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Sitting in dingy poorly lit rooms in covert office blocks in Estonia, Cairo, Dhaka and New Dehli, workers work through the night, doing a menial task for a measly wage. But rather than stitching together high-end sneakers or sewing buttons onto $200 pairs of jeans, the workers in this case sit in front of glowing computer screens, clicking on the paid advertisements that appear on websites. These click farms are ad fraud—a problem that has plagued online publishers since advertising first migrated online. And, as technology advances, fraudulent methodologies are becoming more sophisticated, turning this problem into a large-scale black market with potential to seriously undermine the value of the online metrics digital evangelists so often champion.
In more modern iterations of these fraudulent setups, the scammer might create a website and then start feeding ads onto it through the Google AdSense programme. Next, the scammer introduces a bot that emulates millions of human clicks per day, resulting in the fraudulent user account being credited.
Lindsay Mouat, the chief executive of the Association of New Zealand Advertisers (ANZA), says that research into this issue has already painted a troubling picture for the industry.
“A survey by ANZA’s US partner the Association of National Advertisers in late 2014 suggested almost a quarter of video ad impressions and more than half of third partysourced traffic is fraudulent,” says the ANZA head. “The study by online fraud detection firm White Ops analysed 181 campaigns from 36 major brand advertisers, which were tagged to identify bot fraud. During the study, 5.5 billion impressions in three million domains were measured over 60 days in line with industry spending patterns.”
The topline findings of this study reveal that large chunks of the impressions delivered were in fact facilitated through fraudulent activities: “Botnet controllers hijack everyday consumers’ identities and home machines to conduct ad fraud; almost a quarter (23 percent) of video ad impressions were identified as bot fraud; 11 percent of display ad impressions were classified as bot fraud; publishers who bought sourced traffic from a third party as a means to drive additional unique visitors to their site, had a bot fraud rate of 52 percent on that sourced traffic; programmatic display bot traffic averaged 17 percent bot fraud; and bot fraud for retargeted ads was 19 percent.”
What is most troubling about these stats is that advertising is increasingly being sold—especially in programmatic—in accordance with the number of impressions (or clicks) that are served. And if a large percentage of those clicks are actually generated through fraudulent means, then this in turn means that advertisers are paying for more than what they’re actually getting.
Given the money involved, this is something that the industry can’t ignore. The recent figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IABNZ) showed that advertisers spent $589 million on digital advertising over the course of 2014, leading the body’s chief executive Adrian Pickstock to suggest that interactive advertising had “almost certainly” overtaken newspaper ad spend. So even if the percentages quoted during the study are on the heavier side, this could still mean that a significant number of ad dollars are being paid toward bot rather than human views.
Can video ad fraud derail programmatic?
According to TubeMogul’s Q4 results, New Zealand’s programmatic video advertising market grew nearly three-fold the fourth quarter of 2014, with video ads available for real-time buying jumping 210 percent to 260 million auctions, from 90 million in the third quarter.
“Automated buying in New Zealand is advancing rapidly, underpinned by the desire of brand advertisers to drive transparency and efficiency in their ad spend,” said the company’s Australia and New Zealand managing director Sam Smith in a release at the time.
The problem, however, is that programmatic is often priced in terms of cost per thousand views (CPM). And this obviously isn’t ideal when statistics suggest that as much as 25 percent of all online video views are registered fraudulently through bot activity.
As illustrated by the growing demand in the programmatic market, this hasn’t yet stopped advertisers from spending ad dollars on programmatic ad-buying.
As OMD’s Andrew Reinholds points out: “Ultimately programmatic for OMD delivers such a cost-effective audience for our clients that even say if 25 percent of the clicks were fraudulent, the way we track and optimise, then the remaining 75 percent of the actual clicks are of real value for us and the CPA [cost per action]delivered will be well below other types of buys.”
And provided that programmatic players can limit the extent of ad fraud and keep this perception of adding value to the client’s offering, then it’s likely that the market will continue to grow.
A measurement problem
In his summary of the ad fraud study, Mouat urged the industry players to start working on a strategy to enable accurate measurement of online impressions.
“The industry needs to collaborate—advertisers, agencies, publishers—to substantially reduce bot fraud,” he says. “This [demands]transparency for sourced traffic, inclusion of language on non-human traffic in terms and conditions, being transparent on anti-fraud policy to all external partners, the use of independent monitoring and an ongoing analysis of fraud in advertising traffic.”
In traditional media channels, tracking of campaigns has relied on industry research conducted by independent third parties that aim to determine the number of readers, listeners or viewers that engage with a medium.
In the case of television, Nielsen provides data on the performance of shows; in radio, TNS has until recently conducted a twice-yearly survey on the number of listeners that tune in; and the magazine industry continues to rely on Nielsen and ABC figures for readership and circulation, respectively.
In each of these instances, media owners sell their ad slots based on information that’s provided by the independent third party. However, as things stand at the moment, the digital industry does not have a preferred supplier for online ratings, making it challenging for advertisers to determine what the most accurate data is.
To address this problem, the IABNZ last August released a document that compares the different measurement vendors available in New Zealand.
“No current audience measurement system is perfect – each has its own strengths and weaknesses so the Measurement Council helps progress improvements across multi channel platforms and keep New Zealand at the forefront of best practice,” says the online publication.
Nielsen, Comscore, Experian and Effective Measure are all pitted against each other in terms of methodology, metrics, positives and user interface, among other things. The IABNZ is not hedging its bets on any specific vendor, and instead says that its “approach is to provide the industry with objective information on the existing methodologies.”
In doing so, it places the onus on advertisers, media agencies and publishers to incorporate their own measures to ensure that their reporting is accurate.
A media agency yoke
Given media agencies’ role in buying the most suitable slots for their clients, it follows that they are principally responsible for safeguarding against fraudulent activities that may obscure the truth behind a campaign’s performance. For this reason, media agencies across New Zealand have consolidated their online campaign tracking capabilities and skills.
“Bot traffic impacts every single campaign online,” admits Nick Boulstridge, the head of digital media at VivaKi. And he says his company has responded though VivaKi Verified, a policy that sees VivaKi evaluate and score web advertising platforms in terms of how they monitor and filter out bot traffic and other fraud, as well as their process for vetting sites for brand safety and quality executions.
“We’ve done a lot of testing on this and found that our whitelist within AoD, our programmatic platform, does a very good job of keeping us off this sort of inventory,” he says.
Similarly, OMD’s managing director Andrew Reinholds says that his agency has also introduced a strategy that helps to identify fraudulent activity.
“When using programmatic buying we utilise cost-per-click (CPC) deals the majority of the time, which therefore sets us up to a risk of being charged for clicks that a ‘non-human’ has generated,” says Reinholds. “The way we counter this is by tracking from click-through to session generated on the website and then through to the desired action for the campaign.”
Taking these systematic steps allows OMD to spot anomalous trends—such as an uncharacteristically high bounce rate—that are consistent with bot activity.
Although the approach is proving effective, Reinholds says that the fight against ad fraud isn’t easy due to the levels sophistication involved.
“It is always going to be difficult to categorically identify the volume of ad fraud,” he says. “It’s been going on for years with search and Google rightly, when they identify suspected fraudulent activity, reimburse their clients. That said, there could be so much more going on that we don’t know about.”
The greyest area
One area that is proving particularly difficult to track is video advertising and Boulstridge believes that this is largely because of the system currently employed.
“Video reporting lags behind due to limitations within the VAST standard,” he says.
Last year, in an article published on AdExchanger.com writer Ryan Joe explained that if a “video was integrated using only the video ad-serving template, then marketers might as well dump their video ads into a titanium box for all the visibility they’ll get.” He went on to say that VAST video placements “don’t allow third-party tech vendors or advertisers to apply viewability technologies,” making it difficult to tell if an ad was viewed by a person.
One way to get around this problem is by incorporating a video player ad-serving interface definition (VPAID), which would support deeper analytics of the video ads running via a platform.
“Unfortunately in New Zealand, VPAID inventory is quite limited due to the dominance of YouTube (Google has rejected the VPAID standard),” says Boulstridge. “True viewability and verification is only really possible with VPAID.”
A Google spokesperson disagrees with this statement: “Google’s ad exchange allows buyers to serve VPAID ads to publishers that opt in.”
And while this might be true, the quick look at TrueView policies for ads served onto it explicitly states that “VPAID is not allowed on YouTube.” And a spokesperson from programmatic ad-buying platform TubeMogul says: “Except in certain circumstances, YouTube generally does not accept the VPAID format, which limits third-party reporting. Generally, [TubeMogul] supports publishers and supply-side platforms transitioning from VAST to the VPAID standard as it allows for more robust measurability.”
What this means is that advertisers are more often than not reliant on the statistics provided through Google’s interface and do not have recourse to independent verification of statistics.
“Advertisers have full transparency on the number and duration of views on YouTube, as well as other metrics,” says the Google spokesperson. “And using TrueView, advertisers on YouTube only have to pay when a viewer watches their video for 30 seconds, or to the end if the video is shorter.”
But Boulstridge isn’t convinced by this argument. “It is very easy to say that TrueView has delivered and only charged for the completed view, but was it human? Without third party tracking you have to accept what is provided by Google.”
Time for standardisation?
“Having a media owner responsible for the tracking and measurement of campaign performance is unusual,” says Reinholds. “By default it can create a perception of non-impartiality and conflict of interest. As with all other media, an independent third party means that these perceptions are removed and everyone is working on a level playing field.”
This is not to say that new media juggernauts such as Google and Facebook aren’t fighting the good fight against fraudulent online activities. Both organisations have invested heavily in technology that identifies ad fraud, and it is, after all, in their favour to have platforms that advertisers trust enough to spend money on. However, there is something icky about giving the publisher exclusive right to report on campaign performance.
So does this mean that it’s time to standardise the industry by incorporating third-party tracking facilitated by an independent third party?
Sam Smith, the Australia and New Zealand managing director of TubeMogul, believes that standardisation does have its merits but could also inadvertently slow down the battle against ad fraud.
“There are situations where standardisation by industry bodies is helpful,” says Smith. “The standards adopted for video viewability adopted around the world obviously helped advertisers have a single metric for whether a viewer had an opportunity to see an ad and what that means. That said, there is a wealth of data available to advertisers in digital advertising and we should not detract from the diversity of what is available by being too rigid as an industry.”
The very diversity of approaches currently being used by industry players means that fraudsters are fighting on myriad fronts—and this makes it more difficult for them to game the system.
However, there is also room for collaboration in this fragmented approach. As Smith explains: “We believe the best approach is to develop your own technology and also work with other leading players in the market.”
But even if the industry does collaborate and find ways to effectively mitigate the problem, there’s no guarantee that ad fraud will disappear. In much the same way that sweatshops are still producing fake products, there’ll always be unscrupulous characters who find ways to make illicit profits online.
- This story was originally published in the March/April edition of NZ Marketing.


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French customs officers found two suspicious bottles of Champagne during a regular vehicle check conducted on a highway near Dijon last week. After a closer inspection, the bottles proved to be filled with a liquid form of MDMA, according to Wine-Searcher. Officers also unearthed more than a kilo of amphetamines hidden under the spare wheel. The drugs are believed to be valued around $123,000.
This is not the first time criminals have transported drugs in wine bottles. Last year, three men were arrested in Australia for importing a few bottles from France, which turned out to be full of liquid amphetamines. Similarly, special forces in Bolivia busted a cocaine ring that was distributing drugs in wine bottles throughout South America.
PSA: Stop doing drugs and drink more wine. That Champagne would have been delicious on its own. [Wine-Searcher] [Photo: Flickr/Images Money]

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Who Are the Innovators in the Middle East?
The Middle East is becoming tech-driven rather than oil-dependent, with its diverse and dynamic innovative entrepreneurs.
Partly by oil, partly by war, the Middle East had long been a focus of global attention. But things have changed for quite a while – now one of the richest regions in the world is going to impress us with its innovative entrepreneurship.
Previously, EqualOcean published the 1H19 Middle East Investment Report addressing the VC investment trends in the region in the first half of 2019. In this article, we shift the spotlight on the best tech innovators in this region.
Enterprise services appears to be the most active sector in the Middle East recently. As our 1H19 VC Middle East Investment Report showed, the total deal value of enterprise services in the first half of 2019 amounted to USD 777.2 million, with a year-over-year growth rate of nearly 40 percent.
In this industry, Israel aces out the other countries in the region. 49 out of 72 to B service companies which got invested in the first half of 2019 are headquartered in Israel.
Among the 49 recently-funded Israeli to B startups, Aqua Security, Logz.io and Bizzabo are the three representative innovators. Aqua Security and Logz.io provide both security services across many cloud-native platforms, partnering with global tech behemoths like Microsoft and Amazon. Bizzabo helps event organizers with registration, ticketing, event marketing and so on.
Aside from these Israeli companies, Saudi Arabia also possesses a noteworthy startup - the Riyadh-based Foodics, which provides cloud-based restaurant management solutions.
The dominance of Israel in enterprise services is natural, given its high-level education and talent backup. Also, the lack of natural resources and geopolitical tensions without cease force the country to seek for technological chances in order to develop. According to the Israeli government, the country’s R&D investment as percent of GDP in 2017 ranked second worldwide, and the country has the third-largest number of companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange globally, following the U.S. and China.
Another factor that cannot be overseen is support from the other side of the globe. Bunches of American tech giants including Google, Intel, Apple have subsidiaries or R&D centers in Tel Aviv, the “Silicon Wadi” of Israel.
Auto & Mobility
The Middle East automotive market is currently in a state of flux, impacted by diverse challenges on a regional level and by the swiftly changing nature of car production globally.
Megatrends, such as shared mobility, electrification, connectivity and autonomous driving, are soon expected to impact the ME automotive & aftermarket industry.
The shared mobility market in the ME is expected to grow at 21% CAGR until 2023, though valued at around USD 900 million in 2018.
About 35,500 electric vehicles were sold in the region in 2018, which is lower than the number of developed economies. However, original equipment manufacturers such as Toyota and Nissan have been promoting hybrid cars in the region, which has triggered a recognizable shift in consumer preference for this technology, so the number is expected to increase in the region
Connectivity penetration rate in the ME reached around 17% in 2018 and is expected to rise at a CAGR of 22% until 2023.
Autonomous driving industry in the ME still has a long way to go, although the UAE ranks 7th on the global preparedness index according to a recent study by KPMG.
In the ME, Israel predominates in automotive technology innovation, if looking at financing events that occurred in the region.
Innoviz Technology is an Israel based high tech company that manufactures high-performance, solid-state LiDAR sensors and perception software that enable the mass-production of autonomous vehicles. The company just closed an extended Series C round of funding this year raising tens of millions of US dollars.
The Egypt-based company Swvl is a premium mass transit system that allows customers to book fixed rate rides on buses and vans. So far, it has closed 4 rounds of funding and raised over USD 80.5 million.
In the UAE, UDrive is the first pay-per-minute car sharing provider in Dubai which offers car rental through mobile access anywhere around the city. It is a super startup located in the Gulf Cooperation Council area.
The landscape of the health care industry in the Middle East is as uneven as that of enterprise services. Advanced med-tech companies and platforms redistributing regional medical resources pole apart geographically.
Israeli companies are dominating the relatively nascent med-tech market, spanning medicine-makers, AI-aided diagnosis and so on. EarlySense is one of the representative Israeli med-tech startups, with its product EarlyOn, a contact-free disease detection system.
According to the Middle East Medical Devices and Diagnostics Trade Association, the annual value of the medical technology market in the region will reach as much as USD 11 billion by 2021.
Vezeeta, an Egyptian digital healthcare platform, stands for another kind of health care entrepreneurship. These online platforms are dedicated to connecting patients and medical services providers, making medical services more accessible.
E-Commerce is one of the maturest industries in the Middle East. From pure marketplaces to e-retailers, the Middle East has a complete spectrum of e-commerce startups.
One of the fastest-growing e-commerce platforms is the Luxury Closet, where people can buy, sell and consign second-hand luxury goods. Another significant e-commerce player is Souq, a marketplace & e-retailer which was acquired by Amazon in 2017. (The two startups are both Dubai-based.)
The sector flourishes amid decreasing consumer confidence. Middle East consumers are switching from brick-and-mortar stores to online purchases because of the latter’s convenience and discounts, according to McKinsey. Online retail sales in the region are projected to grow at least by 20 percent annually, while the CAGR of brick-and-mortar sales is only 3 to 5 percent.
As a recently published report by Bain & Company estimated, the e-commerce market in MENA (the Middle East & North Africa) standing at USD 8.3 billion today could grow by 3.5 times to reach USD 28.5 billion by 2022.
Besides, the thriving of e-commerce in the Middle East cannot be separated from the development of last-mile delivery and logistics. Companies like the Dubai-based Fetchr have made online retail more convenient, thus more attractive for consumers.
Fintech startups in the Middle East usher in the best of time, owing to the burgeoning e-commerce and the nearly untapped huge fintech market - the mobile penetration rate in the United Arab Emirates is as much as 173% percent, the highest number worldwide, while 70 to 75% of the country’s transactions are still cash-based, for instance. As the millennials become more influential, online payment and other fintech sectors are bound to thrive.
The UAE is surely the fintech leader in the Middle East. According to the latest Global Financial Centres Index published in March, Dubai ranked 12th globally and was the only Middle Eastern city listed. Among hundreds of financial companies headquartered in the city, Network International, Sarwa.co and Bayzat are three representatives, focusing respectively on online payment solutions, personal investment assistance, and insurance.
Israeli startup Pagaya Investments is also a noteworthy game changer. The Tel Aviv-based fintech company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to manage investments.
Another top player is Fawry, an Egyptian digital payment platform. It enables consumers without bank accounts to transfer money via multiple channels, including mobile wallet, ATMs, brick-and-mortar retail stores.
The “Middle East” in this article includes Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen.


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Indonesia suspends imports of Indian buffalo meat
Despite the fact that Indonesia has become a large buyer of Indian buffalo meat for the last 5 years, as an attempt of reducing the dependency on Australian beef, last week, the Asian country placed a ban on beef imported from India. The head of government logistics agency Bulog told Indonesia's parliament "due to the lockdown … plus the development of the COVID-19 virus in India … we temporarily stopped the [buffalo meat] import plan," chief executive Budi Waseso said, according to Reuters.
The Indonesian authorities have allowed import permits for 80,000 tonnes of buffalo meat this year, of which 13,000 tonnes have already arrived prior to the Ramadam celebration. However, the ban is creating some important disruptions in the supply chain. "So the government in Indonesia has not decided on whether [to enforce] a ban [on buffalo meat imports] due to COVID-19 in India, but what we hear from Bulog is that imports will be postponed", commented Indonesian livestock consultant Robi Agustiar.
For now, the Aussie red meat industry seems to re-gain an advantage in the Indonesian market, as Australia represents one of the long-time beef suppliers.
Australian beef exports to South Korea have increased 2% in the first 5 months of the year, compa...


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LOUISVILLE, Ohio – Ohio State dairy economist Cam Thraen’s projected outlook for dairy says it’s only a matter of time until producers will see real changes in the bottom line.
Until then, dairymen face several months of uncertainty and low prices.
Slowed decline. Explaining the recent dairy price nosedive, Thraen pointed to a stabilization of cow numbers across the nation.
In 1990, there were more than 10 million cows in production across the country, but the dairy industry was also experiencing a long-term decline in the total dairy herd. That decline slowed after the 1996 farm bill to today’s nearly 9.2 million cows in production.
“The average milk per cow [output] grows at 2 percent a year. With more cows producing more, we definitely aren’t winning at that game,” he said.
Slumping demand. Margins are tight with grain and feed prices up and milk prices down drastically.
“It really puts significant pressure on dairies from a profitability sense.”
According to the economist, the real culprit for pricing is slumping demand.
“The real message here is the numbers keep creeping up. We’re producing more than the commercial market is willing to take,” he said.
Data presented during a Nov. 18 dairy outlook meeting in Louisville, Ohio, show increased market carryout each year since 1998. The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service figures show a 7 billion pound surplus brought into 2002.
The carryout surplus is projected to last until the third quarter of 2003.
“The industry geared up for consumption that disappeared in 2001-2002. There was nothing there. Numbers are going down every year,” he said.
The only safety valve is to produce less, voluntarily or involuntarily, or to get consumers to purchase more dairy products.
Economic factor. Since 1975, cheese consumption has increased from 14 pounds per capita to 30 pounds per capita in 2001, and fluid milk consumption has fallen from 300 pounds to 207 pounds per capita in 2002.
Commercial sales of butter, cheeses, nonfat dry milk and fluid milk haven’t held up and are blamed on the economic recession.
“It’s not a pricing issue, it’s an income issue. Sales at the restaurant level – the cheese on pizzas at Pizza Hut and all the cheeseburgers – have evaporated because people don’t eat out as much,” he said.
Strong growth in demand will be needed to keep prices up and pull milk through the market.
Good news ahead. But there’s good news for dairy producers who are struggling to make ends meet right now.
Milk production growth is cyclical in nature, typically four to seven quarters in length, and production is expected to turn down again.
“This is a good thing. We’ll get the supply back into balance with demand and prices will get better,” Thraen said.
(You can contact Andrea Myers at 1-800-837-3419, ext. 22, or by e-mail at email@example.com.)
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Celiac.com 09/28/2015 - The Irish Daily Star is reporting that more than two dozen inmates at the country's top security Portlaoise Prison are set to protest prison authorities' refusal to give them gluten-free bread and better food.
The inmates, including RIRA boss Michael McKevitt, say prison officials have broken an agreement to supply gluten-free bread as part of the prison diet.
According to the Daily Star, prisoners have begun stockpiling rubbish in preparation for a "dirty protest" in a bid to get the authorities to change their mind. The Prison Services have declined to comment. There has been no word about a direct connection to celiac disease in regards to the prisoners' demand for gluten-free bread.
Earlier this week, republican prisoners group Cogus issued a statement highlighted food as one of the prisoners' main complaints.
While that particular statement made no mention of gluten free bread, it read in part:
"The food has seriously deteriorated over the last number of months and in general is sub-standard, at times unfit for human consumption, comprising of basic small portions which are totally inadequate."
"This has resulted in men having to purchase food with the little money they have through the prison shop which charges extortionate prices. Numerous attempts have been made by the prisoners to resolve this issue but to no avail."
Stay tuned for more developments.
What do you think? Are prisoners entitled to gluten-free bread?
Read more at: The Irish Daily Star


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Thanks to Moscow’s Parallel import scheme, Russians will still be able to obtain the latest release iPhone 14, even if Apple has ceased sales operations in the country.
Denis Manturov, Russian Trade and Industry Minister, was asked in a report if the new iPhone 14 will be available to Russian consumers, and he simply responded: “Why not? If consumers want to buy these phones, yes. There will be the opportunity.”
In March of this year, Apple chose to join the sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine by suspending all online product sales and banning all shipments to the country. The Russian government, on the other hand, has devised a workaround that will enable Russian consumers to obtain items that are not available in the country.
They call it “parallel imports,” and it involves Russian shops looking for third-party sellers in the country where Apple operates, then importing it to the country since this form of import does not require approval from the manufacturing company.
Then, as expected, pre-orders for the iPhone 14 began to appear on the Russian mobile network MTS. The iPhone costs about 84,990 roubles ($1,398). The only disadvantage is that there is still a chance that the pre-order will be canceled if the Russian store does not get any available stock, and delivery might take up to nearly 4 months (120 days).


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NDC bike lockers are full – join the waitlist.
By: Emma Carey
Instructor Kevin Boon likes to combine his cardio with his commute by cycling to Red River College’s Notre Dame Campus for work.
Boon bikes to work because of the College’s Sustainability Office’s promotion and Winnipeg becoming increasingly bike-friendly.
Boon said he wishes he had a bike locker.
Bike lockers at the NDC were introduced as part of RRC’S first phase in their Transportation Plan. The Transportation Plan offers sustainable transportation options.
Current staff and students can apply to rent one of the 34 lockers through the Campus Store. The lockers had a monthly $10 rental fee when first introduced in October 2017 but are now free.
There are no lockers left at NDC.
Manager Anthony Carl Francisco at the Notre Dame Campus Store said more staff than students occupy the lockers. There are two staff and one student on the waitlist.
For Boon, having a locker would make him more likely to cycle as his bike would need less maintenance since a locker would keep it protected from the elements.
RRC instructor Daniel Enns bikes nearly every day to the NDC and has had a bike locker since they first arrived. Enns said the lockers are quick and easy to use, they keep his bike sheltered, and provide a convenient place to store his helmet and jacket.
“It’s been pretty painless,” he said.
The Exchange District Campus doesn’t offer bike lockers to students and staff. There are indoor and outdoor spaces for bikes but Tim Hoover, a student at the EDC, said it’s not nearly enough.
“Bike parking here is brutal,” said Hoover.
Hoover said he doesn’t trust locking his bike outside but he knows if they wants a space inside bikers must arrive early.
Students can also store bikes in the basement of the Paterson GlobalFoods Institute.
“If the college really cares about sustainability and climate change, they need to step up the bike parking situation big time,” said Hoover. “Bike lockers at the Exchange District Campus would be a great first step.”
Read RRC’s phase one of the Transportation Plan: https://cpb-ca-c1.wpmucdn.com/www.rrc.ca/dist/c/13/files/2017/09/RRC-Transportation-Plan-Phase-1-Final.pdf.


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Windstream Holdings, based in Little Rock, Arkansas, is a privately held communications and software company that offers managed communications services, including SD-WAN and unified communications as a service (UCaaS), and high-capacity bandwidth and transport services to businesses across the United States. Its fastgrowing Kinetic by Windstream division provides premium broadband, entertainment and security services to residential and business customers in 18 states, primarily in rural areas.
Windstream had set the bar high for performance in 2020, including a plan to add 40,000 net-new subscribers and customers. “Any telco will tell you that’s an ambitious goal because it requires a hyper-focus on lowering churn as well as achieving aggressive growth,” said Lorenzo Clark, a vice president of sales at Windstream. “But we wanted to challenge ourselves.”
The opportunity for Windstream not only to reach but also surpass that goal emerged early in the year — and in dramatic fashion. When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the U.S., a large swath of the population was suddenly working or learning from home. The demand for fast, reliable internet service skyrocketed, creating pressure on Windstream to install and provide service to customers at a much higher volume than it had anticipated for 2020.
Most companies treat marketing and sales as church and state. But we saw an opportunity to change the relationship dramatically. We went from greeting one another in passing to becoming joined at the hip.
Lorenzo Clark, a Vice President of Sales at Windstream
When Clark joined Windstream in 2019, the former NFL player immediately noticed that the marketing and sales organizations weren’t working as a cohesive team. He said marketing didn’t fully understand the sales strategy and processes, and sales didn’t fully comprehend the marketing strategy, customer profiles and messaging in the marketplace.
“Most companies treat marketing and sales as church and state. But we saw an opportunity to change the relationship dramatically. By creating synergies across both functions, we’ve created the right environment for success. We went from greeting one another in passing to becoming joined at the hip,” said Clark.
He added, “Sales and marketing need one another to be successful. Working together, they create more value and have more impact — like Batman and Robin, or peanut butter and jelly.”
Another ambitious goal that Windstream had set for 2020 was to improve its marketing efficacy while also reducing ad spend.
"Marketing dollars are sunk costs, and it’s imperative to have visibility into the performance of those dollars,” said Clark. “Marketing can spend millions driving quality leads, but if the sales team doesn’t convert those opportunities to customers, it’s a loss. Likewise, you can have the world’s greatest sales team, but if the lead quality isn’t there, that’s also a loss.”
In addition, the sales team for Kinetic, Windstream’s high-speed internet division, realized that its process for doing quality assurance on sales calls was inefficient. It needed a conversation intelligence solution to improve QA efficiency, which would, in turn, reduce labor costs and improve agent coaching.
“Our QA agents were only listening to 0.5% of total calls. Based on this small sample, they were assuming what agents were doing on all calls. But we couldn’t be sure those assumptions were correct,” said CJ Barnhart, Kinetic Quality Assurance Manager. “In addition, QA agents were spending a lot of time manually looking for sales calls to coach agents on, which was driving up labor costs.”
With Invoca, we can tie our marketing to a purchase, and that visibility lets us optimize our marketing spend and campaign performance. If we find a campaign isn’t meeting expectations, we can shift dollars to higher-performing campaigns and drive higher lead quality.
Lorenzo Clark, a Vice President of Sales at Windstream
Windstream was ready to reach its customers and exceed its goals because of strategic changes and investments it had made prior to the pandemic. That included creating stronger alignment between its marketing and sales functions and adopting Invoca’s AI-powered conversation intelligence platform for both teams.
Unlocking full-funnel visibility of online and offline marketing performance
“The Invoca platform has allowed us to unlock a ‘full-funnel’ view of our marketing performance that incorporates both online and offline,” said Clark. “That’s important for a company like Windstream because 60% of the leads we generate online will pick up the phone and call us.”
He added, “Not having visibility into 60% of your traffic makes it really difficult to manage the media mix and optimize which tactic you’re going to use from week to week and month to month. Now, we can get a read on lead quality because we can see what’s happening on sales calls and also track sales performance on a lead-by-lead basis.”
“Prior to using Invoca, we really had no visibility into which tactics and messages were successful at driving traffic,” said Melinda Russell, director of digital marketing at Windstream. “That made optimizing our campaigns virtually impossible. Now, we utilize Invoca insights to inform our media mix and our spend into high-performing channels.”
With Invoca, Windstream can now tie their marketing to a purchase, and that visibility enables them to optimize marketing spend and campaign performance. “If we find a campaign isn’t meeting expectations, we can shift dollars to higherperforming campaigns and drive higher lead quality,” said Clark.
The marketing team is also taking the full-funnel view enabled by Invoca platform and ingesting it back into its martech stack. “It creates a 360-loop for ongoing campaign optimization, targeting, and more. We can reach further with fewer resources by attacking our day-to-day in a more targeted way, which is extremely powerful,” he said.
Exceeding goals and earning recognition
“We’ve already been able to maximize our performance and optimize our marketing spend, which has led to increased profitability, even when you normalize for the COVID-19 effect,” said Clark. Windstream achieved 150% of its 2020 net subscriber goal after just 10 months and realized 7x ROI for the Invoca solution in the first eight months of use. “We’ve been able to reduce our cost-per-acquisition spend by about 17% because we’re getting better quality leads.”
Russell said, “Over the past year, we have transformed inside sales into a performance-based environment and Invoca’s technology supports that business characteristic. Our partnership with Invoca has produced a strong ROI. Plus, winning ‘Rookie of the Year’ at this year’s Invoca Summit Awards feeds our competitive nature. We’re prepared to go to the next level.”
Improving the contact center experience
Invoca enabled Windstream’s marketing organization to create more personalized experiences for customers who contact the call center by creating clear “swim lanes” for inbound traffic. That strategy prevents customers from being transferred multiple times before reaching the correct department. “Invoca has helped us to address the most significant pain point for new and existing customers,” said Clark. “We’ve been able to lower our transfer rates by 750 basis points. That’s significant not only because we’re saving on labor costs, but we’re also improving the customer experience overall.”
Automating sales quality assurance and improving coaching
With Invoca, the Kinetic sales team is no longer just performing QA on a small sample of the 30,000 phone calls they receive each month. Now, they’re able to automatically QA 100% of the phone calls they receive, without any lift from their QA team. Kinetic simply sets up its criteria for a successful sales call in Invoca— such as if the agent greets the caller properly, asks for the sale, and handles any objections that arise — and Invoca’s AI scores each call accordingly.
Additionally, Invoca gives Windstream’s sales team automated scorecards so they can see each agent’s strengths and areas for improvement. This gives supervisors more time to be analytical and solve problems, rather than listening to calls. As a result, Kinetic managers can identify trends more quickly and give better coaching to agents.
“We can now monitor more calls and get the supervisor more information on their agents so that they can coach those that were truly driving down performance, not the ones that may have had one or two bad days,” said Barnhart.
Invoca’s automated QA also helps Kinetic’s sales agents stay compliant with industry regulations. Customer proprietary network information (CPNI) infractions can be extremely costly for businesses, with fines up to $1 million. In the past, Kinetic was only able to listen to a small portion of calls to ensure compliance. This left them open to potential fines and infractions. But with Invoca, they now can ensure that they’re compliant on all calls.
Building a more efficient and proficient ecosystem for marketing and sales
“We’re a better marketing organization because we have a strong partnership with sales,” said Aaron Pierce, vice president of marketing at Windstream. “Our teams have realized that we make each other better — I think that’s the biggest win. And now, when we have a problem, we can put all the smartest people together in the room to tackle it.”
Windstream’s adoption of Invoca is also supporting the company’s ongoing brand transformation efforts. The company has made significant investments to expand its product portfolio with next-generation technology and services and advanced functionality to support the growing needs of its customers. And Windstream has been investing deeply to enable its internal customers as well, including partnering with technology providers like Five9 and Salesforce to advance the goal of creating an efficient and proficient ecosystem for sales and marketing at the company.
“We’ve incorporated Invoca into the very foundation of our ecosystem,” said Clark. “And now that we’re starting to use conversation intelligence, we’re building customer profiles and gaining deeper insight into how Windstream’s customers want to be treated. That knowledge will allow us to provide our customers with the experience, products, and services they want at a price they can afford, and give them the support they need when they need it. And that can help us position Windstream as the obvious choice across the telco industry.”
The Results from Invoca Marketing Attribution:
- 7x ROI within the first eight months
- 150% of 2020 net subscriber goal after 10 months
- 17% reduction in paid search CPA
The Results from Invoca Automated Call QA:
- 40% increase in average revenue per sales call
- 27% decrease in calls where agent failed to overcome caller hesitation
- 5% increase in script and sales process adherence
We can now monitor more calls and get the supervisor more information on their agents so that they can coach those that were truly driving down performance, not the ones that may have had one or two bad days.
CJ Barnhart, Kinetic Quality Assurance Manager at Windstream
Want to learn more about Invoca? Request your personalized walkthrough of the platform.


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A company from Japan has an innovation that can turn our window panes into solar-energy catchers that can wrangle power from low and invisible light.
The invention uses glass that can utilize indoor and residual light and could supplant some of the energy generated by bulky rooftop solar panels. And unlike its common roof-based counterpart, the innovation reportedly doesn't need rare and costly metals.
"The product itself inside, everything in here is made of very, very easy-to-find materials," inQs Chief International Officer Rike Wootten told the online publication.
Using windows to harvest light energy isn't entirely new. The tech is generally expected to complement rooftop systems, though.
Researchers working on another type of window project have so far obtained around a 10% efficiency, CNET reports. By comparison, typical solar panels can operate with up to a 22% efficiency rate or more, with breakthroughs regularly announced that have the potential to improve performance, further transforming our energy system.
Windows could perhaps power nearby lamps or automated blinds in homes. A skyscraper loaded with them could feasibly provide electricity for break rooms and printers. However, they would need to be wired into structures, which could be a deterrent for some people considering the option, all per CNET.
InQs is adding a unique product to the abundance of inventions in the solar sector, but details on how the tech works are a little light.
The company's website bills the glass as colorless and transparent, providing power generation, lighting, and heat shielding. A fact sheet says the tech can be installed as an inner pane, making retrofits in windows and even tabletops easy. The power can be stored in a battery for later use. It's all made without the use of "harmful chemicals.".
The fact sheet touts a 40% savings in heating and cooling costs, as well.
CNET's Jon Reed, who saw the tech at the Vegas show, has perhaps the best description of its ability.
"The key to transparent solar tech is that it doesn't capture the energy from the visible light spectrum. Generally, that means it harnesses ultraviolet and infrared light, allowing the rest to pass through," he wrote.
If inQs' glass can reliably capture low light, it could provide a solar option that will work mostly anywhere. But it might be a while before the glass arrives stateside. CNET reports that inQs is making the windows in Tokyo, and the product isn't available outside of Japan.
For its part, the inQs team seems bullish on the invention.
It "opens the door to a new era of power generation," the company website states.
Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the coolest innovations improving our lives and saving our planet.


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A few days ago, the Realme 10 was suddenly discovered on several certification websites. Now that the company’s new smartphone has been discovered in yet another certification database, the listing has nevertheless provided some vital information.
For those who don’t know, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer is getting ready to introduce the new Realme 10 series phones in 2019. However, the gadget was discovered on important certification websites before any official notification, including BIS, NBTC, EEC, and Indonesia Telecom certification websites. Recently, it was even discovered mentioned on the IECEE database. The device’s battery capacity is now listed on the CB test certification, along with the model number RMX3630.
Notably, this is the identical model number that was discovered on the entries on the certification databases from Indonesia Telecom, NBTC, BIS, and EEC. While earlier sightings of the Realme 10 did not provide any additional information, the most recent certifications have shown that a big 4,880mAh battery will be used to power the smartphone.
In other words, the gadget will have a battery with a rate capacity of 4,880mAh, when an usual battery would have a capacity of roughly 5,000mAh.
Unfortunately, the new certification website just provided this information; further information on the future item is still a mystery. Although more information should become available in the upcoming weeks given that its launch is still a few months away. So stay tuned for further information on this amazing phone.


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A repeat offender stealing from shops was causing havoc in Cork city where shop owners are employing people and doing their best, a sentencing judge declared.
Judge Olann Kelleher said courts had a duty to protect shops in such circumstances, as he jailed Vandana Munteanu of 50 Orchard Court, Blackpool, Cork for 10 months.
The 24-year-old confessed to her part in shoplifting on December 4, 2017, at Aldi, Westside retail park, Ballincollig, and more recently on February 25 at Kids Care, North Main St, Cork.
Sergeant John Kelleher said the defendant was one of three women who went into the Kids Care shop on February 25 when staff were distracted by their behaviour as one of them took €400 worth of items and put them into her skirts before walking out of the shop.
“They were followed and all of the property was recovered,” Sgt Kelleher said.
The sergeant also described what happened in the previous incident at Aldi back on December 4, 2017. Again, three women entered the shop and €103 worth of items were taken away concealed in skirts.
Ms Munteanu, aged 24, pleaded guilty to her part in both thefts.
Sgt Kelleher said she had 35 previous convictions, including 23 related to theft.
Defence solicitor Frank Buttimer said the defendant had co-operated and pleaded guilty.
Judge Olann Kelleher said: “She is causing havoc in this city. She has been getting short custodial sentences but those don’t seem to be having any effect. The court has a duty to protect shops which are employing people in Cork and doing the best they can.”
The judge imposed a 10-month jail term. Recognisances in the event of an appeal were set at €750 plus independent surety of €750.


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The commerce and industry ministry is planning to ask the external affairs ministry to resolve the issue of granting faster visas for Chinese technicians, The Economic Times (ET) reports. Chinese technicians and engineers need to visit India to set up factories and machinery in the country, and a faster visa could make this process smoother.
Citing an unnamed government official, the report said that some industries require technicians to visit the plants. According to the official, these visits are an important part of the process of setting up a factory and would help India's manufacturing and export sectors if the visits were made easier.
Exporters have highlighted the issue of delays in visas for Chinese technicians. The report said that this affects companies involved in making non-leather footwear and sports shoes.
A delay in visas results in delayed investments. An industry expert said this is especially significant in the wake of global companies looking to divert their business from China to India.
Other than this, the exporters have requested the commerce ministry to allow them to pay their default-related liabilities in instalments. They have cited the export support schemes to seek relief. Government officials aware of the matter said that the ministry is looking into this demand, the report added.
Elaborating on this, the officials said that the proposal would be examined in accordance with the exemptions applicable for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) under the "Vivad Se Vishwas" scheme.
EB-5 visa: What is it, who can apply and how it is different from H1-B visa
US extends visa walk-in interview waiver for more applicants; check here
Indian applications for US EB-5 visa on the rise; China tops with 90% share
Germany announces relaxation in its Schengen visa rules for Indians
H1-B visa deadline likely to get extended as users face technical glitches
Retailers see top line growth on low base in January-March quarter
Account Aggregator at heart of creating inclusive growth in India: Nilekani
BSNL looks to ring in 100 million 4G customers in a couple of years
Govt extends last date to submit bids under 7th tranche of coal auctions
Indian IT firms to see revenue decelerate by 5%: S&P Global Ratings
A number of firms could not deliver the services and products as per government contracts due to Covid-19. Under the scheme, the performance security, bid security, and liquidated damages forfeited from these firms would be refunded, the ET report said.


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L&T Technology Services Limited (LTTS) and Ansys have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish the LTTS-Ansys Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Digital Twin.
The centre will support LTTS in demonstrating industry use cases, develop future facing solutions, and enable its customers to optimize design, manufacturing, and supply chain processes.
Ansys' Twin Builder solution will allow LTTS to further expand its market share in digital twin areas.
The MoU signed will see the companies setup CoE for Digital Twin in Chennai with plans to expand in Vadodara and Bangalore as well.
The digital twin market is valued at USD 6.5 billion and is expected to reach USD 125.7 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 39.48 per cent.
Both companies believe that the CoE will help LTTS showcase digital twin proofs of concept to its customers and speed up their adoption. The collaboration will also enable LTTS to meet the growing demand for digital twin solutions and provide access to emerging talent in the technology market.
The joint efforts of Ansys and L&T Technology Services will create opportunities for innovation and growth in the digital twin industry, providing a new level of insight and control to manufacturers. With the digital twin market projected to experience exponential growth in the coming years, this collaboration will position both companies at the forefront of the trend.
LTTS recently launched its next-generation IoT-based engineering practice on Digital Twins and is expected to derive extreme value from this collaboration to bring the benefits of digital twins to a range of industries, from oil and gas to automotive, aerospace, and defense, among others. By leveraging Ansys' simulation tools, the CoE will help accelerate the digital thread for manufacturing and industrial enterprises.
In a statement, Abhishek Sinha, Chief Operating Officer and Board Member at L&T Technology Services Limited, said “We are pleased to collaborate with Ansys which will help our customers visualise every aspect of production and gain actionable insights. With Ansys’ simulation tools, we will be able to accelerate the digital thread of enterprises across manufacturing and industrial segments in particular. This association with Ansys will help accelerate the adoption of digital twin technologies and solve complex problems for our global clientele.”


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This effect has been confirmed empirically by a team of marketing researchers who tracked three businesses for a year after they offered a social coupon. All three companies lost money the month they offered the coupon and will have difficulty earning it back. According to analysis done by the two researchers,
V. Kumar and Bharath Rajan, the companies would need 15, 18, and 98 months (almost eight years) to earn back their lost profits. The reason? “The three businesses had difficulty retaining most of the new customers who were attracted to the coupon offers,” the two researchers wrote in the MIT Sloan Management Review.


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Falmouth will get new Ninety Nine Restaurant
Woburn chain continues its expansion on Cape Cod with a fourth location. FALMOUTH — The Ninety Nine Restaurant and Pub chain plans to open its fourth Cape Cod restaurant next month in Falmouth.
The restaurant will be on Route 28, near the intersection of Dillingham Avenue, at the site of a former Bickford's Family Restaurant, said Brad Schiff, vice president for marketing.
The restaurant will seat 170 diners and employ about 70 staff members, Schiff said.
The Woburn chain has made a rapid expansion on Cape Cod since opening its first Cape restaurant in Mashpee in 1996. It also has restaurants on Route 28 in West Yarmouth and Centerville. The Mashpee restaurant is among the chain's five busiest, Schiff said.
"Cape Cod has been a terrific place for us," Schiff said. "We're delighted to be going into Falmouth."
The chain also has a restaurant in Wareham, just over the Bourne line.
The restaurants' casual atmosphere and reasonable prices have helped support its expansion throughout New England. The Falmouth location will mark its 76th restaurant in New England. The chain expects to open 12 restaurants this year.
Since it will occupy an existing building, the Falmouth restaurant will not be a prototypical, standalone Ninety Nine Restaurant, but it will feature decor consistent with the chain's other restaurants, Schiff said.
It will serve lunch, dinner and take-out. Lunch ranges from about $5.99 for chicken pot pie to $7.59 for the chicken Caesar salad. Dinner ranges from about $8.99 for the fish and chips to $12.59 for a 12-ounce sirloin steak.
Schiff said he isn't concerned that the Falmouth restaurant will steal customers from the Mashpee location. He said he believes the population on the Upper Cape can support the two restaurants.
The original Ninety Nine restaurant was founded in Boston in 1952. Founder Charles Doe is retired and living on Cape Cod.
His son Chad Doe is the company president.
The chain employs about 5,000 and has some 17 million customers.


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ECIC has been featured in a KZN publication, Mercury, under the topic Exporter Awards Winners.
ECIC was a sponsor at the KZN Chamber of Commerce and Industry Exporter of the Year awards 2016. The gala dinner was held at the Durban ICC last night, 20 October 2016.
The overall winner in the manufacturing category at the Exporter of the Year awards in the KZN region was Sappi Southern Africa.
Marketing and Brand Specialist, Odirile Ramasodi, was part of the awards adjudication process on behalf of the ECIC.
Please find attached the article for your perusal.


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An international accessories store has officially opened at Springfield Town Center – bringing a variety of accessories to the mall’s grand courtyard.
The opening of Lovisa, a fashion accessories store – which follows the first location in Australia in 2010 – brings a new brand to the mix of new tenants at the centre.
BoxLunch Gifts is also expected to open at the mall soon, rivaling Lovisa’s accessories collection with a curated collection of licensed and non-licensed merchandise.
Another new retailer – Canadian company Showcase – also has plans to open in the centre. The opening comes as the retailer plans a 12-state expansion this summer with 27 floors. The company was founded in Canada in 1994 and aims to provide consumers with new and hard-to-find trends in health, beauty, home, toys, candy and food.
Shawarma Taco will also serve a mix of tacos and shawarma in the high-end food court, according to the mall’s website. The company did not immediately say when it plans to open.
Elevation Lifestyle, a company that sells all-natural home and body care products, also hosted a grand opening over the weekend. The business is located on the upper level of the mall near JCPenny. The products are said to be made from natural and organic ingredients.
Highs & Lows also opened on the lower level next to Dave & Busters earlier in the year, bringing a mix of exotic foods, candy and sodas to downtown.
The LEGOLAND Discovery Center is also still on the way. A company spokesperson said the store will still open sometime this year, but a more up-to-date timeline was not available.


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China's annual production capacity of electric motor vehicles will reach 1 million units by 2020, a senior official forecast.
As the world's largest auto market, new energy vehicles are key to the development of China's auto industry, said Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang.
Wan said automobile exhaust emissions accounted for 70 percent of air pollution in big cities of China.
While extolling new energy cars, Wan said promotion of public transportation would also help to ease the problems caused by expanding car ownership in China.
Public transport should also be the top priority for use of new energy automobiles in China, he said.
Twenty-five Chinese cities have jointed a pilot program co-sponsored in 2009 by Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Finance, National Development and Reform Commission, and Ministry of Industry and Information, to promote energy-efficient and new-energy vehicles.
The project aimed to replace public transport vehicles with electric vehicles to support the development of electric vehicle industry, Wan said.
A total of 8.5 billion yuan (1.28 billion U.S. dollars) from the capital market has entered the electric car industry since the debut of the project in 2009, he said.
China became the world's largest auto market, as Chinese automakers sold 13.6 million vehicles last year, and the market continued to grow rapidly in the first half of 2010 with sales up almost 48 percent year on year to 9.02 million units.
The government announced in June that it would subsidize the purchase of green cars in a bid to reduce vehicle emissions. Subsidies of up to 60,000 yuan will be given to buyers of completely electric vehicles in pilot cities like Shanghai, Changchun, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Hefei.


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These guys have it down.
Ricardo Reyes and Elon Musk, from Molly McHugh’s piece in Wired:
“In other cars, all the systems work separately—there are different processors for different parts: the safety system here, the cruise control here,” says Reyes. “And that’s the evolution of building cars in stages, whereas our car has a central operating system, more like what your phone has.”
“Car-makers need to think of their cars as connected devices, that the way a car should operate, like your cell phone or laptop so you can do improvements over the air,” says Musk. “… It’s important for safety and functionality that car-makers move to a connected philosophy … It’s kind of odd to have a computing device that’s not connected.”
You can be sure that if Apple chooses to do a car, these are key philosophies they will incorporate. Apple is all about integrated hardware and software because of the superior experience this provides. It’s very possible they can just come in and built a better car than most manufacturers.
Great thanks to Cody Burleson for writing these instructions. My VM was nearly 55GB; it is now just over 24GB. Make sure, though, that there is no unallocated portion of the C: drive in Windows, as this method will not touch them.


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iiNet founder and former CEO, Michael Malone, has joined the NBN board, filling a vacancy left Internode co-founder, Simon Hackett, who resigned to focus on his involvement in ASX-listed company, Redflow Limited.
Four music labels have joined forces and launched legal action aimed at forcing Australia’s largest Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to a major piracy-linked BitTorrent site.
ASX-listed TPG Telecom has seen its net profit soar 90 per cent to $202.5 million for the first half of FY16, ending January 31. This is in comparison to the same time last year.
Soon to be TPG-owned internet service provider (ISP), iiNet, has launched a new permanent installation at the Perth Arena, the iiNet Social Post.
Netflix announced today that it will begin operations in Australia and New Zealand on 24 March. The popular streaming service for movies and TV shows has been long awaited by Australian fans, who have taken to using VPN services in order to watch the...
The producer of Oscar-winning film, Dallas Buyers Club, has taken its hunt for pirates of the film to Australia, after filing a barrage of antipiracy lawsuits in the US. But at least one Australian Internet service provider is pushing back out of con...
iiNet’s content delivery network (CDN) distributed 1.2 petabytes (PB) or 1228.8 terabytes (TB) of video and music data in December 2013 alone.
Australian telecommunications provider, iiNet, has unveiled a range of 4G mobile plans with no lock-in contracts
The battle between Australian ISP iiNet and a consortium of 34 film companies has taken another turn after the recent appeal dismissal, with an Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft press release stating the companies' intention to take their...
Australian Internet service provider iiNet has proposed the establishment of an independent body to police copyright infringement by Internet users.
Service providers, rights holders and internet users are anxiously awaiting news of whether the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) will further appeal the decision against it today by the Federal Court, but both the industry body a...
iiNet yesterday launched a range of mobile phone plans, allowing existing customers of its fixed broadband offerings to bundle mobile services into their bill. But there's just one catch; customers will need to bring their own phone.
National broadband company iiNet has extended its popular BoB integrated ADSL router product line with what it has billed as the first product to come out of its new in-house development labs -- a younger sibling dubbed BoB Lite.
Optus has finally brought out a 1TB plan after its competitors kickstarted the terabyte trend.
Internet service provider (ISP) iiNet (ASX:IIN) has announced the opening of a new in-house research and development division for the production of media devices, specifically focusing on the next generation of modems.
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First impression on unpacking the Q702 test unit was the solid feel and clean, minimalist styling.
For work use, Microsoft Word and Excel programs pre-installed on the device are adequate for preparing short documents.
The Fujitsu LifeBook UH574 allowed for great mobility without being obnoxiously heavy or clunky. Its twelve hours of battery life did not disappoint.
The screen was particularly good. It is bright and visible from most angles, however heat is an issue, particularly around the Windows button on the front, and on the back where the battery housing is located.
My first impression after unboxing the Q702 is that it is a nice looking unit. Styling is somewhat minimalist but very effective. The tablet part, once detached, has a nice weight, and no buttons or switches are located in awkward or intrusive positions.
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SYDNEY—Lawmakers from the U.K. and Canada criticized Facebook ban on Australian users sharing news articles, and they said the tech giant could attract more scrutiny around the world as authorities grow increasingly concerned about its market power.
Facebook removed news from its platform in Australia in response to legislation that would effectively compel it to pay traditional media companies for content. The Australian legislation, supported by media companies including News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., has been widely watched globally and could offer a model for other countries that want to require big tech companies to pay publishers for their content.
Back-to-School Sale: Extra 25% off sitewide - JCPenney coupon code
Walmart coupon: $20 off your $50+ order
- Best Buy:
Save 15% or more on the Best Buy deal of the Day
Up to 15% off + free shipping at Wayfair
Nike Gear Up for Fall Sale: Up to 50% off
- Dick's Sporting Goods:
10% off sitewide - Dick's Sporting Goods coupons


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Evolution Gaming Adds New Titles to its Roster
The mighty Evolution Gaming, best known as the kings of the Live Casino, have just announced the release of some brand new games, ones that will no doubt excite casino gamers across Europe.
The games in question are 2 Hand Casino Hold’em, a variant of the world’s most popular PvP poker game, and Free Bet Blackjack. These games will hit casinos everywhere only a couple weeks after they officially launched their licensed Deal or no Deal game, which comes courtesy of a deal they signed with brand owners Endemol Shine Group.
Evolution Gaming’s new blackjack title provides players with a few unique opportunities to play. They will be given the chance to “Free Split” their bets on all pairs except for tens and “Free Double-Down” on all 9, 10 and 11 totals. There are also a number of side bets to make things more interesting, including the classic 21+3 and the old-school Six Card Charlie, where more cards equate to bigger wins.
There is also a side bet available on their 2 Hand Casino Hold’em game. In this case players can stake money on pocket aces, adding an extra dimension to the play and potentially winning more money as well.
Evolution Gaming are one of the biggest names—if not the biggest—in Live Casino gaming. They are the developer that every operator wants to partner with and that every player wants a piece of. They have one of the largest selections of Live Casino games, which are streamed live from locations across Europe, and thanks to this recent announcement that collection will expand even more.
Their games typically come loaded with a host of features, and their latest two releases are no exception. One of the standout features of Evolution Gaming’s new poker title is the fact that there are no queues. The mix of Live and Virtual aspects is finely balanced and ensures that things move slowly and smoothly, with everyone invited to sit down and play regardless of how many people are already active.
There are also many more games played per hour thanks to this format. According to an official report by Evolution Gaming, two-handed games result in 70% more action over the course of a single play session, which means more players can place more bets, allowing everyone, from player to casino and supplier, to benefit.
A representative of Evolution Gaming commented on the release of the two new titles, saying that Free Bet Blackjack is “based on one of the most popular modern variants of blackjack” while 2 Hand Casino Hold’em increases “betting options and chances to win.” They added that they were looking forward to seeing how these games would be received by their growing fanbase and were confident they would be successful.
In addition to these two fast-paced additions to their roster, and the aforementioned Deal or no Deal, Evolution Gaming also recently launched Super Sic Bo. As the name suggests, this game is based on the popular number-crunching game of chance, but a multiplier is added to give players a chance to win as much as 1,000x.


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PS3 Hitting The Road In Japan
Up to this point, things have been quiet on the Sony PR front in terms of Japan. Well, what better way to liven things up than by taking your new product on a tour of the country? It's a full-on marketing campaign for Japan, and although it may be starting a touch late, it's still coming strong.
In the latest Famitsu, SCE's Masatsuka Saeki revealed that Sony will be launching a nationwide retail tour for the PS3. The cornerstone of the program involves the company putting playable PS3 units in over 1,000 retail stores all across Japan. Sony intends to kick things off the first part of November.
Additionally, the PS3 will be getting an official Sony-endorsed advertisement program, which is likely to include television commercials and hotspot ads in magazines. Saeki wouldn't go into details, but he did imply that these ads would give the nod to developers who displayed PS3 titles at last month's Tokyo Game Show.
Famitsu took things a step further by suggesting ideas for Sony's campaign. They believe Sony should continue the tradition of closing out ads with catchy slogans; the original PS1 ads (around 1994) ended with, "All games are collected here." In 2003, Sony promoted a PS2 price drop with "Sorry to have kept you waiting." And when the PSP launched in 2004, it hit shelves to the tune of "Take all your games with you." Will Sony take a similar route with the PS3? That remains to be seen.
For now, we'll assume Famitsu is on-target with this report, but we'll be looking for official details from Sony in the coming weeks.
10/21/2006 Ben Dutka


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Newton, Mass.—Industrial Video and Control (IVC) has applied for a patent on a new technology they have developed for their industrial camera enclosures. Designated the L-series, these new camera enclosures will be made from carbon fiber compounds and are designed to operate in hazardous areas rated Class I Division 1. The first L-series cameras are PTZ cameras with multiple camera imaging and lighting options including thermal. The first product in this series is a Class 1 Division 1 portable PTZ camera with built-in illuminators that weights only 25 pounds. It is designed for portability and other applications where weight is a concern.
IVC is a manufacturer of IP-based cameras and developer of advanced software for managing networks of video systems. “We have just completed our initial certification testing with Factory Mutual and we are very excited,” said Bill Richards, IVC’s Vice President of engineering. “These new enclosures have exceeded our expectations. We are also pursuing opportunities to apply this technology to other industrial instrumentation that is complementary to our cameras.”
IVC plans on delivering L-series cameras using the new enclosure technology in Q1 2012. According to IVC’s President, Norman Fast, the company already has significant orders in hand for the new product.
For more information about Industrial Video & Control or other camera enclosures, click here to go to Utility Products' Buyers Guide.


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FREDERICKSBURG, VA - Families, friends, and fans are invited to join Fredericksburg Baseball for the official team name announcement block party!
WHO: Fredericksburg Baseball is announcing their official team name.
WHAT: As construction for the new ballpark is underway, Fredericksburg Baseball continues to roll out details about the new team coming to town in April 2020.
WHEN: The event is on Saturday, Oct. 5 and will open at 10 a.m. and the official name announcement ceremony will begin promptly at 11 a.m. followed by the team store grand reopening with merchandise bearing the team name and logos for sale.
WHERE: Wolfe Street between Caroline and Sophia Streets near the entrance to the parking garage. The team store is located parallel to the event at 601 Caroline St., First Floor, Fredericksburg, VA 22401.
WHY: Fredericksburg Baseball couldn't be more excited to roll out the official team name, logos, and the new line of merchandise for fans. Revealing the team name will officially give Fredericksburg Baseball fans something to cheer for!
HOW: The team name reveal event will be free and open to the general public. Fans in attendance of the event will get a first look at team logos and merchandise. Team merchandise will be available for purchase immediately following the event and inside the team store.
In honor of the new team announcement, attendees will hear speeches from Fredericksburg officials, Fredericksburg Baseball team owners Art and Seth Silber, new team Executive Vice President and General Manager Nick Hall, and more!
For all event updates, visit www.fredericksburgbaseball.com or Fredericksburg Baseball on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
For additional information, contact Marketing Coordinator Paige Honaker at (703) 590-2311 or at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Download the event flyer here.
Note: The Fredericksburg Baseball staff is fully relocating to the 601 Caroline St. Store and Information Center as of Monday, Sept. 16. Our offices/store will be open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and with weekend hours posted on our website. Our new phone number as of Sept. 16 will be (540) 858-4242.
Fredericksburg Baseball is set to begin Carolina League play in 2020 at a brand new, state of the art stadium facility, located at Celebrate Virginia South on Carl D. Silver Parkway near the Fredericksburg Expo & Convention Center in Fredericksburg, VA. Celebrate baseball in The 'Burg and stay up to date with the progress of the new ballpark facility and the team online at www.fredericksburgbaseball.com, and follow Fredericksburg Baseball on Facebook (@FredericksburgBaseball), on Twitter (@FXBGBaseball20), and on Instagram (@fredericksburgbaseball).
This story was not subject to the approval of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues or its clubs.


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As you finish your last-minute holiday shopping, you may notice that prices for, well, everything are higher than they were this time last year. Inflation has thankfully cooled a bit in recent months, but it’s still running hot enough to cause a tremendous amount of sticker shock this holiday season.
Our current bout of inflation is driven by a complicated confluence of factors – the war in Ukraine, COVID lockdowns in China, global supply chain bottlenecks, and sky-high demand for goods. But, as we’ve discussed in previous posts, there is one important factor behind rising prices that deserves your utmost attention as you browse the aisles over the next few days: corporate greed.
While Americans have been struggling to afford basic necessities like rent and food, corporations have been doing better than ever. In the third quarter of the 2022 fiscal year, corporations in the nonfinancial sector posted a breathtaking $2.08 trillion in combined profits. Corporate profit margins haven’t been this high since 1950.
How did this happen? Corporations have used the enormous hype over inflation to raise prices more than what would be necessary to make up for increased production costs. They’re not charging more because it’s more expensive to make things, they’re charging more because they want to inflate their profits.
According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, over half (53.9%) of price increases can be attributed to fatter corporate profit margins alone. If you still can’t believe it, take corporate executives at their own word: they’re openly bragging about their price-gouging strategies on earnings calls with shareholders.
For this week’s Closer Look, we want to give you a rundown of a few of the greediest corporations you may want to avoid this holiday season. Before we look at those, however, we want to tell you about a new podcast from Eric Schoenberg, a member of the Patriotic Millionaires!
Eric just released “You Can’t Take It With You,” in which he tells the stories of nine of the richest men in American history and what happened to their great wealth after they died to try to understand why people want to become so rich in the first place. Covering titans of industry from John D. Rockefeller to Charles Tiffany, the founder of Tiffany and Co., “You Can’t Take It With You” is a fascinating look at extreme wealth over the ages, and we highly recommend you check it out. It’s available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Buzzsprout.
Now back to the Closer Look!
Albertsons made headlines this year after announcing a merger with competing grocery conglomerate Kroger. This move may result in hundreds of store closures and the loss of thousands of union jobs. But before that, the private equity managers who run Albertsons are trying to strip it for parts – they want the company to direct $4 billion in dividends to its shareholders (largely wealthy investors). Where did all that money come from? From the pockets of Albertsons customers, whose higher grocery bills helped the multi-billion dollar corporation raise its profits by 90.5% over the last year. When you shop for ingredients for your holiday dinners, remember those higher price tags are the result of not an increase in costs, but a massive rise in profits going to Albertsons shareholders and executives. We hope knowing that your hard-earned money goes to lining the pockets of wealthy investors doesn’t spoil your appetite.
If you’re worried about meals over the holidays being too expensive, grocery stores like Albertsons aren’t the only culprits. General Mills, a major food conglomerate that sells thousands of products in virtually every aisle of the grocery store, has raised prices almost half a dozen times in the last year and has seen its profits increase by 15% over the last year alone. General Mills makes many household staples that Americans rely on to keep themselves and their families fed. Using inflation as a guise to balloon their own wealth is a far cry from the spirit of the holidays.
If you’re prepping your car for the upcoming winter weather, you should know that a significant portion of the costs you’re paying at the register isn’t going towards employee pay or the products themselves – it’s going to bloated company profits. Autozone profits rose nearly 12% in 2022, nearly double the level of inflation, leaving the company’s executives celebrating. Autozone CEO Jamere Jackson even bragged recently that “inflation has been a little bit of our friend.”
Last year, Dollar Tree, for the first time in 35 years, raised the base price of their goods to $1.25 and up to $5 per item, reportedly to combat inflation. While some increase could be expected, Dollar Tree has managed to increase its profits by 57% from 2020-2022. You might be best to avoid getting your last-minute “cheap” wrapping paper from the chain as a result.
A staple of the holiday dessert table, Hershey’s has taken inflation in stride and used it to shoot up their shareholder’s earnings. The sticker shock you feel this year when shopping for treats for your holiday get-togethers is caused by a 36% profit increase from 2020-2022.
Gas and Oil Companies
To the surprise of absolutely no one who has paid for gas in the last year, oil and gas companies like Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and BP are doing better than ever. In the first quarter of this year, Shell made $9.1 billion (its strongest quarter ever), ExxonMobil made $5.5 billion (double its profits from the first quarter of 2021), and Chevron made $6.5 billion (quadruple its profits from the first quarter of 2021). These five companies together netted an astounding 300% more in profits in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the year before. While gas prices have thankfully calmed down since earlier this year, oil and gas companies have already made out like bandits, and their greed is still being felt by American consumers.
As families struggle to make ends meet this holiday season, greedy corporations are doing everything they can to bring more wealth to their stockholders, and everyone else be damned. The holidays are stressful for a variety of reasons, but corporate greed should never be one of them. Congress should hold these corporations to account for their egregious profiteering through things like windfall taxes and better antitrust enforcement.
We wish you and your loved ones a peaceful, joy-filled holiday. And a “Bah Humbug!” to greedy corporate price-gougers!


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Indonesia has today launched a new interactive visitor guide as part of a major campaign to position itself as the world’s leading destination for Muslim tourists. The Muslim visitor guide has been created as a dedicated resource to showcase the island destination, popularly known as the world’s largest archipelago, to tourists across the globe.
The guide, titled “Many lands.Timeless culture. One journey” aims to highlight Indonesia’s rich and diverse culture by referencing the best experiences, shopping, dining and renowned prayer facilities to discover and explore across the country.
As part of its aim to appeal to a wider Muslim audience, the 70 page guide will be available in English and Arabic.
The visitor guide is part of a long-term campaign by tourism officials to diversify their visitor arrivals to the Southeast Asian country which represents over 17,000 islands.
The publication has been compiled by the Indonesia Ministry of Tourism and leading online travel platform HalalTrip.
The Muslim travel market is now widely recognised as a key growth tourism sector projected to be worth $200 billion by 2020. As a country with the world’s largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia is an attractive destination for muslim tourists keen to explore one of the most unique places in Asia.
The Ministry of Tourism Indonesia said the new guide was an important step in its long-term strategy to welcome family visitors with diverse needs to the country.
Arief Yahya, Indonesia Tourism Minister, said: “We want to assure the comfort of these travellers by providing information about various tourism products and services in many destinations in Indonesia which comply with their needs and expectations to enhance their holiday experiences.”
Each section in the new Muslim visitor guide provides information on attractions and experiences across the Island including the best shopping destinations.
It highlights the best Halal dining experiences in that region, hotel accommodation, places to pray and mosques within the Island.
A marketing campaign to promote the new guide has now been activated which includes copies of the publication distributed among travel agents and partners across the world while a downloadable format is available from various websites.
Fazal Bahardeen, CEO of HalalTrip, said: “We are delighted to have been given the opportunity to help compile this unique insight into Indonesia as a muslim-friendly destination.
"Indonesia is one of the most vibrant and diverse countries in the world with an amazing offering for muslim travellers full of culture and vibrant energy.”
The MasterCard-CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) 2015, the most comprehensive research that has been released on the sector, saw Indonesia ranked sixth on the overall OIC list.
Earlier this year, Bali came 10th as the world’s top shopping destinations for Muslim tourists in The MasterCard-CrescentRating Muslim Shopping Travel Index 2015 (MTSI 2015) which revealed Muslim travellers spent a total of $62 billion globally in shopping and dining.
In 2014, the Muslim travel market was worth $145 billion with 108 million Muslim travellers representing 10% of the entire travel economy.
To download a copy of the visitor guide please visit: http://www.halaltrip.com/downloadable-halal-travel-guides/


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Schwartz Media Strategies’ Partner Aaron Gordon explains to PRWeek what Twitter must do to prosper as it heads into its next decade.
Twitter marked its 10-year anniversary on Monday. PRWeek asked technology-focused communications executives to weigh in on whether it will last another decade.
Twitter is celebrating its 10th birthday on Monday. The social platform started with a short message by co-founder Jack Dorsey – “just setting up my twttr” – then became a forum for social change, breaking news, celebrity feuds, and, yes, product promotion. It also learned the lessons of going public, with its share price dropping as investors demanded more users and new revenue sources.
PRWeek asked five executives if Twitter will still be around in 10 years.
Aaron Gordon, partner, Schwartz Media Strategies
Every social media platform fears becoming the next MySpace, but Twitter can avoid that fate if it does three things over the next 10 years. First, it needs to keep its current base of active users engaged, particularly celebrities and journalists who shape consumer tastes and trends. Second, Twitter must continue innovating by improving its methods for prioritizing content and integrating new technologies that cater to next-gen users, such as live streaming via Periscope. Lastly, the company needs to rethink its ad pricing, which favors large brands at the expense of small and mid-sized businesses that can’t justify the investment.


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a testing of global engagement trends suggests dining, video gaming and relationships is poised to undergo big disruptions when lifestyle comes back to normalcy.
Listed here try an invitees blog post by Brian Yoo, fundamental operating policeman at MOLOCO. Feedback include publisher’s very own.
At last, the end is during view. The submission associated with the COVID-19 vaccine suggests we could finally start to envision our everyday life after lockdown, and even though that’s great news for most people, additionally, it suggests big modifications for mobile app publishers.
The lockdown results at large
In general, quote demand and engagement developments obviously adopted lockdown cycles, climbing as constraints had been applied and slipping because they raised. Around australia, like, which had the main benefit of an even more clearly explained lockdown schedule, overall bid desires surged 69percent over pre-lockdown figures. When the limits happened to be raised, general requests instantly dropped 54percent before jumping back when it comes down to yearly holiday growth, but once we’ll after read, this wasn’t the fact across all kinds.
On the other hand, Austria’s quote demand data reveals the result of generally toggling restrictions. The united states experience three official lockdowns, although standard of seriousness differed for every single. Bid requests your 12 months gradually enhanced as lockdowns went into destination, after that dipped because they happened to be raised, and then increase even further during the further lockdown stage. By January, Austria’s quote needs had been around 130percent above whatever they happened to be pre-COVID, driving the impetus of any occasion season invested in lockdown.
It isn’t that people were utilizing their mobile phones a lot more aˆ” though that is correct as usage ended up being up 10per cent YoY aˆ” but which they happened to be increasing the approaches they made use of them. Physical fitness applications, games, streaming services, ecommerce and video clip cam software all noticed surges of packages and task as brand new people comprise forced to make use of their mobile phones to have interaction using business in many ways they formerly hadn’t.
A return to romance
Searching into classification specifics, post-lockdown information suggests that specific mobile software classes will have a critical part inside the post-lockdown world. Data indicates that internet dating apps have reached the top the list, as consumers desperate to revive their own enchanting resides return to a common electronic enjoy hubs in droves.
Because of so many of those in lockdown missing human being contact, it is little ponder that matchmaking applications is seeing truly huge spikes in involvement each time lockdowns lift. Once Australia had the all-clear, quote desires from matchmaking apps erupted because depressed users inundated the group and eagerly engaged with rewarded advertising placements in return for the in-app currency that provided them the capability to relate with each other.
Dating software marketers should expect to see an oversupply of organic downloads, nevertheless they could do just fine to create aside budget for remarketing efforts that will make sure their most valuable people, who may have not surprisingly taken a rest during lockdown, are brought back to the fold using the vow of a fun-filled go back to socializing.
Let them eat dessert
Much like matchmaking programs, the conclusion lockdown will trigger big involvement in dining programs as starving customers excitedly head back on their preferred meals spots. You’ll want to remember that whenever speaking about the eating class, we aren’t writing about DoorDash, Postmates or comparable shipping apps that surged during lockdowns. Quite, these reflect the in-person eating knowledge facilitated by software like Yelp, Resy and OpenTable.
Australia’s fairly clear-cut start and finish to restrictions makes the information simple to parse. Dining demands reduced 99%, dropping to nearby nonexistence throughout nation’s original lockdown stage, subsequently continuously enhanced as limits eased in the nation. Post-lockdown requests gone back to pre-lockdown degrees progressively, telegraphing a cautious go back to normalcy that eventually peaked throughout the holidays.
Some snacks distribution software are not monetized by ads so can not necessarily need their unique involvement levels dependably reviewed via bid demands, marketers should not count on a matching 1:1 decrease much more people turn to eat around. The pandemic has received an irrevocable effect on exactly what most think about to get a one-way march toward a primarily e-commerce mainly based upcoming. While shipping amounts may decrease, count on them to plateau at a higher stage than they were pre-pandemic.
Enjoy opportunity isn’t over
It was not a massive surprise observe a rise in video gaming application usage as bored stiff consumers looked-for latest forms of entertainment. Wuhan, among the first segments in the arena to enter lockdown, noticed a 173percent escalation in bid desires as soon as the order was actually implemented. And while you would be forgiven for convinced that bid requests within this class would shed since limitations eased and communities are no further caught japonska seznamka at your home, it’s actually just the opposite.
All around the globe, lockdowns posses supported as a catalyst for greater readers to know mobile gaming, and far of this market will continue to be post-COVID thanks a lot surely into the retention ways cellular game publishers used to hold their unique games gluey. Thus, mobile gaming’s upward pattern will likely manage throughout 2021. Though you’ll encounter highs and valleys of use, post-lockdown low information might be above pre-COVID level.
Cause the Roaring ’20s
Whether the software drops into among above-mentioned categories or perhaps not, remember that constraints tend to be not likely to raise all simultaneously as vaccine rollout varies from country to country. Subsequently, brand-new stress of COVID posses emerged, and will always put the global people curveballs with regards to training lockdowns. Consider how an increase in infections and a virus mutation affected Denmark’s overall involvement later around.
The majority of what is to come will still be unanticipated, and promotional methods ought to include choices to fit various scenarios. Nevertheless, it would simply take anything genuinely extraordinary to stop the post-lockdown energy of games, dating and eating mobile programs. Publishers when it comes to those categories can more than likely look forward to their own version of the Roaring ’20s, and may prepare appropriately.


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If you have included your mobile phone number in your Facebook contact information, then you’ll be interested in a major security flaw discovered by Suriya Prakash.
Many people reluctantly give up their mobile number to Facebook to enable login approvals, self-included. As you can see in the image shown below, I have my phone number set to ‘Only Me.’
In a perfect world, my phone number would be safe from hackers, scammers and other prying eyes on Facebook, but that is not the case. There is a sneaky, conflicting privacy setting that overrides this one.
Located in your Privacy Settings under “How You Connect” the following option appears:
“Who can look you up using the email address or phone number you provided?”
This option is set to “Everyone” by default! As noted by Prakash, there is not an option to totally restrict access to this information – the best you can do is set the option to ‘Friends.’
Even more worrisome is the fact that Prakash was able to write and execute a script to collect usernames and phone numbers of random Facebook members. He estimated that a hacker could use a botnet to obtain the data of all affected accounts in only a couple of days.
Prakash notified Facebook about the flaw, and it appears Facebook didn’t fully comprehend the issue. They further stated that it was the user’s responsibility to make sure they couldn’t be found based on their phone number provided. Facebook also claimed the attack wasn’t a serious threat because ‘rate limiting’ controls are in place to impede a hacker’s efforts. Surprisingly, Prakash bypassed the rate limiting measure by simply using the mobile version of Facebook.
Prakash claims he has reached out to Facebook five times on this issue, and they refuse to fix or even acknowledge the bug, so he decided to go public with his findings.
Prakash believes that up to 500 million users could be affected by this vulnerability.
Until Facebook appropriately corrects this issue by adding the ‘Only Me’ option in the privacy settings, users are encouraged to set the option to ‘Friends.’ You could also bypass the extra layer of security provided by login approvals and remove your mobile number altogether.
*Update 11-OCT-12 – Allfacebook is reporting that Facebook has fixed the vulnerability that allowed phone numbers to be easily harvested from Facebook. We still contend that the issue isn’t appropriately addressed until users have the option to totally restrict who can look them up via their mobile number. As reported earlier this week, there is not an ‘Only Me’ for this privacy setting.
BitDefender Safego is a Facebook application you can install that will scan your News Feed and help keep you safe from scams on Facebook.
PRIVATE WiFi® is a Personal VPN that encrypts everything you send and receive. Don’t access Facebook from a public WiFi hotspot without it.
Action Alert | Free Parental Control offers a 100% free Internet safety solution designed for parents. There is also a Maximum Protection option for parents that need a more advanced set of tools.