Yearly Archives: 2018

A recent study commissioned by Yale University found that many adults are unaware of the risk they potentially put their home property under when they share their location while on holiday or not at home. A tenth of the people surveyed admitted they have in the past shared a post regarding a holiday countdown revealing exactly how long until their home would be unattended. A fifth said they felt they had at some point put themselves at risk and 10 per cent saying they had become victim of robbery or a crime due to what they posted online.

The traditional way of thinking about home security is now expanding since our social media profiles are somewhat a reflection of our real physical life, with many people posting regular updates, especially big events such as a much anticipated trip abroad. Our privacy settings online and how and what we share should be taken into consideration, with opportunist thieves easily browsing public profiles to work out when, and for how long, people will likely be away.

Sharing travels and big events with friends and family online is a good thing but it can come at a risk if someone takes advantage of you. It is important to check and regularly manage your privacy settings to be aware who can view your profile and posts, especially on Facebook — being that it is the largest social media platform and generally where people share the most detail.

With more crime beginning from online resources, it’s important to check your privacy settings on all public platforms and to be diligent about protecting your security online. Becoming more careful with your online security can only help secure yourself better in the physical world as well.

If you are interested in learning more about online security or would like to discuss our security software service, please be in touch with us at, [email protected].

EURid, the registry manager of the .eu TLD (top-level domain) revealed a communication they received from the European Commission stating:

“The revocation of existing holders’ rights and the prohibition for registrars from processing any more requests for registrations or renewals for .eu domain names whose holders are no longer eligible must be prepared so that the necessary measures are effective as from 1 January 2021 or, in case that there were no withdrawal agreement in force before 30 March 2019, as from 30 March 2019.”

While the UK and EC continue their ongoing negotiations, this information is subject to any transitional arrangement that may be contained in a possible withdrawal agreement.

Please note that we will be offering a proxy service so that you will still be able to register your .eu domain — please be in touch to discuss and learn more at, [email protected].

If you have been a customer of PC World, Currys, Dixons, Carphone Warehous, please be advised they have found that some of their security systems had been accessed in the past using sophisticated malware.

Following the findings, the company promptly launched an investigation, alerted customers, and are taking steps to update their security systems. It was reported that 10 million records containing customers personal data were accessed in 2017 but thankfully there is not no confirmed case of fraud to date. The customer information that was accessed did not contain bank details or account information.

Please read the companies full message and steps they suggest to minimise potential risk — dixonscarphone.com/message.

In the second quarter of 2018, the Chinese global information and communications technology solutions provider, Huawei, overtook Apple and moved into second place in market share of worldwide smartphone shipments.

The data, recorded by IDC, Canalys, and Strategy Analytics, reports the company shipped over 54 million handsets in the second quarter compared to the 41.3 million iPhones that Apple sold and Samsung’s 73 million units.

Below is a detailed list of the top five worldwide smartphone vendors and their year-over-year growth:

Huawei has granted their success this past quarter to their strong position in China, where they lead the market with a 27 per cent share, and good sales of their flagship P20 model (above), as well as their mid-range models such as the Nova series that are very popular in both Asia and Europe. Due to Huawei being practically banned in the United States, the numbers are even more impressive while they have had to make up the numbers in other markets.

Apple is still doing well but this is the first time the company has lost their second place position that they have held since the second quarter of 2010. Samsung sales have fallen significantly this past second quarter, although they still firmly hold first place, for now, so it will be interesting to see how the list changes in the future seeing that the bottom two companies, Xiaomi and Oppo, are also Chinese brands like Huawei and their numbers have both increased compared to last year.

If you would like to read more about articles like this and what hear about what we’ve been up to please subscribe to our monthly newsletter, directionforward.com/news — or contact us to learn more about our services and support agreements, [email protected].

Earlier this summer, Apple made the announcement, at their annual WWDC, the new iOS 12 update would introduce tools to help manage and monitor time spent on their devices and individual apps. Around the same time, Google made the same announcement for its new Android P operating system that tracks all of users’ usage time.

Over this past week, social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram are now also taking similar steps by implementing these same features into their apps to help users monitor the time they spend per day. The new time managing dashboard will allow users see the amount of time they’ve spent scrolling, set a reminder for when they reach their alloted time, and mute notications for a max. of 8 hours.

The move by Apple, Google, Facebook, and Instagram follows the increasing concerns of excessive screen time and social media use and how it can have a negative impact on mental health, especially in young people.

There is also criticism over this move by Facebook and their ultimate intentions and whether the new feature is more of a way to balance their corporate interest of keeping people spending as much time as possible on Facebook, while being still being responsive to a serious issue.

Our ‘digital well being’ will be an ongoing topic of discussion as we become ever more reliant on our devices day-to-day, and how to balance our usage time. The newly introduced time management dashboards on Apple and Google devices and within apps such as Facebook and Instagram may not entirely work for everyone but the awareness and visual representation could push some to make positive changes, if needed.

If you are interested in learning more about topics like these, please subscribe to our monthly newsletter, directionforward.com/news or if you are interested in our Social Media or Content Management Service, please in touch at, [email protected].

Coming soon, eBay is adding Apple Pay as the first new payment service since their move away from PayPal back in 2015. Since then, the auction site has been preparing to slowly transition to a non-PayPal and completely new payment platform.

Only recently eBay announced they are moving to an integrated payment system built by the Amsterdam-based company, Adyen, a leading global payment processor. Since Adyen’s product is solely a back-end service, it will allow eBay to open up multiple checkout options on their website, the first of many being Apple Pay.

Having the option soon to be able to make a purchase using Apple Pay will make check out much faster and easier for Apple and iPhone users — using Face ID, Touch ID on iOS or macOS, and even Apple Watch to authenticate payments.

Over the next few years, eBay’s plan is to fully transition into a payment intermediation marketplace. This means users will be able to complete their purchases within eBay’s website or app through many different payment forms, and of course, PayPal will always remain as a payment option.

If you would like to learn more about Apple products we are a Joint Venture partner with Apple and can assist you with any questions or consultation regarding the purchase and setup of a new device. Please be in touch at, [email protected].

Google has once again been fined by the EU, this time for a record €4.3bn, over Android. Last year the company was fined €2.4bn for abusing its near-monopoly in online search to give “illegal advantage” to its shopping service. On Wednesday they were once again fined and this time for €4.3bn for abuse of Android’s dominance in mobile operating systems — the biggest EU antitrust penalty to date.

The findings for Google’s latest penalty were grounded in their business strategy over the past decade — the EU commission found they outlawed restrictions on the Android Operating System that resulted in cementing Google’s dominance in online search at a time when consumers were moving from desktop to mobile devices. Google has denied any wrongdoing.

Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android’s operating system is used by more than 80 per cent of the world’s smartphones and it has become increasingly vital to the group’s future earnings as we all become more reliant on our mobile phones.

The EU Commission found Google has been using ‘tying’ methods, which forced mobile phone makers to pre-install Google’s search app and the Chrome browser as condition of using their Google Play, smartphone app store. In addition, they found mobile operating networks and device manufacturers were paid anti-competitive financial incentives if they pre-installed Google search and no other rival services.

A third part of the case has said that there were even contractual restrictions that blocked manufacturers from selling phones using rival operating systems developed on the Android open source code.

The EU’s Competitive Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has said these imposed conditions are illegal and ensured Google’s dominance across Android devices by using its search engine and that these practices have denied an equal and fair chance for others to innovate and compete, such as Amazon’s Fire OS.

Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai claims the commission has misunderstood consumer behaviour and wrongly defined the market. They argue that rival apps are only one-download away, making it impossible to completely shut out competitors even when theirs come pre-installed.

Google also stated that they fear this decision will upset the careful balance they have with Android and is a troubling signal in favour of proprietary systems over open platforms.

The lobby group, FairSearch, helped launch the case against Google when they made a formal complaint. They have said the latest fine and order to comply in 90 days should mean that Google will finally cease their anti-competitive practices re. smartphones, and also in other areas — smart TVs, where it is shown they are imposing the same practices.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to read more like it, please sign up for our monthly newsletter — directionforward.com/news.

We are pleased to announce we meet the requirements and have been approved to be a Silver Microsoft Partner. This level of partnership with Microsoft brings with it many opportunities for our clients to benefit from using Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions.

To qualify for the certification, we submitted three detailed case studies that were approved by the client, Ventula Consultanting, Tiro Partners, and Grosvenor. Accompanying the case studies, Malcolm also passed two Microsoft Certified Professional exams to successfully prove competency and acquire the Silver Partnership.

The Silver partnership has given us a depth of resources and materials to help provide the best Cloud Solutions to help support our clients and help you build your businesses.

Below are a few of the solutions and tools we can now provide:

This and many more benefits accompany the Silver Microsoft Partnership and being a part of the Microsoft Partner Network — by providing our team with invaluable resources to help our client’s test, build and grow their businesses using Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions and marketing materials, as well as access to the best resources for us to support you in this process.

To learn more and receive the benefits from our Silver Partnership with Microsoft, you can sign up for Microsoft Office 365 today or get in touch with us at, [email protected].

If you’re a daily Twitter user you may have recently noticed a slight decrease in your follower count or saw a tweet from a big name on Twitter reporting a significant decrease in their followers. Some top celebrity accounts are even seeing their follower count reduced by over a million.

Although this sudden drop in followers may come as a shock for some big name users, the move is ultimately a good thing. The accounts that are being removed are inactive, meaning they were originally set up by a real person but have since become locked temporarily or permanently due to suspect behaviour. It is also good to note, that these accounts are not being completely removed from Twitter, just from their followers’ accounts.

The move by Twitter is in response to their new focus on the company’s “controversial health”. Earlier this year, the Twitter CEO said the company would be searching for ways to root out trolling, bullying, hate speech, and political manipulation on the network. In order to do that, they were beginning to look for ways to better understand the nature, or “health,” of conversations on its platform. The company have now began to take active steps forward to develop an actual system metric to measure the health of the platform and ‘clean it up’ to ensure it can continue to grow in a positive direction.

The recent events of this week’s inactive follower purge, as well in May and June Twitter suspended 70 million suspected spam and bot accounts, is showing measures are actually being put in to place to begin to combat some of the serious problems the platform are facing. Overall, the update will remove tens of millions of accounts from follower numbers across the platform and impact around 6% of its users.

Whether or not you will are impacted has mostly to do with how many followers you have, and most of us will only see a very small difference, if any at all.

It’s hopeful and a big positive to see social media platforms formally putting health measures in place to improve their platform activity and encouraging to see the changes beginning to happen. If you would like to discuss social media and it’s benefits for your company and hear about our Social Media service, please be in touch with us at, [email protected]. If you liked this story and would like to hear more like it, you can also sign up to our monthly newsletter — directionforward.com/news

The Information Data Office (ICO) is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest and promote openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

Direction Forward is registered with the ICO as a Data Controller, and under the Data Protection Act it requires every data controller who is processing personal information to register with the ICO, unless they are exempt.

Registering with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is a relatively straightforward step and firms which have registered are added to the searchable register on the Information Commissioner’s website which contains the name and address of data controllers and a description of the kind of processing they do. This is a good thing and keeps organisations open and transparent, which equates to more consumer and user trust in regards to the handling and storage of their personal data.

We live in a data driven world and sharing data helps make life easier, more convenient and connected, so it is important to make sure your information is safe and secure and that the organisations you are sharing it with are being responsible.

Direction Forward’s registration number with the ICO is ZA422411 — if you would like to learn more about data security and hear about our hosting services, please be in touch with at, [email protected].