Following improvements in performance and security, all Shared Drive and Cloud Backup customers should upgrade to the new version (v4.15) of the desktop app.
The new version will be available on Tuesday, 4th August. Please update when you are automatically prompted..
Those who are already running the latest software will not be prompted and do not need to make any changes.
Four of the world’s most powerful CEOs – Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple – were questioned yesterday in an antitrust hearing against the potential monopolisation by large corporations controlling their markets.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Google’s Sundar Pichai all faced challenging questions from members of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, who brought newly released documents with contrary evidence of fair conduct against the tech companies..
Google
Google was hounded for misusing information and controlling what is seen, i.e. preferring profitability over relevance in search. Google has been found to have stolen content from other sites to advance its own presence, and threatening businesses that they would be removed from Google’s search engine if they fought against this. It was said that Google is like a “walled garden” where people are directed to sites Google permits to be at the top, and hiding others which are detrimental to Google’s growth. The fairness that users are forced to pay for advertising to grow their business, directly advancing Google’s profits and giving further power was considered. It was also highlighted that the more user data Google has, the more money it has, and the fair use of this data was interrogated.
Facebook
Facebook was questioned heavily on its fair use of user data and the information that was allowed online, such as fake news. Mark Zuckerberg was unable to reassure the committee that political elections haven’t and won’t again be undermined by biased posts and advertising, as has been shown to have happened in the 2016 US presidential election. Facebook was confronted about the misuse of user data, which Facebook leverages to its benefit. Facebook’s alleged monopoly tactics were also discussed, e.g. buying competitors such as Instagram and Whatsapp, with the aim to neutralise these competitors.
Amazon
Jeff Bezos was questioned mainly on whether Amazon uses data to undermine its third-party merchants, i.e. the marketplace sellers on its platform, to which Bezos was unable to offer a conclusive answer. It was shown that Amazon was prepared to lose $200m in order to undercut another online sales business. It was also found that seller information was used against them as knowledge for Amazon to know how to undercut smaller businesses. Some of Amazon’s sellers were quoted as stating that they experienced “bullying, fear and panic” on the platform. Bezos couldn’t guarantee that Amazon’s data policy wasn’t being violated by Amazon and sellers information wasn’t being misused. It was also unexplained why sellers fees were rising so quickly and high; currently up to 30% of product price.
Apple
Cook was challenged on why Apple has restricted certain apps in their App Store over others, especially when they offer very similar products or use the same tools. The same questions were asked in regards to why Apple removed apparently competing apps by other companies/developers, which were to Apple’s own offerings. Neither interrogations could be answered. It was inquired if confidential information was misused for the benefit of Apple, which Cook denied.
International ties with China were brought in, such as questions as to whether the Chinese military directly benefited from Google. All four CEOs were asked for recommendations on how the US government could better protect against the Chinese government stealing technology from American companies. No concrete responses were given on this, and it was rather confusing that these CEOs were asked such a politically loaded question.
Chairman Mr Cicilline concluded that it is clear these four companies do have monopoly power and that “some need to be broken up, and all need to be regulated and held accountable”. Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook and Pichai were compared to Rockefeller and Carnegie, in that they do “whatever it takes to crush individual businesses”. The findings and solutions from this hearing will soon be reported in full by international media.
Microsoft is working on a new feature to “Add shortcut to My files” for folders shared with you, which will be available worldwide by the end of September 2020.
This new feature will give users the ability to add shortcuts to shared folders in OneDrive and SharePoint, making it easier to find and work on these files. The shortcuts will also appear at the OneDrive root with the owner’s details in the sharing column in order to differentiate it from your own content.
Currently, when a user adds a shortcut to a SharePoint folder that was already synchronised the user will not see the new shortcut in their OneDrive folder, but the previously synced folder will remain in File Explorer. This is a limitation in the public preview that Microsoft aims to address before making the feature generally available.
Once the public preview has rolled out to your organisation, to use this feature:
OneDrive
In OneDrive, in the navigation bar, select Shared > Shared with me
Find the folder that you want to add, and click the little circle icon in the folder’s tile to select that particular folder
Click Add shortcut to My files button or right-click the folder and select Add shortcut to My files
SharePoint/Teams
Select Add shortcut to My files to add the shortcut to the entire library or select a specific folder that you want to add and then select Add shortcut to My files
For further information please see further instructions on support.microsoft or contact us.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg has ruled that the current transatlantic data protection regulations do not sufficiently protect the data of European citizens.
The ‘Privacy Shield’ transatlantic agreement is used by thousands of companies to transfer data between the EU and the US. Previous to this, the ‘Safe Harbour’ agreement was in place, which itself was dismantled by European judges in 2015, due to similar complaints against the security, privacy and protection of personal data.
This new ruling comes about due to the discrepancy between data protection regulations in Europe and the US. The US affords far fewer rights to individuals over use of their personal data in comparison to EU countries, which are under the GDRP – for example which includes the right to make subject access requests to platforms/organisations to understand how they are using your data and to request that you be removed from their service(s) and ‘forgotten’. Vera Jourova, EU executive vice-president in charge of Values and Transparency said, “We would like to see on the American side a federal law that would be equivalent or similar to the General Data Protection Regulation”.
It has been stated that companies will still be able to move data under Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), which are legally binding agreements covering data protection, and are specific to each platform/company. But ‘Privacy Shield’ is no longer valid.
This is a major victory for privacy campaigners, and has immediate implications for Facebook and thousands of other companies that move personal data across the Atlantic.
Microsoft have announced a new look and an updated Yammer, which will automatically replace the previous version.
Yammer is an Enterprise Social Network (ESN) and part of Microsoft 365, which allows communication with users inside (and also outside) an organisation. Through new ‘Yammer Conversations’ you can integrate conversation feeds within SharePoint sites from any Yammer community or user, to stay up to date with discussions without leaving SharePoint.
New features include previews of media and visuals, the ability to upload images and files into conversations, and Yammer management actions – such as Close Conversation, Mark Best Answer to a Question, and Pin a conversation.
Sites already using Yammer Conversations will automatically be updated with the new version. For organisations who have not yet set up Yammer, please see here on how to add to SharePoint.
Yesterday, Twitter was compromised in one of the most widespread and confounding hacks it has ever experienced. Numerous ultra high profile accounts were targeted, including President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Michael Bloomberg, and Apple.
The hackers took over accounts in what appeared to be a Bitcoin scam, sending out tweets asking for money for which the “author” would send double back the amount. The hack resulted in people sending at least $120,000 worth of the cryptocurrency to the digital wallet address, which was listed in nearly all of the tweets. However, there may have been ulterior motives beyond the cryptocurrency scam – political and business accounts were made to look vulnerable and may have had sensitive account information exposed.
Twitter took drastic steps to block new tweets from every verified user, compromised or not, as well as locking all compromised accounts. Twitter tweeted, “We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools”. It was acknowledged that the hackers used special employee level access to take control of many highly visible and verified accounts. It has also been claimed that some employees were involved in helping hackers with access.
It is not confirmed exactly how the hack was carried out. But it is likely that as the hackers were able to take over multiple highly sensitive accounts, all with two-factor authentication enabled, that they could not have exploited this many individual accounts, but would have needed access to employee tools.
This attack shows how vulnerable social media can be. Twitter in particular has become a highly political platform, and accounts with this influence and reach being a risk may have further impact and risk, such as during elections. Shares in Twitter immediately fell 4 percent in after-hours trading.
Find Twitter’s instructions here on how to secure your own account: https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/two-factor-authentication
Microsoft has announced that it will close all physical stores, only a year after the flagship location in London was opened.
Since the closure of many stores in March due to Covid-19, Microsoft has taken a new approach and put even more focus into their online services and platforms. New services online will include one to one video chat support, online tutorial videos, and virtual workshops.
Microsoft says it will continue to support customers online, with retail team members apparently transitioning to working remotely and at Microsoft corporate locations. Remote work will be increased including online sales, training and support. Microsoft is also investing in new digital storefronts on microsoft.com, and dedicated online stores for Xbox and Windows.
The closing of Microsoft Store physical locations will result in a pre-tax charge of approximately $450M, including primarily asset write-offs and impairments, however Microsoft hopes this will be offset through significant growth via digital storefronts.
India has decided to ban 59 of China’s biggest mobile apps, including TikTok and Alibaba’s UC Browser, with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology alleging they are breaching the privacy of Indian users and mining their data.
“The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India…is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures,” the Ministry said.
Previously security researchers revealed that data copied to the clipboard on an iOS device could be read by any active app, and TikTok was found to be one of them actively exploiting this.
Bytedance, the owner of TikTok, responded that the security breaches were related to the use of an outdated Google advertising SDK, and that SDK is in the process of being replaced. However, recent findings are contradictory to this claim as TikTok appears to continue to access users’ clipboards, despite the original issue being fixed.
Apple has theoretically fixed this problem in a beta version of iOS 14, which warns users whenever any app reads the last thing copied to the clipboard. However, users will need to upgrade to iOS 14 to benefit from this protection. Since this announcement TikTok has been shown to still be abusing user data via accessing the clipboard on iOS devices. The status of this issue on Android platform is currently unknown.
The United States is currently considering also banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok.
We are pleased to present the new online Crêpeaffaire Shop.
We were tasked with quickly adding ecommerce capability to Crêpeaffaire’s existing website, whilst brick and mortar stores were closed during the national lockdown. The new online shop was designed using a quirky style which compliments Crêpeaffaire’s branding. The shop is fully responsive design across all devices and screen sizes, and the products, pricing, tax, orders and shipping can be fully managed in-house. There is also a custom workflow that sends completed orders to a SharePoint spreadsheet for oversight and backup.
Find the Crêpeaffaire Shop at crepeaffaire.com/diyshop.
This month, The Coca-Cola Company is pausing all digital advertising on social media platforms globally – for July at least and perhaps beyond.
James Quincey, Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, stated that this time will be used to reassess advertising standards and policies, and what should be expected of social media partners to rid the platforms of hate, violence and inappropriate content.
This decision comes as part of a broader boycott of Facebook’s platforms including Facebook itself and Instagram organised by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the NAACP, and other organizations called the “Stop Hate For Profit” campaign. The recent boycott campaign started with outdoor living brands such as The North Face and Patagonia. Other enterprise companies have since joined such as Unilever, Verizon, and support for the initiative has been voiced by Ben & Jerry’s and Magnolia Pictures. Diageo and Honda have since announced they will also pause paid advertising on major social media platforms this month.
Facebook has recently reconsidered its practices and will now ban advertising that presents races and/or religions as threats. However, this may not be sufficient to change the hate and harassment present on social media. An open letter by the ADL to all companies who advertise on Facebook sets out what is wrong with Facebook and what changes are needed.