UC Browser is developed by UCWeb, a subsidiary of Alibaba (China). This is one of the most popular mobile browsers in Asia, with over 500 million downloads on Google Play alone. According to security researcher Gabi Cirlig, UC Browser silently sent iPhone users’ browsing data (even with incognito mode enabled) to UCWeb servers (registered in China, but located in the US). ). This is in stark contrast to the company’s previous statement, which does not record a user’s “browsing and search history” when incognito mode is activated. More worryingly, UC Browser also collects IDs (unique identifiers) to track users across various websites. The collection of user data happens on both Android and iOS versions, not sure what UCWeb is doing with all this information? Interested readers can watch the video at: “This kind of tracking is done on purpose,” Cirlig told Forbes. When compared with Google Chrome browser and some other popular browsers, he found there is no browser like UC Browser. UC Browser just rolled out a new update last week, but the company never mentioned monitoring users’ browsing activity. Currently the English version of UC Browser has been removed from the App Store, but the Chinese version still exists, and unlike the English version, it does not send data back to the UCWeb server. Earlier in 2019, the UC Browser version for Android also violated Google Play’s policies.

Many Borrowdale Valley residents refer to the mysterious works as “Banksy’s work” – an anonymous graffiti artist who has become an icon of contemporary British street art – because no one knows who created them. them. The work is crafted from slate, overlooking the Borrowdale valley, England. Photo: Borrowdale Institute. Mr. Shawn Williamson, a sculptor in Windermere, said above BBC Radio Cumbria : “These works are made up of large pieces of slate that are arched to frame the landscape behind it. There have been many artists in the past who have created similar works and each has a unique touch own uniqueness”. “This piece really shows the colors of the Lake District and traditional local crafts, interwoven with the wonderful natural scenery of this place. All of which makes them extremely mysterious.” , Mr. Shawn Williamson added. Photographer Carl Halliday took pictures of the rock formations and posted them online. The photos have attracted a lot of attention from the online community. BBC The location of these works of art is not given specifically because some areas have terrain that could be dangerous for curious residents.

“This group leaves cash in specific places – behind a bush or under a bus seat – for criminals to get. They send specific location instructions. This is a whole new profession.” Financial Times quoted Dr. Tom Robinson, founder of Elliptic organization specializing in analyzing cryptocurrency transactions. The dark web site Hydra (Russian) offers a variety of methods for criminals to exchange cryptocurrency for cash, for example exchanging Bitcoins for gift certificates, debit cards or iTunes vouchers. Special software is required to access the Hydra dark web. Photo: ZDNet. Anonymous but still leaving traces According to experts, the ability to store cryptocurrency without providing an identity makes this currency especially attractive to many criminal gangs, especially hackers specializing in breaking into networks of businesses. and demand ransom. Statistics from research firm Chainalysis show that in 2020, businesses and organizations paid at least $350 million in cryptocurrency ransoms to a number of hacker groups, including DarkSide, the group that attacked the pipeline system. Colonial Pipeline earlier this month. But while anonymous, cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on an immutable blockchain system, leaving a clear trail for anyone with any knowledge of the technology. A number of investigative firms have been established to assist national authorities in tracking various criminal gangs by analyzing the flow of cryptocurrency transactions. Chainalysis (headquartered in New York, USA) is one such company. Binance cryptocurrency exchange. In 2011-2019, cryptocurrency exchanges supported the conversion to cash of about 60-80% of Bitcoin transactions by criminal groups. Photo: Binance. Chainalysis raised $100 million in its initial public offering, reaching a valuation of over $2 billion. There are also Elliptic (headquartered in London, UK) and CipherTrace, a company supported by the US government. Chainalysis said that in 2020, some illegal organizations receive about 5 billion USD and transfer 5 billion USD to other organizations. This represents almost 1% of all global crypto flows. Initially, the criminals only withdrew funds through major cryptocurrency exchanges. Elliptic estimates that between 2011 and 2019, cryptocurrency exchanges supported the conversion of about 60-80% of Bitcoin transactions by illegal organizations into cash. Take advantage of crypto ATMs Since last year, exchanges have been concerned about the tightening of regulations by many governments, so they have begun to apply anti-money laundering (AML) and customer identity verification (KYC) processes. This change pushes criminals to unlicensed exchanges. Still, expert Michael Phillips of online insurance company Resilience said that unlicensed exchanges have low liquidity, making it difficult for criminals to convert crypto to fiat. “The goal is to make it more expensive for criminals to convert money,” he explained. However, criminals still have a way around. Research by Chainalysis shows that some intermediaries are quietly assisting gangs in conducting many illegal money conversion transactions. Meanwhile, small-scale transactions still flow through more than 11,600 crypto ATMs worldwide without any control, or through gambling sites that accept crypto payments. Criminals can use crypto ATMs to get cash. Photo: EPA. Faced with that situation, crypto security companies use the technology of analyzing blockchain transactions and intelligence to determine which crypto wallets belong to criminal gangs. At the same time, they provide an overview of the global crypto crime ecosystem. As a result, companies discovered that many hacker groups lease ransomware to criminal networks. Kimberly Grauer, director of research at Chainalysis, said hackers also pay support services to other criminal groups in cryptocurrency. Thus, a criminal cryptocurrency ecosystem has been formed on a global scale. “We were able to see the ransom transactions, how the gangs split the money and how that money went to groups in the system,” Grauer said. The tricks are getting more and more sophisticated However, cybercriminals are increasingly using a variety of high-tech tools to obscure the traces of cryptocurrency transactions. Some criminals use “chain-hopping” – repeatedly switching between different cryptocurrencies – to avoid the eyes of security companies. In addition, they use a “privacy cryptocurrency” like Monero, which has a high degree of anonymity. Another tool commonly used by criminals is a “mixer,” a third-party service that mixes illegal cryptocurrencies with clean money, before pushing them back onto the market. In April, the US Department of Justice arrested a Swedish citizen of Russian origin, who specialized in operating a “mixing” service called Bitcoin Fog. During the past 10 years, this guy has transferred a total of 335 million USD in Bitcoin. Governments need to modernize confiscation and asset freezing processes to make it easier to confiscate cryptocurrencies from exchanges. Tom Kellerman, director of cybersecurity strategy at VMware V “It is possible to untangle mixed cryptocurrencies. However, that requires high technology and a lot of processing and data power,” said Katherine Kirkpatrick, director of law firm King & Spalding. According to Elliptic, the popular 2020 coin mixers are highly anonymous “personal wallets”. They supported 12% of Bitcoin wash transactions last year. Tom Kellerman, director of cybersecurity strategy at VMware and a member of the US Secret Service’s advisory board, said that governments need to modernize the process of confiscating and freezing assets for law enforcement. easily confiscate cryptocurrencies from exchanges. In the past, blockchain security experts have floated the idea of ​​sharing a “blacklist” of crypto wallets used by criminals with exchanges, analytics firms, and governments. “Now is the right time to consider that initiative.” he Kemba Walden of Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit.

SVR’s secure messaging system interface on Tor. Photo: The Record Those with information about imminent threats to Russia can now “tease” Russian intelligence agencies using the Tor browser on the darknet (network of inaccessible websites. from search engine). According to Russia Beyond, the announcement of a new confidential information system and other information related to Russian national security has just been posted on the website of the General Department of Foreign Intelligence (SVR). By clicking on the button “Report information” in the bottom left corner of the main page, users receive specific instructions as follows: “If you are outside Russia and have important information related to An urgent threat to the security of the Russian Federation, you can securely and anonymously share it with us through SVR’s virtual reception system (VRS) over the TOR network ”. The SVR claims the new darknet system will allow notified individuals to securely and anonymously share data and details with local authorities. It also provides a public PGP key as an additional layer of security for encrypting messages sent over the new virtual receiving system (VRS). When a user first visits this website for the purpose of sending information related to Russian national security, they will receive a 5-word code needed to decode the intelligence messages if they wish. contact the recipient of the denunciation

The change in the importance of words over time for social media posts. The program will then model how they evolve over time. This new tool is expected to help the medical industry combat misinformation online. “A lot of machine learning studies involve misinformation,” said Courtney Shelley, a postdoctoral fellow with the Modeling and Information Systems Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and co-author of the study. Social media focuses on identifying different types of conspiracy theories. Instead, we want to create a more cohesive understanding of how misinformation changes as it is spread. People tend to believe the first message they get, the expert explains. So in the future, the health sector can keep track of which theories are attracting attention on social media. From there, help the health sector create real information, prevent the public from “accepting” fake news. Under the title “Thought I want to share first”, the study used anonymous Twitter data to describe four Covid-19 related topics. Using the collected data for each topic, the team built random machine learning models or artificial intelligence (AI). Then help classify whether that information is wrong or not. “This allows us to observe how individuals talk about this information on social media and see changes over time,” says co-author Dax Gerts. Research shows that posts that contain misinformation carry more negative emotions than usual. At the same time, these fake news tend to develop over time. Because, they are “augmented” details from other topics as well as events in the real world. Furthermore, the study found that surveillance machine learning could be used to automatically identify conspiracy theories. In addition, the unsupervised learning method can be used within each topic, to uncover changes in the importance of words. “It is important for health officials to know how conspiracy theories are evolving and attracting over time. If not, they run the risk of unintentionally making fake news publicly. So it’s important to know how conspiracy theories are changing and how they can incorporate other theories or real-world facts. As a result, helping to strategize coping with factual disclosure campaigns, ”said researcher Courtney Shelley.

Lee MacMillan, the star on the social network Instagram, recently ended his life in tragedy. She is one of the victims of online bullying, an extremely dangerous flip side from social networks.

Lee MacMillan is a blogger with 74,000 followers on Instagram. The 28-year-old girl, famous for her van adventures with ex-boyfriend Max Bidstrup. Both have traveled from Canada to the Americas, South Africa … with the shepherd dog. At the end of January 2020, the couple announced the way everyone went, making many fans feel regretful.

At that time, in addition to words of comfort and encouragement, Lee also became the subject of some fans blaming and stoning. Gradually, the young girl fell into a state of depression before taking her own life. According to Lee’s family, the people who are always trying to bully Lee online are a small group of 74,000 fanpage followers.

They let go of her disparaging words for a long time. “Unfortunately, Lee has faced some sort of criticism and they have deeply influenced her. Our help was not enough for her to overcome the negative emotions they caused“The father of the Instagram social network star,” said Wil, sadly.

According to Daily Mail Australia, the Lee family hopes their daughter’s story can shed light on the devastating effects of cyberbullying can have on a person’s psychological health.

A global issue

Ipsos survey of cyberbullying in several countries. Photo: Statista

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) defines “cyber bullying” as bullying using digital technology. It can take place on social media, messaging platforms, gaming platforms, and mobile phones. It is repetitive behavior, intended to frighten, anger, or embarrass the targeted people.

There are various forms of bullying on the Internet, such as the spread of lies, malicious rumors, and offensive comments; Post embarrassing photos of someone on social media; Sending harassing or threatening messages through messaging platforms; Impersonating someone online to send malicious messages to others …

In fact, bullying has always been a headache for many people and society for a long time. Now, with the use of social media becoming ubiquitous around the world, bullies are taking advantage of the “high-tech path” to commit these evils. There are no age or gender restrictions on victims of cyberbullying.

In September 2020, Microsoft released the results of an online bullying study, which found that 38% of people in 32 countries said they had been involved in a bullying case, as victim, bully or bystander.

In Vietnam, 51% of internet users, including 48% of adults and 54% of teenagers, said they had been involved in a “bullying case”, 21% said they had been a victim and 38 % are bystanders or witnesses bullying or harassment.

Rates of online bullying among Vietnamese students through studies from 2015 to 2017. Photo: UED Media

The study also surveyed adults about bullying, also known as “harassment”, both inside and outside the workplace. In Vietnam, 15% reported seeing bullying at their workplace and 44% reported having experienced bullying outside of their workplace.

According to another survey by Unicef ​​and the special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Violence against Children, published in September 2019, one-third of teenagers in 30 countries said they were once victims of cyberbullying, of which one in five said they had dropped out of school because of cyberbullying and violence.

Surveys via anonymous messages are conducted through U-Report. More than 170,000 U-Report users aged 13-24 participated in this survey, including teenagers from Albania, Bangladesh, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, France, Gambia, Ghana , India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jamaica, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam …

“Today, the classroom space connecting with the outside world also means that school hours no longer end by the time students leave the classroom, and sadly, bullying doesn’t stop there.“, Ms. Henrietta Fore, CEO of Unicef ​​organization said.

With the Covid-19 epidemic still going unpredictable, when measures are taken, children and adolescents have used online platforms more often as they have to learn from far. And as a result, the number of online bullying cases is certainly increasing.

The level of bullying among high school students, according to a 2018 survey of the Department of Psychology – Education, Da Nang Pedagogical University on cyberbullying, with the participation of more than 500 high school students. In the city.

Virtual bullying, real impact

Mr. Pham The Truong, General Director of Microsoft Vietnam, commented: “Cyberbullying has real-world consequences. In the case of cyberbullying, victims can be harmed at any time of the day by anonymous sources, and it is likely that the incident will be spread to a large number of people. People of all ages can be affected by online abuse, cruelty and abuse“.

Globally, when asked about the effects of workplace bullying, survey participants reported feeling humiliated (58%) globally, according to a Microsoft survey. ), followed by mental loss (52%) and loss of confidence (51%).

The effects also vary between generations. 53% of respondents aged 18-24 reported feeling isolated and depressed, while Gen X generation (those born between the 1960s and early 1980s) were underperforming. more fruit (58%). People who experience online bullying or harassment at work also reported feeling “unbearable or severe” pain.

When it comes to online bullying or harassment, Microsoft says, most people in Vietnam block bullies (63%) or share with friends about what happened (58%). , the rest ignored the bully (43%). 50% of survey respondents said that they reported behavior to social media companies or other providers.

Rate of bullying online in the world from 2008 to 2018. Photo: UED Media

In its report, Microsoft encourages people of all ages to report any online threats or harassment to the relevant online service provider. User reports play a key role in providing everyone with a safe and reliable online experience.

In the third quarter of 2020, the artificial intelligence (AI) system of Facebook discovered and removed 94.7% of the 22.1 million content that provoked hate on social pages; increased from 80.5% out of 6.9 million content over the same period of the previous year. Facebook is taking steps to use AI to remove these content from its platform.

“Online bullying is out of control in the world, and it needs to be stopped. People involved in this behavior must understand that their actions have real consequences. We need to find a way to stop them and the platforms for this to happen accountable“Lee MacMillan’s father said.

According to Mr. Luu Dinh Phuc, Director of the Department of Information and Communications (Ministry of Information and Communications), Vietnam has specific regulations on behavior on domestic websites. For overseas social networking platforms, offended persons can immediately report such platforms so that they can take measures to remove them, or send information to regulatory agencies such as the Department of Information and Communications, media information and local authorities.

The Department of Information and Communications has now established channels to request cross-border platforms to remove bad and malicious information. The Department has also set up a center to receive and process fake news at the address tingia.gov.vn and the introduction of prefix reception reflecting fake news 18008108. This center has the role of receiving, assessing and publishing fake news about information that may cause negative effects on the community, and offend the honor and dignity of individuals.

Information given by the fake news processing center will be shared on social networking sites, forums and newspapers for the community to understand, thereby reducing the disadvantages. In addition, when the center has announced fake news, the functional forces will base on that to investigate whether the objects spread inside or outside the country to handle. Mr. Phuc also added that in the coming time, the department will set up a specialized room dealing with fake news.

Le Minh

Lee MacMillan is a star on the social network Instagram. Photo: People