinook helicopter from the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade lands after an advising mission at the Afghan National Army headquarters for the 203rd Corps in the Paktia province of Afghanistan December 21, 2014.
(REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

Attacking formations of armored columns could, for instance, maneuver in a broader, potentially more lethal dis-aggregated fashion, made possible by advanced sensors, autonomy, networking and AI systems. A less-condensed force would of course be less vulnerable to large-scale destruction by enemy attacks.

The idea is to get a multi-decade jump on warfare decades from now, involving a carefully calibrated blend of intelligence information, near-term emerging weapons, basic research looking 20-years ahead and new technical trends promising to massively alter the nature of war.

HOW AI CHANGES ATTACK MISSIONS FOR US FIGHTER JETS AND BOMBERS

“If we write the concept and say ‘if only I could?’ … And then say ‘well I can’t do that right now, but what about in 15 years?’ There is a path to get there if we put the dollars in the right place today,” Murray said. “We are making those investments now, so that 15 years from now … we go from ‘if only I could’ to … we actually can.”

Speaking to current methods of bringing these ideas to life, Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, director of the Long Range Precision Fires Cross Functional Team, Army Futures Command, told me that new technologies and emerging warfare tactics will inspire a new, modern notion of traditional “Combined Arms Maneuver.” A vital element of the kind of warfare envisioned by futurists incorporates Information Dominance and … as Rafferty put it, using a tactical network. He told me that many key programs and platforms (especially Long-Range Precision Fires in his case) now being developed to surge the Army into future decades of war — are all being engineered with a mind to a “network.”

“We are bringing the Combined Arms effect of Long Range Precision Fires, Future Vertical Lift and Next Generation Combat Vehicle networked together. Multi-domain tenets involve convergence,” Rafferty said.

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Extending this reasoning, several pertinent elements of emphasis with major Army programs point to a networking “synergy” wherein platforms operate as attack machines and information “nodes” in a larger, multi-domain meshed network.

Ex-Reddit CEO blasts platform for amplifying ‘hate, racism’

Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao blasted the company on Tuesday for amplifying racism and hate amid nationwide protests against police brutality and racism that were sparked by the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis.

“You don’t get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all day long,” Pao, who was the company’s interim CEO from late 2014 through mid-2015, tweeted in reference to Black Lives Matter.

Pao retweeted a link to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s open letter to his staff, in which he said the company “does not tolerate hate, racism and violence.”

AS CORONAVIRUS SCAMS PROLIFERATE, GOOGLE LAUNCHES SPAM-SPOTTER TOOL

The company has been criticized for years for allowing racism and hatred to thrive, in particular on a subreddit thread called “the_donald” that was formed in 2015.

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Several Silicon Valley companies have put out statements and announced donations to racial justice organizations in recent days. But these commitments have also prompted critics to point out the ways in which these same platforms have inflamed hatred in all its forms for years.

While she was at Reddit, Pao banned five subreddits for fostering harassment. She resigned from the company after critics complained she was censoring the platform.

Fox News reached out to Reddit for comment on this story.

Twitter pledges focus on ‘context, not fact-checking’ after Trump targets social media

In a series of messages Tuesday evening, Twitter said it has reviewed its “Twitter Safety” policies regarding messages that may be in violation of its content rules.

The operator of the popular microblogging platform said it will now focus on “context, not fact-checking” when deciding whether to rule a tweet to be in violation of its policies.

The series of messages came nearly a week after Twitter flagged a message posted by President Trump, saying the message had “violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence.”

The thread of messages also included a list of company principles posted by CEO Jack Dorsey.

WHAT’S IN TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

“We are NOT attempting to address all misinformation,” Twitter says in one of the messages, posted under its Twitter Safety banner. “Instead, we prioritize based on the highest potential for harm, focusing on manipulated media, civic integrity, and COVID-19. Likelihood, severity and type of potential harm – along with reach and scale – factor into this.”

In his message last Thursday, Trump had included the phrase, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” which critics said was an allusion to the U.S. era of racial segregation and suppression.

After his message was flagged, Trump hit back at Twitter the next day, posting the same message via the official White House account in addition to Trump’s personal account.

In another of its messages Tuesday, Twitter wrote: “We also believe it’s important people can read and speak about what world leaders say, even if they violate our rules.” It then refers readers to a “public interest notice,” posted in October, that further outlines its policies.

Last week, President Trump issued an executive order intended to curb some of the legal protections currently shielding social media companies like Twitter from lawsuits.

Twitter issued a series of messages Tuesday night about how it will handle alleged rule-breaking messages, just days after President Trump issued an executive order targeting social media companies.

“Twitter is targeting the President of the United States 24/7, while turning their heads to protest organizers who are planning, plotting, and communicating their next moves daily on this very platform,” White House official Dan Scavino wrote last Friday. Twitter is full of s— – more and more people are beginning to get it.”

Meanwhile on Tuesday, a tech-focused civil liberties group filed a lawsuit, seeking to block Trump’s executive order to regulate social media.

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In its lawsuit, the Center for Democracy and Technology claims Trump’s executive order is an act of revenge and violates the First Amendment rights of both tech companies and the general public, NPR reported.

Trump’s order, signed last week, could allow more lawsuits against internet companies like Twitter and Facebook for what their users post, tweet and stream.

New Air Force B-21 stealth bomber takes key technology step toward war readiness

The new stealth U.S. Air Force B-21 bomber has taken yet another key technological step toward being ready for war, through integrated computer automation designed to streamline information, improve targeting and offer pilots organized warzone information in real-time.

Air Force and Northrop Grumman developers recently completed an essential software-empowered process intended to bring greater levels of information processing, data management and new measures of computerized autonomy, according to published statements from Air Force Acquisition Executive Dr. William Roper.

Through virtualization and software-hardware synergy, B-21 sensors, computers and electronics can better scale, deploy and streamline procedural functions such as checking avionics specifics, measuring altitude and speed and integrating otherwise disparate pools sensor information. In effect, it means war-sensitive sensor, targeting and navigational data will be managed and organized through increased computer automation for pilots to make faster and more informed combat decisions.

Roper’s post on LinkedIn explained it this way: The “USAF innovation hasn’t missed a beat during COVID-19. Our B-21 team just ran containerized software with Kubernetes on flight-ready hardware! Another step towards ‘DevStar’: our initiative to bring radical autonomy to software development, partnering with Northrop Grumman.”

While most of the B-21 development is “black,” for understandable reasons, Roper’s comment offers an interesting window into some of what developers generally describe as a new generation of sensing, computing, targeting and processing information made possible by rapid software modernization. He referenced a number of terms which, upon closer examination, point to some technical modernization methods able to massively improve combat performance.

AIR FORCE ARMS B-52 BOMBERS WITH PROTOTYPE NUCLEAR-ARMED CRUISE MISSILES

Containerized software, among other things, refers to an ability to program computer operating systems to streamline and compartmentalize different functions simultaneously, yet without launching an entire machine for each app, according to “Kubernetes” website. Roper cited Kubernetes, which is a computer system for “automating application deployment, scaling and management.” Much of this, as cited by Roper, is made possible through what’s called application containerization; it is defined as an operating system-level “virtualization method used to deploy and run distributed applications,” according to Techtarget.com. Containerization enables multiple “isolated applications or services run on a single host and access the same operating system.”

The B-21 Raider – artist’s impression.
(U.S. Air Force)

By drawing upon software-enabled virtualization, systems can upgrade faster, reduce their hardware footprint and better employ automation, AI and machine-learning applications. In all-out warfare terms, this means B-21 pilots can share information and find and destroy targets such as enemy air defenses … much faster. This is something which can expedite precision weapons attack and identify approaching air and ground threats and, perhaps of greatest importance, keep pilot crews alive.

AI-applications, optimized by new algorithms, can absorb new war-sensitive information, bounce it off a seemingly limitless database and quickly perform comparative analyses to make decisions, prioritize information and streamline the organization and presentation of data for humans operating in the role of command and control. The concept is to, as Roper put it in his post, better expedite the famous OODA-loop decision-making process. OODA Loop, made famous years ago by Air Force fighter pilot John Boyd, stands for Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action. It refers to the importance of getting inside an enemies’ decision-making process by completing the OODA loop faster and more accurately, therefore taking key life and death actions to destroy an enemy … faster.

The concept behind increased automation is to ease the “cognitive” burden upon pilots by performing time and energy-consuming procedural functions autonomously … all while leaving human decision-makers in the irreplaceable role of command and control. This way, dynamic, capable human problem solving can be more fully and effectively leveraged in combat. In summary, pilots will be able to make faster and better decisions, therefore “owning the OODA Loop” as Roper put it in his published comment.

PENTAGON GIVES F-22S ‘FIRST STRIKE’ CAPABILITY WORLDWIDE WITH RAPID RAPTOR PROGRAM

Not only will integrated next-generation software exponentially speed-up war-sensitive decision making, but it will also increase performance for weapons systems. Things like weapons guidance systems, weapons network security, processing speeds and major war platform functionality. Long-range sensors for an airplane’s command and control systems and of course procedures to aggregate otherwise stovepiped data systems, can all be optimized through software upgrades.

All of this pertains to Roper’s reference to “DevStar,” a strategy through which the Air Force has been expediting technical development to bring a new generation of weaponry and technology to war much more quickly. Much of this, according to Roper’s strategic vision, relies upon software integration and innovation. An Air Force DevStar paper describes it as “speed, quality, focus and collaboration.” The idea is to, at least in part, circumvent or streamline lengthy, at times, bureaucratic acquisition procedures to fast-track proven systems to war, all without compromising quality. Much of this, Roper has often explained, can be expedited through digital development, essentially modeling designs and technical systems prior to “bending metal.”

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Roper has long emphasized the importance of rapid software development and integration, having at one time told reporters that software modernization may indeed “decide who wins the next war.”

Apple tracking iPhones stolen during riots, report says

Apple is tracking the iPhones that have been stolen from its stores during the recent riots across the U.S., the New York Post reports.

Citing a message from Twitter, the Post reports the stolen devices show a message on the screen saying the device should be returned to where it was stolen from and that it has been disabled and authorities will be notified.

A source familiar with the company’s thinking said the messages seen have been in place for some time.

The tech titan, which had started to reopen some of its U.S.-based stores that were closed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, saw some of its stores attacked in cities across the country.

MURKY MESSAGING: FACEBOOK ALLOWED ‘DEATH TO AMERICA’ ADVERTISING BUT CENSORS BACK TO WORK

In the wake of the protests which are happening as a result of the death of George Floyd, Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees the company would make donations to a “number of groups” and would match employee donations as well.

“Today, Apple is making donations to a number of groups, including the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit committed to challenging racial injustice, ending mass incarceration, and protecting the human rights of the most vulnerable people in American society,” Cook wrote in the memo obtained by Bloomberg. “For the month of June, and in honor of the Juneteenth holiday, we’ll also be matching two-for-one all employee donations via Benevity.”

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment for this story, citing matters of security.

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As coronavirus scams proliferate, Google launches scam-spotter tool

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Scammers beware: Google is on the lookout for you.

The Mountain View, Calif., company on Thursday unveiled a new website to teach users how to spot and avoid some of the most common online scams as hoaxes and fake sites proliferate amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The website, called Scamspotter.org, contains a variety of information about hoaxes and their standard patterns, as well as how to identify things like fake stimulus checks or even fake vaccine offers.

The tech giant launched the tool in partnership with the Cybercrime Support Network, a nonprofit focused on helping victims of online fraud. The website also includes a quiz that outlines a range of common fraud scenarios.

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“It will take a cross-generational effort,” Vint Cerf, a Google vice president and pioneer in the development of the Internet, said in a blog post. “If we learn how to spot the bad actors, we can spend our time focusing on those moments that matter.”

It’s well-known that scammers are using the coronavirus pandemic to their advantage to prey on peoples’ vulnerabilities. According to the Federal Trade Commission, Americans have lost over $40 million due to COVID-19-related scams.

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Scammers are trying a wide range of tactics to gain access to peoples’ private banking and medical information.

The website is especially geared at educating seniors, who tend to lose more money than other demographics to scams, according to Google. The company urged young people to share the information from the website with the elderly people in their lives.

Cerf, who is 76, said seniors should feel like they can use the Internet comfortably, because “we invented” it.

Murky messaging: Facebook allowed ‘Death to America’ advertising but censors US back-to-work rallies

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When it comes to violating Facebook’s guidelines, it is often anyone’s guess what will fly and what will fall.

As President Trump’s rhetoric against social media companies and censorship gains momentum following Twitter’s decision to red flag some of his posts for containing false information or glorifying violence, troubling questions still plague Facebook’s mixed censorship policies.

“Facebook has a massive set of content guidelines that are so broad and extensive they could ban almost any content,” Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture Media Research Center, told Fox News. “In addition, Facebook just announced a new Oversight Board that will handle content appeals. That board is overwhelmingly international and lacks American support for First Amendment ideals.”

Nonetheless, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has sought to distance his platform from the President’s Twitter feud, insisting in an interview on Fox News this week that his company has “a different policy than Twitter,” and that they are “stronger on free expression” than other tech giants.

Earlier this week, Trump announced he would introduce legislation – by executive order – that would diminish a law that ultimately protects Internet companies and social media conglomerates such as Twitter and Facebook from statutory liability protections, and would cut federal funding for tech companies that engage in censorship and political conduct.

But for foreign governments and interests groups, there may be more wiggle room, analysts contend.

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For example, Iran-backed groups have had a long track record of using the platform for propaganda – and lethal – purposes, of which both the shadowy outfits behind them and Facebook itself has seemingly profited.

Last year, Facebook was filled with “sponsored” content featuring signs “Death to America.”

“Death to America” sponsored content on Facebook
(Steven Nabil screenshot)

According to several Iraqis who reported the advertising as a violation, they were instead given a “thank you for requesting a review” message.

“A specialist from our team reviewed the post again and confirmed that it doesn’t go against our Community Standards, including hate speech,” the response read. “We base our policies our Community Standards on input from the people who use Facebook around the world, as well as experts.”

(Steven Nabil screenshot)

Gainor pointed to the hypocrisy.

“The problem is Facebook allowed those ads but banned pro-life ads in Ireland during the campaign whether to allow abortion or not. Facebook isn’t consistently pro-freedom at all,” he said. “And that’s what’s scary.”

THE AFTERMATH OF QASSEM SOLEIMANI’S DEATH AND HIS DAUGHTER’S RISE TO PROMINENCE

Weeks after those ads started circulating, violent protests broke out in the streets of Baghdad, and more content was being pushed, urging a retaliation against protestors who had taken to the streets of Baghdad and the south of Iraq to fight for freedoms and the removal of Iranian meddling. Ultimately, hundreds were killed when pro-Iran militias fired back on them.

According to U.S.-based Iraqi journalist Steven Nabil, who found himself on the targeting end of militia groups and had his own page shuttered for 30 days when he tried to speak out over the brewing unrest in his homeland and with no way to appeal the ban to Facebook, it was in September 2019 that slain Iranian General Qassem Soleimani ordered a renewed social media operation using Iran-backed forces based in neighboring Baghdad.

Amid the protests that spawned in the later months of last year throughout Iraq urging for the removal of Iran’s influence, scores of fake pages flooded Arabic-speaking accounts targeting journalists covering the unrest as “agents of the CIA” and vowed they were behind the unrest, thus endangering lives.

“That puts us in a lot of danger, and many of these pages still run,” Nabil said. “And its especially ironic that Facebook is OK with ‘Death to America’ but wants to censor Americans trying to get back to work.”

People protest for re-opening the economy at a faster rate outside the Old Pinellas County Courthouse, amid the coronavirus crisis, in Clearwater, Florida, U.S. May 11, 2020 in this still image taken from a social media video. (JOZEF GHERMAN/ FACEBOOK/ OPEN TAMPA BAY/via REUTERS)

Indeed, some Facebook critics have raised concerns over the Silicon Valley giant’s role around protests as hypocritical, if not utterly confusing.

In late April, Facebook took down event pages pertaining to organized rallies against the stringent stay-at-home orders as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and later said it did so only in states where strict social distancing guidelines were in place.

FACEBOOK WON’T ALLOW PROMOTION OF PROTESTS ‘THAT DEFY GOVERNMENT’S GUIDANCE’ ON SOCIAL DISTANCING

However, its selective content response is symptomatic of a more profound schism within its censorship framework. So how does the flagging and content removal process work?

“Facebook states that it is currently working to reduce the spread of fake news with machine learning that ‘predicts what stories may be false’ and by reducing the distribution of content ‘rated as false’ by independent third-party fact-checkers. There are several problems with this,” observed Kristen Ruby, social media consultant and president of the New York-based Ruby Media Group. “Every human being has a level of internal bias. So whatever the fact-checkers say is false is flagged as false. Meaning, they are engaging in fact-checking, but everyone’s views of facts are distorted by their own personal opinion.”

In her view, this is why it is critical for Facebook and big tech companies to decide if they are truly publishers or if they are neutral parties, because “you can’t be both.”

Yet trial attorney Kelly Hyman argued that Facebook is actually becoming safer for its some 2.6 billion users through its monitoring of violations – including fraud and deception, coordinating harm and publicizing crime, bullying and harassment, hate speech and cruel and insensitive content – by employing artificial intelligence (AI), community feedback and content review teams.

“The crackdown ranges from removing the content to disabling the account, to covering the content with a warning, and cases that pose harm to public safety, law enforcement is involved,” she said. “But, the company may need to step up their efforts.”

In this Oct. 17, 2019, file photo Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Georgetown University in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

While Facebook does apply labels to so-called misleading posts, it exempts from review posts by politicians, a mandate that some lawmakers claim perpetuates the spread of falsities and adds to a dizzying policy.

“Where it has gone wrong in recent years is a matter of perspective – some policymakers and thought leaders believe that it should not censor any content while others believe it should censor far more than it currently does,” conjectured Heather Heldman, a former advisor to the U.S. State Department and managing partner at the Luminae Group.

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Unlike Twitter, Facebook outsources its fact-checking to media partners and says it takes no stance itself.

And as for the future of Facebook amid Trump’s legislative push, some say that regardless of how it plays out, it is time for a reboot.

“Why should big tech platforms have an unfair business advantage and be immune from lawsuits when other businesses are not afforded this advantage? This law has not been changed in 24 years. It is important that we review this policy to see if it still makes sense for the 2020 digital economy and ecosystem we live in and beyond,” Ruby added. “You can’t say on the one hand that you are not responsible for the content that appears on your platform, but on the other say, here is a list of 50 reasons why we will delete your content.”

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

FBI reveals how alleged scammer stole personal identities

Jonathan Nguyen, 23, of Windham, N.H., was charged this week in federal court for carrying out a scheme to steal personal information and turn it into profits, the FBI said.

This is how the operation was allegedly conducted.

First, Nguyen, and others involved in the fraudulent financial scheme used Bitcoin to purchase names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, email addresses, passwords, credit card account numbers, expiration dates, and other kinds of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), according to the FBI, which cited the charging document.

AVERAGE AMERICAN HAD PERSONAL DATA STOLEN AT LEAST 4 TIMES LAST YEAR, REPORT SAYS

Next, they allegedly turned the stolen information into cash. One way they did this was to purchase tickets to sporting events and gift cards, the FBI said, noting that these were then sold for profit.

(Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

Nguyen and his collaborators also created e-commerce websites for fake companies and “obtained payment-card processing capabilities for these sham companies in order to cash out the stolen credit cards,” the FBI added.

The scammers were tech-savvy enough to get around the fraud-detection mechanisms used by internet merchants, according to the FBI.

MICROSOFT WARNS ON COVID-19 CYBER-SCAMS

“This case is an excellent example of how stolen data can be monetized,” Inga Goddijn, executive vice president of Risk Based Security, told Fox News.

“We have a tendency to assume the malicious actors that steal data are also the ones using the data for illicit purposes. While that can happen, it’s more likely the pilfered data will be sold to others — who in turn use that data in schemes like those Mr. Nguyen is alleged to have perpetrated,” Goddijn said.

Mounir Hahad, head of the Juniper Threat Labs at Juniper Networks, echoed Goddijn’s comments.

AS FTC ISSUES FRESH WARNING, HERE ARE 5 COVID-19 SCAMS TO BE AWARE OF

“Most criminals engaged in stealing PII information or payment card information tend to auction it on the dark web and never attempt to profit from it directly. They know the more involved they are with the stolen information, the more risky it gets,” Hahad told Fox News.

“In this case, we’re looking at the other side of the equation: what do people who purchase this kind of information do with it?”

However, the alleged use of legitimate payment processing systems could have left them vulnerable, Hahad said.

COVID-19 HACKERS TARGETING MEDICAL PROVIDERS, FBI SAYS

“Creating sham web sites to use the credit cards may not have been the smartest move, though, because such an approach usually requires engaging with a legitimate payment processing service whose audit logs will keep traces of all transactions. In the U.S., those audit logs would be at the reach of law enforcement given the proper warrants,” Hahad said.

The charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, access-device fraud, and identity theft provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000, the FBI said.

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The defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty, the FBI said.

5 great sites to delete online accounts, create ambient music, see if a site is down and more

Kim Komando has fresh insights on the top websites for a wide range of your needs.
(iStock)

According to Internet Live Stats, there are about 1.8 billion operational websites. But far too many sites are junk, so we tend only to frequent our favorites. That’s why I highlight 5 bookmark-worthy sites for knowledge, usefulness, or just for fun every week.

The easy way to delete unwanted online accounts

The more online accounts you have, the more at risk you are when hackers come calling. It’s best to keep your digital life buttoned-up. The problem is deleting abandoned accounts can be difficult at best.

Pinterest and Evernote, for example, make it almost impossible to remove your account. Other sites hide their options to delete accounts with links buried deep within the site. JustDelete.Me has done the hard work to put together links to remove your accounts from hundreds of sites.

Tap or click here for a directory of direct links to remove yourself from various websites.

This Harvard test will tell you if you’re tone-deaf

Do the cats yowling on the back-fence sound better than your rendition of “Somewhere over the Rainbow?” Let science be your no-judgment zone. Researchers at Harvard University are studying how our minds interpret what we hear.

The Music Lab’s online tone-deafness quiz accurately tests musical skills in about 10 minutes. Grab a pair of headphones and answer questions about the sounds you hear. First, you’ll decide which sounds are loudest to calibrate your speakers. Then the tough part begins, that is, deciding whether you hear a pitch that is higher or lower than the sound before it.

Tap or click here to learn if there’s any hope for your singing.

Is it down for you or the entire world?

The video conferencing service Zoom recently experienced audio and video issues that left many virtual Sunday church goers without weekly service. While confused users flooded social media to try to fix their computers, phones, or tablets, they could have used this site. There was nothing they could do.

Zoom was experiencing a service outage. If a site you use is experiencing issues, Downdetector will display a live outage map, information on where the outage occurred, the time it happened, and the most reported problems.

Tap or click here for this smart trick to use when a site or service is down.

See life in numbers

I use this site when it’s someone’s birthday to give the celebrator some fun facts about his or her life so far. It’s always a conversation starter.

Try it for yourself. At Life Stats, enter your date of birth and you instantly see the number of times your heart has beaten, how many days you have spent asleep (it’s a lot!), what a dollar was worth when you were born, and more facts including life expectancy statistics.

Tap or click here to get your life stats.

Try a custom ambient sound maker

We all have preferences when it comes to sound. Would you rather get something done in a bustling coffee shop or a silent room? Do you prefer gentle white noise or complete quiet when sleeping?

A Soft Murmur is beautiful, useful and endlessly customizable. Here’s how it works. Visit the site and choose your background noise of choice from basics like rain, thunder, waves and wind to crickets, birds, fire and coffee shop chatter. Set the level for each sound to create your perfect mix. Maybe it’s a coffee shop and rain (cozy!) or waves, wind and birds for a more calming effect.

Tap or click here to create your perfect background noise.

Cook based on your fridge and pantry

Right now, most of us are stocking up on groceries to avoid going back to the store every few days. This makes it difficult to whip up fun new recipes.

If you’re stuck in a rut, you’re going to love MyFridgeFood. Check off the items in your fridge and pantry, and find recipes based on what you have on-hand.

Take our measly selection: bacon, barbecue sauce, cheddar cheese, chicken breast, green peppers, pasta, rice, potatoes and oil. We can turn all that into bacon wrapped barbecue chicken (yum!), easy chicken rice casserole (the kind of comfort food we need right now), crockpot chicken pot pie, or so many other yummy-sounding meals.

Tap or click here to get delicious recipes using what you have at home.

Have a site that you like and want to share? Please tap or click here to tell me about it.

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Learn about all the latest technology on The Kim Komando Show, the nation’s largest weekend radio talk show. Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today’s digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com.

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