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Why do I get so much spam and unwanted email in my inbox? And how can I get rid of it?

<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kayleen-manwaring-8735">Kayleen Manwaring</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/unsw-sydney-1414">UNSW Sydney</a></em></p> <p>Spam might not have brought an end to the internet or email, as some dire predictions <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-spam-could-destroy-the-internet/">in the early 2000s</a> claimed it could – but it’s still a massive pain.</p> <p>Despite all the spam being removed by spam-filtering technologies, most people still receive spam every day. How do these messages end up flooding our inboxes? And are there any legal consequences for the senders?</p> <h2>What is spam?</h2> <p>The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted in 2004 “there does not appear to be a widely agreed and workable definition for spam” across jurisdictions – and this remains true today.</p> <p>That said, “spam” generally <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/232784860063.pdf?expires=1693541947&amp;id=id&amp;accname=ocid177499&amp;checksum=D0C5BDAC49951DF353618B8E38483253">refers to</a> unsolicited electronic messages. These are often sent in bulk and frequently advertise goods or services. It also includes scamming and phishing messages, according to the OECD.</p> <p>Most people think of spam in the form of emails or SMS messages. However, what we now call spam actually predates the internet. In 1854, a spam telegram was sent to British politicians advertising the opening hours of dentists who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/09/why-spammers-are-winning-junk-mail">sold tooth-whitening powder</a>.</p> <p>The first spam email came more than 100 years later. It was reportedly sent to 600 people on May 3 1978 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080628205216/http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-spam11may11001420,1,5168218,full.story">through ARPAnet</a> – a precursor to the modern internet.</p> <p>As for how much spam is out there, the figures vary, possibly due to the various <a href="https://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/">definitions of “spam”</a>. One source reports the average number of spam emails sent daily in 2022 was about <a href="https://dataprot.net/statistics/spam-statistics/">122.33 billion</a> (which would mean more than half of all emails were spam). As for text messages, another source reports a daily average of 1.6 billion <a href="https://thesmallbusinessblog.net/spam-text-statistics/">spam texts</a>.</p> <h2>Where do spammers get my details?</h2> <p>Each time you enter your email address or phone number into an e-commerce website, you may be handing it to spammers.</p> <p>But sometimes you may even receive spam from entities you don’t recognise. That’s because businesses will often transfer customers’ contact information to related companies, or sell their data to third parties such as data brokers.</p> <p>Australia’s Privacy Act 1988 somewhat limits the transfer of personal information to third parties. However, these laws <a href="https://theconversation.com/accc-says-consumers-need-more-choices-about-what-online-marketplaces-are-doing-with-their-data-182134">are weak</a> – and <a href="http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/unsworks_75600">weakly enforced</a>.</p> <p>Some entities also use “address-harvesting” software to search the internet for electronic addresses that are captured in a database. The collector then uses these addresses directly, or sells them to others looking to send spam.</p> <p>Many jurisdictions (including <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/s19.html">Australia</a>) prohibit these harvesting activities, but they are still <a href="https://www.projecthoneypot.org/statistics.php">common</a>.</p> <h2>Is spamming against the law?</h2> <p>Australia has had legislation regulating spam messaging since 2003. But the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00614">Spam Act</a> surprisingly does not define the word “spam”. It tackles spam by prohibiting the sending of <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/s15.html">unsolicited commercial electronic messages</a> containing offers, ads or other promotions of goods, services or land.</p> <p>However, if the receiver <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/sch2.html">consented</a> to these types of messages, the prohibition does not apply. When you buy goods or services from a company, you will often see a request to click on a “yes” button to receive marketing promotions. Doing so means you have consented.</p> <p>On the other hand, if your phone or inbox are hit by commercial messages you haven’t agreed to receive, that is a breach of the <a href="https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/">Spam Act</a> by the sender. If you originally signed up to receive the messages, but then unsubscribed and the messages kept coming after <a href="https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/sch2.html">five business days</a>, that is also illegal. Senders must also include a <a href="https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/s18.html">functioning unsubscribe facility</a> in every commercial message they send.</p> <p>Spammers can be penalised for breaches of the Spam Act. In the past few months alone, <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2023-06/commonwealth-bank-penalised-355-million-spam-breaches">Commonwealth Bank</a>, <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2023-08/doordash-penalised-2-million-spam-breaches">DoorDash</a> and <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2023-06/mycar-tyre-auto-penalised-1m-spam-breaches">mycar Tyre &amp; Auto</a> were fined more than A$6 million in total for breaches.</p> <p>However, most spam comes from outside Australia where the laws aren’t the same. In the United States spam is legal under the <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business">CAN-SPAM Act</a> until you opt out. Unsurprisingly, the US <a href="https://talosintelligence.com/reputation_center/email_rep#spam-country-senders">tops the list</a> of countries where the most spam originates.</p> <p>Although spam sent to Australia from overseas <a href="https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/s16.html">can still breach</a> the Spam Act – and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) co-operates with overseas regulators – overseas enforcement actions are difficult and expensive, especially if the spammer has disguised their true identity and location.</p> <p>It’s worth noting that messages from political parties, registered charities and government bodies aren’t prohibited – nor are messages from educational institutions to students and former students. So while you might consider these messages as “spam”, they can legally be <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/sch1.html">sent freely without consent</a>. Factual messages (without marketing content) from businesses are also legal as long as they include accurate sender details and contact information.</p> <p>Moreover, the Spam Act generally only covers spam sent via email, SMS/MMS or instant messaging services, such as WhatsApp. Voice calls and faxes aren’t covered (although you can use the <a href="https://www.donotcall.gov.au/">Do Not Call Register</a> to block some commercial calls).</p> <h2>Staying safe from spam (and cyberattacks)</h2> <p>Spam isn’t only annoying, it can also be dangerous. Spam messages can contain indecent images, scams and <a href="https://www.cyber.gov.au/learn-basics/explore-basics/watch-out-threats/phishing-emails-and-texts">phishing attempts</a>. Some have <a href="https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/types-threats/malware">malware</a> (malicious software) designed to break into computer networks and cause harm, such as by stealing data or money, or shutting down systems.</p> <p>The <a href="https://www.cyber.gov.au/protect-yourself/securing-your-email/email-security/protect-yourself-malicious-email">Australian Cyber Security Centre</a> and <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/dealing-with-spam">ACMA</a> provide useful tips for reducing the spam you get and your risk of being hit by cyberattacks. They suggest to:</p> <ol> <li> <p>use a spam filter and block spammers – email and telecommunications providers often supply useful tools as part of their services</p> </li> <li> <p>unsubscribe from any emails you no longer want to receive – even if you originally agreed to receive them</p> </li> <li> <p>remove as much of your contact details from websites as you can and always restrict the sharing of your personal information (such as name, birth date, email address and mobile number) when you can – beware of pre-ticked boxes asking for your consent to receive marketing emails</p> </li> <li> <p>install cybersecurity updates for your devices and software as you get them</p> </li> <li> <p>always think twice about opening emails or clicking on links, especially for messages promising rewards or asking for personal information – if it looks too good to be true, it probably is</p> </li> <li> <p>use <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-multi-factor-authentication-and-how-should-i-be-using-it-191591">multi-factor authentication</a> to access online services so even if a scam compromises your login details, it will still be difficult for hackers to break into your accounts</p> </li> <li> <p>report spam to your email and telecommunications providers, and to <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/dealing-with-spam#complain-or-forward-spam-to-the-acma">ACMA</a>. <!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208665/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> </li> </ol> <p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kayleen-manwaring-8735"><em>Kayleen Manwaring</em></a><em>, Senior Research Fellow, UNSW Allens Hub for Technology, Law &amp; Innovation and Senior Lecturer, School of Private &amp; Commercial Law, UNSW Law &amp; Justice, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/unsw-sydney-1414">UNSW Sydney</a></em></p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-get-so-much-spam-and-unwanted-email-in-my-inbox-and-how-can-i-get-rid-of-it-208665">original article</a>.</em></p>

Technology

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10 technology commandments

<ol> <li>Thou shalt clear thy browser history: It's pretty simple step, but all-important. Particularly as you never know when someone will want to borrow your laptop. </li> <li>Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's technology: This includes inappropriate thoughts about said neighbour’s iPad mini, new smart -phone, nor any other technological wonder that belongs to him/her. Pursue new devices. </li> <li>Thou shalt not mix up contacts: It’s basically the difference between texting something funny or private to your sister and eternal shame. </li> <li>Thou shalt remember, thy phone does not belong in the toilet: What is it with phones and loos anyway? </li> <li>Thou shalt not open dodgy emails: No matter how much you want to buy that AMAZING weight-loss medication from India, DON’T OPEN THAT EMAIL! It’s all lies! </li> <li>Thou shalt take care on Facebook: When it comes to social embarrassment, Facebook seems to be the social network of choice. </li> <li>Thou shalt not reply all: Reply all IS the devil in disguise. One casual click of a button and suddenly you've sent your entire address book that embarrassing story from your weekend's antics. </li> <li>Thous shalt turn off autocorrect: Disguised as a godsend or clever little function, yet somehow autocorrect causes more embarrassment than it's worth. </li> <li>Thou shalt not throw devices across the room: Because you never know, you might just need to turn it off and back on again. </li> <li>Thou shalt not set up a wacky email address: Ok it might be funny for around about a week, but less so for the years to come and when you realise you can’t email the Red Cross seeking volunteer work from sixtyandsexy@hotmail.com, at which point you’ll have to change it. So you may want to keep in mind, getting a new passport is easier than getting a new email address this day in age.</li> </ol> <p><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p>

Technology

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10 useful things to know about Photoshop

<p>Would you like to try your hand a little photo editing? Well, you’ve likely heard of Photoshop – it’s the go-to photo editing software for everyone from a budding photographer to a design professional. Whilst there are many quick and easy things you can master with Photoshop, the scope of its capability is endless. While this is not quite a step-by-step how-to guide, there are some extremely useful tips that will help you take your editing skills one step up.</p> <p><strong>Combine images with text
</strong><br />There’s a really easy way to overlay an image on top of text. Drop an image layer over a type layer then hold down Alt and click the line between the two layers in the Layers Panel to clip the image to the text.</p> <p><strong>Funky backgrounds
</strong><br />If you’d like to change the default grey background to something more funky, simpley hit Shift–click over the background area with the Paint Bucket tool to fill it with your foreground colour. Right-click it to go back to grey.</p> <p><strong>Colour code layers
</strong><br />Using colour coding to organise your Layers Panel can be very helpful. Right-click over a layer’s eye icon to quickly access eight colour code choices.</p> <p><strong>Close all images
</strong><br />To close all of your documents at the same time, Shift-click any image window’s close icon.</p> <p><strong>Diffuse effects</strong><br />
The Diffuse Glow filter can give highlights a soft ethereal feel, especially when you combine the effect with desaturation. Hit D to reset colours then go to Filter>Distort>Diffuse Glow. Keep the effect fairly subtle, then go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and drop the saturation down to complete the dreamlike effect.</p> <p><strong>Foreground and background colours</strong> <br />Change your foreground and background colours with X 
</p> <p><strong>Panel and tools view</strong> <br />Hide or shows all panels and tools 
with TAB</p> <p><strong>Straighten horizons</strong><br />Hold down A and drag a line to straighten your images.</p> <p><strong>Paste in place
</strong><br />Cut and paste a selection to a new layer and Photoshop will place it in the middle of the screen. If you want to paste it to a new layer, but keep the position the same, use Cmd/Ctrl+X to cut and Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+V to paste in place. Similarly, you should hold down Shift while dragging layers between documents with the Move tool to keep the same position.</p> <p><strong>Make sketch lines</strong><br />
If you want to turn a photo into a painting, adding sketch lines can make the effect look more realistic. To do so, duplicate your layer then go to Filter>Stylise>
Glowing Edges, then invert the colours, desaturate and use the Darken or Multiply Blend Mode.</p>

Technology

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The truth about computers and your eyesight

<p>Do you ever find that at the end of the day your eyes are bloodshot, dry or fuzzy? It could be because you are your addicted to you digital devices. Here’s what you need to know.</p> <p>An increasing reliance on technology including laptops, tablets, smart phones and so on has given rise to a new health condition called computer vision syndrome (or CVS), which is effecting many Australians of all ages.</p> <p>Including a number of eye and vision-related problems, CVS is a result of prolonged use of digital devices. While they’re not thought to be permanent, symptoms of CVS are generally unpleasant and can cause some discomfort. </p> <p>Furthermore, CVS is also thought to be having an impact on the incidence of myopia (short-sightedness) with a study conducted by the National Eye Institute in the USA reporting the prevalence of near-sightedness increasing by around 66 per cent over the past 30 years in America.</p> <p>Whether for work or pleasure, the dramatic rise in ownership of smartphones and tablets coupled with modern day trends that involve doing more and more things from these devices (paying bills, shopping, research), is causing our eye muscles to work harder and for longer periods. There are ways to can prevent or at least limit any problems created by a digital device obsession.</p> <p><strong>Keep an eye out for…</strong></p> <p>You’ve probably experienced at least one of the common symptoms of computer vision syndrome which include:</p> <ul> <li>Eyestrain</li> <li>Headaches</li> <li>Blurred vision</li> <li>Dry eyes</li> <li>Neck and shoulder pain</li> </ul> <p>These symptoms may be caused by other factors such as uncorrected vision needs, glare, poor lighting, improper posture, etc. You should always consult an eye care professional who will be able to diagnose computer vision syndrome through an eye exam.</p> <p><strong>What you can do to save your sight…</strong></p> <p>With these simple practices, you can reduce, or even prevent the effects of computer vision syndrome:</p> <ul> <li>Make sure the lighting in the room is comfortable on the eyes, and prevents you from staring into glare on the computer screen</li> <li>Position the computer screen so that your head is in a naturally comfortable position while working</li> <li>Take breaks. A few minutes away from the computer can go a long way when it comes to your eyes. Think of it similarly to the way you take stretch breaks for your arms and back.</li> <li>Make sure your seat is comfortable. A comfortable chair with support for your neck and back will help you avoid neck and shoulder strain commonly associated with computer vision syndrome.</li> </ul> <p><em>Image: Getty</em></p>

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Is Google’s AI chatbot LaMDA sentient? Computer says no

<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-default"> <p>“Actions such as his could come only from a robot, or from a very honorable and decent human being. But you see, you can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.”</p> <p><cite>– Isaac Asimov, <em>I, Robot</em></cite></p></blockquote> <p>Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was among the first to consider a future in which humanity creates artificial intelligence that becomes sentient. Following Asimov’s <em>I, Robot</em>, others have imagined the challenges and dangers such a future might hold.</p> <p>Should we be afraid of sentient robots taking over the planet? Are scientists inadvertently creating our own demise? How would society look if we were to create a sentient artificial intelligence?</p> <p>It’s these questions which – often charged by our own emotions and feelings – drive the buzz around claims of sentience in machines. An example of this emerged this week when Google employee Blake Lemoine claimed that the tech giant’s chatbot LaMDA had exhibited sentience.</p> <p>LaMDA, or “language model for dialogue applications”, is not Lemoine’s creation, but the work of <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.08239.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">60 other researchers at Google</a>. Lemoine has been trying to teach the chatbot transcendental meditation.</p> <p>Lemoine shared on his Medium profile the <a href="https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">text of an interview</a> he and a colleague conducted with LaMDA. Lemoine claims that the chatbot’s responses indicate sentience comparable to that of a seven or eight-year-old child.</p> <p>Later, on June 14, Lemoine said on <a href="https://twitter.com/cajundiscordian/status/1536503474308907010" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter</a>: “People keep asking me to back up the reason I think LaMDA is sentient. There is no scientific framework in which to make those determinations and Google wouldn’t let us build one. My opinions about LaMDA’s personhood and sentience are based on my religious beliefs.”</p> <p>Since sharing the interview with LaMDA, Lemoine has been placed on “paid administrative leave”.</p> <p>What are we to make of the claim? We should consider the following: what is sentience? How can we test for sentience?</p> <p><em>Cosmos </em>spoke to experts in artificial intelligence research to answer these and other questions in light of the claims about LaMDA.</p> <p>Professor Toby Walsh is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Walsh also penned an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/14/labelling-googles-lamda-chatbot-as-sentient-is-fanciful-but-its-very-human-to-be-taken-in-by-machines" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">article for the <em>Guardian</em></a> on Lemoine’s claims, writing: “Before you get too worried, Lemoine’s claims of sentience for LaMDA are, in my view, entirely fanciful. While Lemoine no doubt genuinely believes his claims, LaMDA is likely to be as sentient as a traffic light.”</p> <p>Walsh is also the author of a book, <em>Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI</em>, published this month in which these themes are investigated.</p> <p>“We don’t have a very good scientific definition of sentience,” Walsh tells <em>Cosmos</em>. “It’s often thought as equivalent to consciousness, although it’s probably worth distinguishing between the two.”</p> <p>Sentience is about experiencing feelings or emotions, Walsh explains, whereas consciousness is being aware of your thoughts and others. “One reason why most experts will have quickly refuted the idea that LaMDA is sentient, is that the only sentient things that we are aware of currently are living,” he says. “That seems to be pretty much a precondition to be a sentient being – to be alive. And computers are clearly not alive.”</p> <p>Professor Hussein Abbass, professor in the School of Engineering and Information Technology at UNSW Canberra, agrees, but also highlights the lack of rigorous assessments of sentience. “Unfortunately, we do not have any satisfactory tests in the literature for sentience,” he says.</p> <div class="newsletter-box"> <div id="wpcf7-f6-p195078-o1" class="wpcf7" dir="ltr" lang="en-US" role="form"> <form class="wpcf7-form mailchimp-ext-0.5.62 spai-bg-prepared init" action="/technology/google-ai-lamda-sentient/#wpcf7-f6-p195078-o1" method="post" novalidate="novalidate" data-status="init"> <p style="display: none !important;"><span class="wpcf7-form-control-wrap referer-page"><input class="wpcf7-form-control wpcf7-text referer-page spai-bg-prepared" name="referer-page" type="hidden" value="https://cosmosmagazine.com/" data-value="https://cosmosmagazine.com/" aria-invalid="false" /></span></p> <p><!-- Chimpmail extension by Renzo Johnson --></form> </div> </div> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“For example, if I ask a computer ‘do you feel pain’, and the answer is yes, does it mean it feels pain? Even if I grill it with deeper questions about pain, its ability to reason about pain is different from concluding that it feels pain. We may all agree that a newborn feels pain despite the fact that the newborn can’t argue the meaning of pain,” Abbass says. “The display of emotion is different from the existence of emotion.”</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">Walsh reasons that we can observe something responding to stimuli as evidence of sentience, but we should hold computers to higher standards. “The only sentience I’m certain of is my own because I experience it,” he says. “Because you look like you’re made of the same stuff as me, and you’re responding in an appropriate way, the simplest explanation is to assume that you must be sentient like I feel I am sentient.” For a computer, however, “that assumption that is not the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation is that it’s a clever mimic.”</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“A conversation has two sides to it,” adds Walsh. “If you play with these tools, you quickly learn that it’s quite critical how you interact with them, and the questions you prompt them with will change the quality of the output. I think it reflects, in many respects, the intelligence of the person asking the questions and pushing the conversation along in helpful ways and, perhaps, using points that lead the conversation. That really reflects the intelligence of the person asking the questions.”</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“Care needs to be taken to not project our own emotions and aspirations onto the machine, when we are talking about artificial intelligence in general,” says Dr Marc Cheong, digital ethics lecturer at the University of Melbourne. “AI learns from past data that we humans create – and the societal and historical contexts in which we live are reflected in the data we use to train the AI. Similarly for the claims of sentience, we shouldn’t start anthropomorphising AI without realising that its behaviour is merely finding patterns in data we feed into it.”</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“We’re very forgiving, right? That’s a really human trait,” says Walsh. “Our superpower is not really our intelligence. Our superpower is our ability to work together to form society to interact with each other. If we mishear or a person says something wrong, we fill the gaps in. That’s helpful for us to work together and cooperate with other human beings. But equally, it tends to mislead us. We tend to be quite gullible in ascribing intelligence and other traits like sentience and consciousness to things that are perhaps inanimate.”</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">Walsh also explains that this isn’t the first time this has happened.</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">The first chatbot, Eliza, created in the 1970s, was “way less sophisticated”, Walsh says. “Eliza would take the sentence that the person said and turn it into a question. And yet there was quite a hype and buzz when Eliza first came out. The very first chatbot obviously fooled some people into thinking it was human. So it’s perhaps not so surprising that a much more sophisticated chatbot like this does the same again.”</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">In 1997, the supercomputer Deep Blue beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. “I could feel – I could smell – a new kind of intelligence across the table,” <a class="spai-bg-prepared" href="https://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,984305,00.html#ixzz1DyffA0Dl" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kasparov wrote in TIME</a>.</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">But Walsh explains that Deep Blue’s winning move wasn’t a stroke of genius produced by the machine’s creativity or sentience, but a bug in its code – as the timer was running out, the computer chose a move at random. “It quite spooked Kasparov and possibly actually contributed to his eventual narrow loss,” says Walsh.</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">So, how far away are we really from creating sentient machines? That’s difficult to say, but experts believe the short answer is “very far”.</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“Will we ever create machines that are sentient?” asks Walsh. “We don’t know if that’s something that’s limited to biology. Computers are very good at simulating the weather and electron orbits. We could get them to simulate the biochemistry of a sentient being. But whether they then are sentient – that’s an interesting, technical, philosophical question that we don’t really know the answer to.</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“We should probably entertain the idea that there’s nothing that we know of that would preclude it. There are no laws of physics that would be violated if machines were to become sentient. It’s plausible that we are just machines of some form and that we can build sentience in a computer. It just seems very unlikely that computers have any sentience today.”</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“If we can’t objectively define what ‘sentient’ is, we can’t estimate how long it will take to create it,” explains Abbass. “In my expert opinion as an AI scientist for 30+ years, I would say that today’s AI-enabled machines are nowhere close to even the edge of being sentient.”</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">So, what then are we to make of claims of sentience?</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“I can understand why this will be a very big thing because we give rights to almost anything that’s sentient. And we don’t like other things to suffer,” says Walsh.</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“If machines never become sentient then we never have to have to care about them. I can take my robots apart diode by diode, and no one cares,” Walsh explains. “I don’t have to seek ethics approval for turning them off or anything like that. Whereas if they do become sentient, we <em class="spai-bg-prepared">will </em>have to worry about these things. And we have to ask questions like, are we allowed to turn them off? Is that akin to killing them? Should we get them to do the dull, dangerous, difficult things that are too dull, dangerous or difficult for humans to do? Equally, I do worry that if they don’t become sentient, they will always be very limited in what they can do.”</p> <p class="spai-bg-prepared">“I get worried from statements made about the technology that exaggerates the truth,” Abbass adds. “It undermines the intelligence of the public, it plays with people’s emotions, and it works against the objectivity in science. From time to time I see statements like Lemoine’s claims. This isn’t bad, because it gets us to debate these difficult concepts, which helps us advance the science. But it does not mean that the claims are adequate for the current state-of-the-art in AI. Do we have any sentient machine that I am aware of in the public domain? While we have technologies to imitate a sentient individual, we do not have the science yet to create a true sentient machine.”</p> <p><!-- Start of tracking content syndication. Please do not remove this section as it allows us to keep track of republished articles --></p> <p><img id="cosmos-post-tracker" class="spai-bg-prepared" style="opacity: 0; height: 1px!important; width: 1px!important; border: 0!important; position: absolute!important; z-index: -1!important;" src="https://syndication.cosmosmagazine.com/?id=195078&amp;title=Is+Google%E2%80%99s+AI+chatbot+LaMDA+sentient%3F+Computer+says+no" width="1" height="1" /></p> <p><!-- End of tracking content syndication --></p> <div id="contributors"> <p><em><a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/google-ai-lamda-sentient/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This article</a> was originally published on <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cosmos Magazine</a> and was written by <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/contributor/evrim-yazgin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Evrim Yazgin</a>. Evrim Yazgin has a Bachelor of Science majoring in mathematical physics and a Master of Science in physics, both from the University of Melbourne.</em></p> <p><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p> </div>

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How QR codes work and what makes them dangerous – a computer scientist explains

<p>Among the many changes brought about by the pandemic is the widespread use of QR codes, graphical representations of digital data that can be printed and later scanned by a smartphone or other device.</p> <p>QR codes have a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2021/03/25/how-the-pandemic-saved-the-qr-code-from-extinction/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wide range of uses</a> that help people avoid contact with objects and close interactions with other people, including for sharing <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/21/qr-codes-have-replaced-restaurant-menus-industry-experts-say-it-isnt-a-fad.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">restaurant menus</a>, email list sign-ups, car and home sales information, and checking in and out of medical and professional appointments.</p> <p>QR codes are a close cousin of the bar codes on product packaging that cashiers scan with infrared scanners to let the checkout computer know what products are being purchased.</p> <p>Bar codes store information along one axis, horizontally. QR codes store information in both vertical and horizontal axes, which allows them to hold significantly more data. That extra amount of data is what makes QR codes so versatile.</p> <p><strong>Anatomy of a QR code</strong></p> <p>While it is easy for people to read Arabic numerals, it is hard for a computer. Bar codes encode alphanumeric data as a series of black and white lines of various widths. At the store, bar codes record the set of numbers that specify a product’s ID. Critically, data stored in bar codes is redundant. Even if part of the bar code is destroyed or obscured, it is still possible for a device to read the product ID.</p> <p>QR codes are designed to be scanned using a camera, such as those found on your smartphone. QR code scanning is built into many camera apps for Android and iOS. QR codes are most often used to store web links; however, they can store arbitrary data, such as text or images.</p> <p>When you scan a QR code, the QR reader in your phone’s camera deciphers the code, and the resulting information triggers an action on your phone. If the QR code holds a URL, your phone will present you with the URL. Tap it, and your phone’s default browser will open the webpage.</p> <p>QR codes are composed of several parts: data, position markers, quiet zone and optional logos.</p> <figure class="align-center zoomable"><em><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451140/original/file-20220309-17-1jkfl5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451140/original/file-20220309-17-1jkfl5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451140/original/file-20220309-17-1jkfl5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=372&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451140/original/file-20220309-17-1jkfl5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=372&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451140/original/file-20220309-17-1jkfl5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=372&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451140/original/file-20220309-17-1jkfl5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=467&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451140/original/file-20220309-17-1jkfl5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=467&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451140/original/file-20220309-17-1jkfl5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=467&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" alt="a black-and-white pattern with four numerical markers attached to arrows pointing to portions of the pattern" /></a></em><figcaption><em><span class="caption">The QR code anatomy: data (1), position markers (2), quiet zone (3) and optional logos (4).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scott Ruoti</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CC BY-ND</a></span></em></figcaption></figure> <p>The data in a QR code is a series of dots in a square grid. Each dot represents a one and each blank a zero in binary code, and the patterns encode sets of numbers, letters or both, including URLs. At its smallest this grid is 21 rows by 21 columns, and at its largest it is 177 rows by 177 columns. In most cases, QR codes use black squares on a white background, making the dots easy to distinguish. However, this is not a strict requirement, and QR codes can use any color or shape for the dots and background.</p> <p>Position markers are squares placed in a QR code’s top-left, top-right, and bottom-left corners. These markers let a smartphone camera or other device orient the QR code when scanning it. QR codes are surrounded by blank space, the quiet zone, to help the computer determine where the QR code begins and ends. QR codes can include an optional logo in the middle.</p> <p>Like barcodes, QR codes are designed with data redundancy. Even if as much as 30% of the QR code is destroyed or difficult to read, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-a-qr-code?op=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the data can still be recovered</a>. In fact, logos are not actually part of the QR code; they cover up some of the QR code’s data. However, due to the QR code’s redundancy, the data represented by these missing dots can be recovered by looking at the remaining visible dots.</p> <p><strong>Are QR codes dangerous?</strong></p> <p>QR codes are not inherently dangerous. They are simply a way to store data. However, just as it can be hazardous to click links in emails, visiting URLs stored in QR codes can also be risky in several ways.</p> <p>The QR code’s URL can take you to a phishing website that tries to <a href="https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA220118" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trick you</a> into entering your username or password for another website. The URL could take you to a legitimate website and trick that website into doing something harmful, such as giving an attacker access to your account. While such an attack requires a flaw in the website you are visiting, such vulnerabilities are <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Cross-site_scripting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">common on the internet</a>. The URL can take you to a malicious website that tricks another website you are logged into on the same device to take an unauthorized action.</p> <p>A malicious URL could open an application on your device and cause it to take some action. Maybe you’ve seen this behavior when you clicked a Zoom link, and the Zoom application opened and automatically joined a meeting. While such behavior is ordinarily benign, an attacker could use this to trick some apps into revealing your data.</p> <p>It is critical that when you open a link in a QR code, you ensure that the URL is safe and comes from a trusted source. Just because the QR code has a logo you recognize doesn’t mean you should click on the URL it contains.</p> <p>There is also a slight chance that the app used to scan the QR code could contain a vulnerability that allows <a href="https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-protect-yourself-from-malicious-qr-codes-2487772" target="_blank" rel="noopener">malicious QR codes to take over your device</a>. This attack would succeed by just scanning the QR code, even if you don’t click the link stored in it. To avoid this threat, you should use trusted apps provided by the device manufacturer to scan QR codes and avoid downloading custom QR code apps.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177217/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/scott-ruoti-1318954" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Scott Ruoti</a>, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-tennessee-688" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Tennessee</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-qr-codes-work-and-what-makes-them-dangerous-a-computer-scientist-explains-177217" target="_blank" rel="noopener">original article</a>.</em></p> <p><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p>

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How to organise your digital clutter

<p><strong>Getting your digital clutter under control </strong></p> <p><span>The days of bursting file cabinets and desks buried under paper may be behind us, but that doesn’t mean our 21st-century lives are any more organised. With wireless technology integrated into our daily routines, many of us have simply traded paper clutter for digital disarray. </span></p> <p><span>You might take it for granted, but it’s there: Your overflowing inbox, that mess of files on your desktop screen, and those alerts that your phone’s storage is at capacity. </span></p> <p><span>The shift from working in the office to remotely from home during the pandemic has blurred the division of personal and business files even further, making organisation that much more of a challenge. </span></p> <p><span>“When one of the digital areas of our life is getting full, it can feel overwhelming,” says productivity coach Clare Kumar. Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting that digital clutter under control.</span></p> <p><strong>Set aside time for a digital clean-up</strong></p> <p>Don’t expect to clean up your digital clutter at the end of a workday when you’re already feeling fatigued. It’s best to schedule this task for a day that you’ll have the time and energy to complete it, just as you might set aside a day for spring-cleaning your house.</p> <p>“As with any organising project, it takes some mental energy, strategic thinking and planning,” says Kumar. It’s also important to tune into how satisfied you feel after doing a bit organising – that will motivate you to keep going.</p> <p>If you find that a periodic mass clean-up of your devices is way too overwhelming, figure out what frequency works for you. Like putting your clothes away at the end of the day, it might feel easier to delete unwanted photos right after you take them.</p> <p>Expert tip: Think about organising your digital clutter from a legacy point of view. Your next of kin needs to be aware of what you own – passwords, finances, legal documents – and where these files are located in case of an emergency.</p> <p><strong>Establish priorities for what you want to keep - or delete </strong></p> <p>According to Kumar, the first thing to do when you’re setting out to organise all your files, whether they’re online banking statements or videos from your last holiday, is to think about what’s important to you.</p> <p>In the same way that you would sort through physical clutter in a room – think junk drawers, old magazines, day-old dishes – imagine it’s your spam emails and outdated documents that are taking up precious space in your digital environment.</p> <p>“You do want to be intentional about this because it’s quite abstract,” she says. The key questions to ask yourself are: What files do you want to keep and how do you want to use them?</p> <p>For example, if your passion is photography, you’ll want to make sure that you have enough room on your devices to store photos, and an organisational strategy to find them again.</p> <p>Expert tip: Start by dividing all the files across your devices that you want to organise into broad categories like photos, work and taxes.</p> <p><strong>Choose the right storage option</strong></p> <p>Chances are, you’ve received a warning from at least one of your smart devices that you’re dangerously close to reaching your storage limit. Luckily, there are a number of different digital storage options you can tap to transfer those files from your device.</p> <p>These options can be divided into two broad categories: physical storage devices (like USB flash drives or external hard drives) that plug into your device, and cloud-based storage (like Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive) that are accessed online and store your files on a remote server. When might you choose one over the other?</p> <p>Well, it depends on what types of files you’re storing, how large they are and how you want to access them in the future. For example, if you’re storing digital photo files you’d like to share with family members, a cloud-based storage would be better because it allows multiple users shared access to the same documents.</p> <p>While it might be tempting to save all your files into a single location, Kumar notes that there’s nothing wrong with using several options – provided they make not only storage but also retrieval as effortless as possible.</p> <p>“My iPhone is backed up to iCloud because that’s natural in that environment, and I use Google Drive because my Gmail’s backed up within that,” she says.</p> <p>Expert tip: Don’t forget to factor in legal requirements for work-related files that might need to be held in more secure storage.</p> <p><strong>Create an organising system that makes sense to you</strong></p> <p>It’s certainly easier in the moment to leave digital files with their automatically-generated file names, but being more deliberate with your labelling pays off in the long run. If you’re looking for a cherished family photo from a few holidays back, you’ll have an easier time finding it under the file name “family-holiday-fiji-july-2019.jpg” versus “10077892.jpg.”</p> <p>“The sole purpose of organisation is to help you find it later,” says Kumar. “You’re paying yourself forward whenever you create a file name that is going to be easy to find.”</p> <p>There are two aspects to this – how you find things and the way that you name things. File hierarchies can become complex and maze-like the more levels you add, so it’s best to keep things as simple as possible. For example, nesting your photo in the folders “Photos  – &gt; 2021  – &gt; March” will make them a breeze to track down later.</p> <p>If you’re a more visual person, apply that to your organising strategy. Love downloading apps on your phone but not how they clutter the home screen? Group them together by colour.</p> <p>“Put only as much structure as you need, and not more,” advises Kumar. The same rule applies to naming files – make it as easy as possible for your brain.</p> <p>Expert tip: When naming files, start with the date and then topic like “yyyy-mm-dd-taxes.” That will allow you to sort files chronologically so you can always see the oldest or the most recent.</p> <p><strong>Take advantage of organising apps</strong></p> <p>There are plenty of different apps on the market that are designed to help with digital decluttering. For those who want to get their inbox and email subscriptions under control, Kumar recommends Unroll.Me for your smartphone.</p> <p>The tool allows you to easily unsubscribe from unwanted emails or combine your favourite subscriptions into a single email. If you find yourself keeping multiple tabs open day after day, the browser extension OneTab consolidates them into a single list to save your device’s memory (and your time).</p> <p>To scrub your social media accounts of old – and possibly embarrassing – posts, you can often delete or archive within the app.</p> <p>Expert tip: If you’ve hit an all-time high number of emails in your inbox, it might be time for a clean sweep. “I highly recommend saving emails that really matter from a sentimental or a business documentation point of view, and then you can do mass delete by time,” says Kumar.</p> <p><strong>Schedule regular decluttering in your routine</strong></p> <p>Kumar recommends checking in on all your devices and files on a quarterly basis. At the minimum, do a yearly audit of the storage you’re using. You could be missing out on a new app that’s more efficient or realise that your storage solution is outdated (or even full).</p> <p>If you still have some old documents on outdated technology like floppy disks, it might be time to think about transferring them to a more reliable supported location before they’re permanently lost. You can still copy data over to a modern computer using an external or internal floppy drive, but technology may have evolved to a point where certain old file formats can no longer be read.</p> <p>“There’s a window when the services are fairly affordable to convert those things and it’s worthwhile jumping on before it becomes a really exclusive and expensive service,” says Kumar.</p> <p>Expert tip: Kumar recommends reading <em>The Organised Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload </em>by Daniel J. Levitin for a neuroscientist’s take on how to navigate all the data we consume.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://www.readersdigest.com.au/true-stories-lifestyle/science-technology/how-to-organise-your-digital-clutter">Reader's Digest</a>.</em></p>

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When is it better to restart vs. shut down your computer?

<p><strong>Keep calm and shut down</strong></p> <p><span>There are some who believe there’s nothing that can’t be fixed on your computer by shutting it down and starting over. </span></p> <p><span>That may be a stretch, but truly, the shutdown option has always been seen as a cure-all for technical difficulties. </span></p> <p><span>Is it really that simple, though? And can a restart create the same system magic?</span></p> <p><strong>The case for shutting down</strong></p> <p><span>Anh Trinh is the managing editor at Geek with Laptop, a site that helps readers gain knowledge around all kinds of tech subjects. </span></p> <p><span>She explains that shutting down a computer is a way to power down all processes of the machine. </span></p> <p><span>“It’s very similar to a restart but with the exception that your computer won’t turn back on again until someone powers it up,” she explains. </span></p> <p><span>“This is especially useful if you plan to leave your computer for a while.”</span></p> <p><strong>Shut down isn't what it used to be</strong></p> <p>People with newer computers may experience a different kind of shutdown these days, according to ProPrivacy digital privacy expert Ray Walsh.</p> <p>“Although many people assume that a shutdown is a more comprehensive way to ensure that all processes are killed, the reality is that since Windows 8, this is a fallacy,” he says.</p> <p>“In older versions of Windows, both ‘shut down’ and ‘restart’ did exactly the same thing in terms of shutting down processes. However, since Windows 8, a new feature called Fast Startup has altered this considerably.”</p> <p>How has that changed things, exactly? “Shutting down a Windows computer actually creates a deep hibernation file that the PC later leverages to allow for Fast Startup. A restart, on the other hand, completely kills all processes, clears the RAM, and clears the processor cache,” he explains.</p> <p>“This is why a restart is the preferred method when completing a new install or uninstall and why a computer restarts during Windows Operating System updates.”</p> <p>And just so we’re clear, forcible shutdowns are a different story entirely.</p> <p><strong>What about Macs?</strong></p> <p><span>“A Mac is a Unix environment in which everything is cleared during both ‘shut down’ and ‘restart,’” Walsh explains. </span></p> <p><span>“This makes both ‘shut down’ and ‘restart’ identical in that all processes, cache and memory will be cleared, giving the machine a complete refresh.” </span></p> <p><span>In other words, there’s no real difference between a shut down or a restart for Mac users. This means most of the information that follows applies to PC users only unless otherwise stated.</span></p> <p><strong>Which situations call for a restart vs. a shutdown?</strong></p> <p>“When you’re installing new software or hardware, you’re going to need to restart your computer. This will shut off all processes so that the Kernal can be reestablished with the new software or hardware in consideration,” says Shayne Sherman, CEO of TechLoris.</p> <p>For those who aren’t aware, the Kernal is a part of the operating system that manages memory and CPU time.</p> <p>“This is also what you want to use when you’re having problems with your computer, since this will kill all processes and restart them.”</p> <p>And yes, this is different for Macs, according to Walsh. “Due to the fact that a Mac always clears everything during a reboot, Mac users will always clear their machine when they restart or shut down,” he adds.</p> <p><strong>How often should users be performing a restart?</strong></p> <p><span>“Most IT experts recommend doing a restart at least once every two to three days to permit Windows to clean up open files, get rid of temp files, and update itself,” Walsh says. </span></p> <p><span>“This ensures that deleted files and other assets are removed from a PC’s cache and aren’t left hanging around, potentially causing security or privacy issues.”</span></p> <p><strong>How often should users be performing a system shutdown?</strong></p> <p><span>“Shutting down a computer is a more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly way to leave a PC unattended,” Walsh explains. </span></p> <p><span>“Leaving a PC in sleep mode results in some power usage by the RAM and from the storage of open files and programs.”</span></p> <p><strong>Which option is better for battery life?</strong></p> <p><span>“A shut down is a deep hibernation that ensures that your computer is not wasting energy,” Walsh says.</span></p> <p><span> “A restart only momentarily turns the machine off to stop all processes, clear the RAM, and clear the processor cache. Thus, a shut down is better for power consumption and better for prolonging the life of the battery.”</span></p> <p><strong>Which option is better for security?</strong></p> <p><span>This is one area where the answer is the same for both PCs and Macs. “Shutting down a Windows PC or Mac is considered better for security because it means that the machine is completely offline for the period of time that it is off,” Walsh says. </span></p> <p><span>“This removes the potential for that machine to be hacked and stops it from communicating with a command and control server if it has already been infected with an exploit.”</span></p> <p><strong>What about cold temperatures?</strong></p> <p>Believe it or not, temperature should be one of your considerations when deciding whether to shut down or restart.</p> <p>“The cold can be extremely damaging to batteries, which is why it is unwise to switch off a battery-operated device when it is extremely cold,” Walsh explains.</p> <p>“It is better to keep a laptop running rather than switch it off in a cold car.”</p> <p>But that’s not the only reason to avoid a shut down in cold temperatures. “In extremely cold temperatures, it can potentially be unwise to turn off a computer abruptly, particularly if you have been performing intensive CPU/GPU tasks that have made the computer heat up considerably,” Walsh says.</p> <p>“This is because going from hot to cold quickly may adversely affect the PC’s microelectronic components due to thermal contraction.”</p> <p>If you have no choice but to shut down, Walsh advises waiting a little while after the intense processes have ended; that will allow the internal components to slowly cool down first.</p> <p>“However, generally speaking, computers like the cold and will perform better in the cold, where they will not heat up as much performing intensive processes,” he adds.</p> <p><strong>How about hot temperatures?</strong></p> <p><span>“The biggest danger for computers is extreme heat,” Walsh says. </span></p> <p><span>“Anytime that a computer is exposed to extremely hot conditions, it is best to power it down and leave it switched off. Even a relatively hot office can potentially be highly damaging to a computer’s components if the computer is overheating. This will substantially reduce the life span of the computer and is much more of a concern than the cold.”</span></p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://www.readersdigest.com.au/true-stories-lifestyle/science-technology/when-is-it-better-to-restart-vs-shut-down-your-computer?pages=1">Reader's Digest</a>. </em></p>

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This New Year, why not resolve to ditch your dodgy old passwords?

<p>Most of the classic New Year resolutions revolve around improving your health and lifestyle. But this year, why not consider cleaning up your passwords too?</p> <p>We all know the habits to avoid, yet so many of us do them anyway: using predictable passwords, never changing them, or writing them on sticky notes on our monitor. We routinely ignore the <a href="https://theconversation.com/choose-better-passwords-with-the-help-of-science-82361">recommendations for good passwords</a> in the name of convenience.</p> <p>Choosing short passwords containing common names or words is likely to lead to trouble. Hackers can often guess a person’s passwords simply by using a computer to work through a long list of commonly used words.</p> <p>The <a href="https://nordpass.com/most-common-passwords-list/">most popular choices</a> have changed very little over time, and include numerical combinations such as “123456” (the most common password for five years in a row), “love”, keyboard patterns such as “qwerty” and, perhaps most ludicrously, “password” (or its Portuguese translation, “senha”).</p> <p><span>Experts have long advised against using words, places or names in passwords, although you can strengthen this type of password by jumbling the components into sequences with a mixture of upper- and lowercase characters, as long as you do it thoroughly.</span></p> <p>Complex rules often lead users to choose a word or phrase and then substitute letters with numbers and symbols (such as “Pa33w9rd!”), or add digits to a familiar password (“password12”). But so many people do this that these techniques don’t actually make passwords stronger.</p> <p>It’s better to start with a word or two that isn’t so common, and make sure you mix things up with symbols and special characters in the middle. For example, “wincing giraffe” could be adapted to “W1nc1ng_!G1raff3”</p> <p><span>These secure passwords can be harder to remember, to the extent you might end up having to write them down. That’s OK, as long as you keep the note somewhere secure (and definitely not stuck to your monitor).</span></p> <p>Reusing passwords is another common error – and one of the biggest. Past data leaks, such as that suffered by <a href="https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/linkedin-2012-hack-what-you-need-know">LinkedIn in 2012</a>, mean billions of old passwords are now circulating among cyber criminals.</p> <p>This has given rise to a practice called “<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-credential-stuffing/">credential stuffing</a>” – taking a leaked password from one source and trying it on other sites. If you’re still using the same old password for multiple email, social media or financial accounts, you’re at risk of being compromised.</p> <h2>Pro tip: use a password manager</h2> <p>The simplest and most effective route to good password hygiene is to use a <a href="https://www.choice.com.au/electronics-and-technology/internet/internet-privacy-and-safety/buying-guides/password-managers">password manager</a>. This lets you use unique strong passwords for all your various logins, without having to remember them yourself.</p> <p>Password managers allow you to store all of your passwords in one place and to “lock” them away with a strong level of protection. This can be a single (strong) password, but can also include face or fingerprint recognition, depending on the device you are using. Although there is some risk associated with storing your passwords in one place, experts consider this much less risky than using the same password for multiple accounts.</p> <p>The password manager can automatically create strong, randomised passwords for each different service you use. This means your LinkedIn, Gmail and eBay accounts can no longer be accessed by someone who happens to guess the name of your childhood pet dog.</p> <p>If one password is leaked, you only have to change that one – none of the others are compromised.</p> <p>There are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_password_managers">many password managers</a> to choose from. Some are free (such as Keepass) or “freemium” (offering the option to upgrade for more functionality like Nordpass), while others charge a one-off fee or recurring subscription (such as 1Password). Most allow you to securely sync your passwords across all your devices, and some let you safely share passwords between family members or work groups.</p> <p>You can also use the password managers built into most web browsers or operating systems (with many phones offering this functionality in the browser or natively). These tend to have fewer features and may pose compatibility issues if you want to access your password from different browsers or platforms.</p> <p>Password managers take a bit of getting used to, but don’t be too daunted. When creating a new account on a website, you let the password manager create a unique (complex) password and store it straight away – there’s no need to think of one yourself!</p> <p>Later, when you want to access that account again, the password manager fills it in automatically. This is either through direct integration with the browser (typically on computers) or through a separate application on your mobile device. Most password managers will automatically “lock” after a period of time, prompting for the master password (or face/finger verification) before allowing access again.</p> <h2>Protect your most important passwords</h2> <p>If you don’t like the sound of a password manager, at the very least change your “critical” account passwords so each one is strong and unique. Financial services, email accounts, government services, and work systems should each have a separate, strong password.</p> <p>Even if you write them down in a book (kept safely locked away) you will significantly reduce your risk in the event of a data breach on any of those platforms.</p> <p>Remember, however, that some sites provide delegated access to others. Many e-commerce websites, for example, give you the option of logging in with your Facebook, Google or Apple account. This doesn’t expose your password to greater risk, because the password itself is not shared. But if the password is compromised, using it would grant access to those delegated sites. It is usually best to create unique accounts - and use your password manager to keep them safe.</p> <p><span>Adopting a better approach to passwords is a simple way to reduce your cyber-security risks. Ideally that means using a password manager, but if you’re not quite ready for that yet, at least make 2022 the year you ditch the sticky notes and pets’ names.</span></p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><span><em>This article first appeared on <a rel="noopener" href="https://theconversation.com/this-new-year-why-not-resolve-to-ditch-your-dodgy-old-passwords-172598" target="_blank">The Conversation</a></em>.</span></p>

Technology

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Science can’t tell if we’re living in The Matrix

<div> <div class="copy"> <p>We live in a unique era, at the boundaries of what transistor-based computer technology can offer.</p> <p>Thanks to that, we can now exploit the impressive versatility of previously prohibitive computational techniques, such as deep learning and other methods of artificial intelligence (AI), to the advantage of scientific research. Such tools are proving so powerful that some people are starting to argue either that we live in a simulation, or that there is a god and it is AI itself.</p> <p>Neural networks, a currently very popular AI method, are known to be universal encoders, which means that, in principle, any problem of any type can be learned and therefore predicted by the network (prohibitive computational costs notwithstanding). Unfortunately, this is not true in practice.</p> <p>Computers are finite-state machines, with finite memory, operated by myopic living beings: humans. This implies that chaotic systems (that is, nearly everything observable) cannot be represented exactly in a computer.</p> <p>Consider the number pi: it is an irrational number containing what seems to be a random, infinite sequence of digits. Neither computers nor humans can represent, or operate with, the true pi: we must approximate it. Fortunately, we have a recipe to approximate it to any precision, but for almost all other irrational numbers the situation is much worse, as they are impossible to compute.</p> <p>If no human can see these numbers, and no computer can really calculate them, do irrational numbers even exist? They do, at least in our imagination.</p> <p>Nature, as we see it, is governed by laws. Anything observable or imaginable obeys them. Physics is just the human-friendly version of a very small fraction of such laws, and it concerns only the observable phenomena. However, physics itself is based on human-centric imaginative assumptions and models.</p> <p>For example, Newton’s laws are never exactly observed in nature: they are a simplified, imaginative set of models able to approximately, yet acceptably, describe several phenomena.</p> <p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Quantum mechanics gives us insight on the finest grains of reality as we can perceive it by telling us that our world is made of funny-behaving “pixels” (</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Planck length</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">, for the pros), literally several hundreds of trillions of trillions of times smaller than the atom. </span></p> <p>These are all models, and models are nothing but the imaginative representations of observable phenomena.</p> <p>Humans understand nature whenever they can associate observation with imagination. The true problem arises when humans attempt to understand the supernatural. Religious people may give you a different perspective, but we must draw a clear line: nature, by definition, cannot be supernatural, and therefore the supernatural cannot possibly be observed in nature.</p> <p>If a human can imagine or observe a phenomenon, then it clearly cannot be supernatural; hence the very definition of “supernatural” must be part of the conceivable domain of nature. That said, I have my strong reservations about whether we can ever prove or disprove our being part of a simulation in some big alien computer, especially if such a simulation is the Creator of nature itself.</p> <p>Disclaimer: Any findings and conclusions are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the view of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the Department of Energy of United States of America. This article has been approved by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for public release, IM number LLNL-JRNL-739760. </p> <em>Image credits: Getty Images    </em></div> <div id="contributors"> <p><em>This article was originally published on <a rel="noopener" href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/physics/science-cannot-tell-us-if-were-living-in-the-matrix/" target="_blank">cosmosmagazine.com</a> and was written by Alfredo Metere.</em> </p> </div> </div>

Technology

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Apple iMac computers return to colourful roots

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the latest installation by Apple, their reinvented iMac design sports a throwback to the original colourful roots from over 20 years ago.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The new desktop computers exhibit a slim-line design, while being available to purchase in seven different colours - </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, silver.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The throwback colours are a nod to the first iMac computer, which was released in 1998, and became an instant hit.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">They also donned a bold all-in-one design originally released in an unforgettable blue translucent plastic body, that has become an iconic image of the technology revolution. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This design came after Apple CEO Steve Jobs wanted to reinvigorate the company’s products and global image.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This company revamp is arguably a key reason for Apple’s incredible ongoing success today.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Excited customers from all over the world have been getting their hands on the new rainbow iMacs, which is unlike anything else on the tech market today. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The new devices include a Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad, which are all rechargeable devices and colour-matched to your iMac of choice.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The desktop computers also boast a 24 inch screen, six built-in speakers and HD cameras.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The iMacs start at $1,899, with PC fans saying the price point is definitely justified by the quality of the colourful machine. </span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image credits: Shutterstock</span></em></p>

Technology

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"Scarily good": Parents in shock at kid's Halloween costume

<p>USA father Greg Dietzenbach, a creative director at an advertising and marketing agency, has a reputation for creative and hilarious Halloween costumes for his children in his neighbourhood.</p> <p>This year proved no exception, as he decided to take some modern inspiration and created the "Zoom scaries".</p> <p><span>"My kids challenge me every year to make a unique costume. Building a </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://youtu.be/ggjSoEsBcH4" target="_blank" class="editor-rtflink">'Transformers' sock robot</a> for my son almost broke my brain... another year [my daughter] <a rel="noopener" href="http://www.halfcrow.art/blog/door-costume" target="_blank" class="editor-rtflink">went as our neighbors' doors</a>. So, this year I wanted to make it a lot simpler."</p> <p>He created the Zoom interface, with other people attending the meeting, for his 12-year-old daughter Ava's costume.</p> <p>The Zoom interface has nine spooky participants, including photos of Ava dressed as the Invisible Man, Wolf Man, Frankenstein, Dracula, a Mummy, Blair With and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The eighth participant is Ava herself, poking her head out of the costume through a cutout.</p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height:281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7838459/halloween-body.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/a2d2d8e49a564a91964f50763d27a1db" /></p> <div class="post_body_wrapper"> <div class="post_body"> <div class="body_text redactor-styles redactor-in"> <p>Dietzenbach recreated the Zoom interface with subtly spooky changes -- replacing "End Meeting for All" with "End Life" and "Share Screen" with "Share Scream" and of course -- "666 Participants."</p> <p>"The best part of this costume creation was the photoshoot I had with my daughter," Dietzenbach said of the seven monsters/meeting attendees his daughter transformed into.</p> <p>"We were laughing the whole time as we tried to make all the monster faces."</p> <p>"Halloween was one of my favourite holidays when I was a kid and I'm happy to share my love of Halloween with my kids," Dietzenbach said.</p> <p>"2020 has been tough, it's nice to know we'll be giving some joy to others (at a safe distance of course)."</p> <p><em>Photo credit: </em><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/coronavirus-dads-zoom-halloween-costume/a9e78e96-8e01-4cc5-a426-a6b7592f6ebd" target="_blank" class="editor-rtflink">Honey</a></em></p> </div> </div> </div>

Family & Pets

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A computer can guess more than 100,000,000,000 passwords per second. Still think yours is secure?

<p>Passwords have been used for thousands of years as a means of identifying ourselves to others and in more recent times, to computers. It’s a simple concept – a shared piece of information, kept secret between individuals and used to “prove” identity.</p> <p>Passwords in an IT context <a href="https://www.wired.com/2012/01/computer-password/">emerged in the 1960s</a> with <a href="https://www.techopedia.com/definition/24356/mainframe">mainframe</a> computers – large centrally operated computers with remote “terminals” for user access. They’re now used for everything from the PIN we enter at an ATM, to logging in to our computers and various websites.</p> <p>But why do we need to “prove” our identity to the systems we access? And why are passwords so hard to get right?</p> <p><strong>What makes a good password?</strong></p> <p>Until relatively recently, a good password might have been a word or phrase of as little as six to eight characters. But we now have minimum length guidelines. This is because of “entropy”.</p> <p>When talking about passwords, entropy is the <a href="https://www.itdojo.com/a-somewhat-brief-explanation-of-password-entropy/">measure of predictability</a>. The maths behind this isn’t complex, but let’s examine it with an even simpler measure: the number of possible passwords, sometimes referred to as the “password space”.</p> <p>If a one-character password only contains one lowercase letter, there are only 26 possible passwords (“a” to “z”). By including uppercase letters, we increase our password space to 52 potential passwords.</p> <p>The password space continues to expand as the length is increased and other character types are added.</p> <p>However, the problem with depending on password complexity is that computers are highly efficient at repeating tasks – including guessing passwords.</p> <p>Last year, a <a href="https://www.cbronline.com/news/stolen-user-credentials">record was set</a> for a computer trying to generate every conceivable password. It achieved a rate faster than 100,000,000,000 guesses per second.</p> <p>By leveraging this computing power, cyber criminals can hack into systems by bombarding them with as many password combinations as possible, in a process called <a href="https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/brute-force-attack">brute force attacks</a>.</p> <p>And with cloud-based technology, guessing an eight-character password can be achieved in as little as 12 minutes and cost as little as US$25.</p> <p>Also, because passwords are almost always used to give access to sensitive data or important systems, this motivates cyber criminals to actively seek them out. It also drives a lucrative online market selling passwords, some of which come with email addresses and/or usernames.</p> <p><strong>How are passwords stored on websites?</strong></p> <p>Website passwords are usually stored in a protected manner using a mathematical algorithm called <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/06/hacker-lexicon-password-hashing/">hashing</a>. A hashed password is unrecognisable and can’t be turned back into the password (an irreversible process).</p> <p>When you try to login, the password you enter is hashed using the same process and compared to the version stored on the site. This process is repeated each time you login.</p> <p>For example, the password “Pa$$w0rd” is given the value “02726d40f378e716981c4321d60ba3a325ed6a4c” when calculated using the SHA1 hashing algorithm. Try it <a href="https://passwordsgenerator.net/sha1-hash-generator/">yourself</a>.</p> <p>When faced with a file full of hashed passwords, a brute force attack can be used, trying every combination of characters for a range of password lengths. This has become such common practice that there are websites that list common passwords alongside their (calculated) hashed value. You can simply search for the hash to reveal the corresponding password.</p> <p>The theft and selling of passwords lists is now so common, a <a href="https://haveibeenpwned.com/">dedicated website</a> — haveibeenpwned.com — is available to help users check if their accounts are “in the wild”. This has grown to include more than 10 billion account details.</p> <p>If your email address is listed on this site you should definitely change the detected password, as well as on any other sites for which you use the same credentials.</p> <p><strong>Is more complexity the solution?</strong></p> <p>You would think with so many password breaches occurring daily, we would have improved our password selection practices. Unfortunately, last year’s annual <a href="https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/91461-the-worst-passwords-of-2019">SplashData password survey</a> has shown little change over five years.</p> <p>As computing capabilities increase, the solution would appear to be increased complexity. But as humans, we are not skilled at (nor motivated to) remember highly complex passwords.</p> <p>We’ve also passed the point where we use only two or three systems needing a password. It’s now common to access numerous sites, with each requiring a password (often of varying length and complexity). A recent survey suggests there are, on average, <a href="https://www.newswire.com/news/new-research-most-people-have-70-80-passwords-21103705">70-80 passwords per person</a>.</p> <p>The good news is there are tools to address these issues. Most computers now support password storage in either the operating system or the web browser, usually with the option to share stored information across multiple devices.</p> <p>Examples include Apple’s <a href="https://www.computerworld.com/article/3254183/how-to-use-icloud-keychain-the-guide.html">iCloud Keychain</a> and the ability to save passwords in Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox (although <a href="https://www.howtogeek.com/447345/why-you-shouldnt-use-your-web-browsers-password-manager/">less reliable</a>).</p> <p><a href="https://tech.co/password-managers/what-is-a-password-manager">Password managers</a> such as KeePassXC can help users generate long, complex passwords and store them in a secure location for when they’re needed.</p> <p>While this location still needs to be protected (usually with a long “master password”), using a password manager lets you have a unique, complex password for every website you visit.</p> <p>This won’t prevent a password from being stolen from a vulnerable website. But if it is stolen, you won’t have to worry about changing the same password on all your other sites.</p> <p>There are of course vulnerabilities in these solutions too, but perhaps that’s a story for another day.</p> <p><em>Written by Paul Haskell-Dowland and Brianna O’Shea. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-computer-can-guess-more-than-100-000-000-000-passwords-per-second-still-think-yours-is-secure-144418">The Conversation.</a> </em></p>

Legal

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Are there ‘male’ and ‘female’ brains? Computers can see a distinction

<p>How useful are the well-known and hotly contested categories of “male brain” and “female brain”?</p> <p>Among experts, nobody really questions that anatomical sex differences in the brain exist. But since the advent of brain science, the scientific community has been divided over how many differences there are, which ones have been definitively proven, how large or small they are, and what they actually mean.</p> <p>And, over the past several years, a new debate has been brewing among experts. Do anatomical differences in the brain “add up” to two clearly recognisable (sex-specific) brain types? Or do they rather “mix up” and form idiosyncratic combinations or “mosaics”, independent of sex?</p> <p><strong>A mosaic of male and female features</strong></p> <p>The mosaic hypothesis was supported by the results of a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468">ground-breaking study</a> published in 2015 by Daphna Joel and her collaborators at Tel-Aviv University.</p> <p>Using brain scans of more than 1,400 participants, Joel and company identified the 10 regions showing the largest differences in size between men and women. Next, they classified each region of each brain as “male-typical”, “female-typical” or “intermediate”.</p> <p>Most of the brains turned out to be “mosaics” of male-typical <em>and</em> female-typical features, rather than being consistently male-typical (“male brains”) or female-typical (“female brains”). Joel concluded that brains “cannot be categorised into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain”.</p> <p><strong>Algorithms can ‘predict’ sex from brain data</strong></p> <p>Critics of the mosaic brain theory, however, point to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hbm.24462">machine-learning algorithms</a> that can use a brain scan to “predict” an individual’s sex with 80 to 90 percent accuracy.</p> <p>If an algorithm can classify brains into sexes so easily, the argument goes, it must be recognising some underlying difference.</p> <p>To some extent, this is a disagreement about what the terms “male brains” and “female brains” should entail. For Joel, using these categories would only be justified if, for example, knowing somebody had a “female” or “male” brain allowed you to predict other things about their brain’s features.</p> <p>But for Joel’s critics, the important thing is predicting the individual’s sex. It doesn’t matter whether or not slotting somebody’s brain into a sex category gives you more information about its structure.</p> <p>Most machine-learning classification algorithms are “black boxes”, which means they don’t reveal anything about <em>how</em> they combine brain features to define “male” and “female” brains. Despite the accuracy of the algorithms, their definitions may not even be consistent: <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00399/full">some evidence</a> suggests the algorithms use different brain features when classifying different subpopulations of females and males.</p> <p><strong>Algorithms’ sex prediction may depend on head size</strong></p> <p>And now even this classification accuracy is under challenge. A research team led by one of us (Carla Sanchis Segura) published <a href="https://rdcu.be/b50w1">a new study</a> that considers a neglected complication. On average, women have smaller bodies, heads and brains than men.</p> <p>In the early days of brain science, these differences in body and brain were mistakenly taken as evidence of (white) men’s intellectual superiority. But in recent years, it has been recognised that head size variation poses a problem for neuroscientists interested in sex differences.</p> <p>When you see a female/male difference in the size of a brain region, how do you know if you are seeing a specific effect of sex? It might simply be a difference between larger brains (more of which belong to males) and smaller brains (more of which belong to females), or a combination of the two.</p> <p>Neuroscientists try to solve this problem by statistically “controlling” for head size. But exactly how is this done?</p> <p>There are several different statistical methods in use. The current “gold standard” for assessing their validity is comparing the sex differences in the brain they find with those obtained in selected groups of females and males matched to have similar head sizes.</p> <p>Using this “gold standard”, the Sanchis-Segura research team found, <a href="https://bsd.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13293-019-0245-7">in an earlier study</a>, that not all currently used methods are effective and valid. They also found that the method used has a major impact on the number, the size and even the direction of the estimated sex differences.</p> <p>Having worked out which statistical control techniques are the most valid, Sanchis-Segura and her team were able to investigate an important question: to what extent does the high accuracy of “brain sex” classification depend on head size variation?</p> <p>The researchers tested 12 different sex-predicting machine-learning algorithms with data that had been properly adjusted for head size variation, data that had been poorly adjusted, and data that had not been adjusted at all.</p> <p>The algorithms delivered highly accurate results when using both raw data and poorly adjusted data. But when the same 12 algorithms were fed with properly adjusted data, classification accuracy dropped to 10% above ‘chance’, at about 60% accuracy.</p> <p>One particularly deflationary finding of the study was that the algorithms achieved high accuracy if they were given just one piece of information – namely, head size!</p> <p>These new findings continue to challenge the usefulfness of the categories “male brain” and “female brain”. Sex certainly affects the brain, and sex effects are important to study. But current attempts to classify brains into the categories “male brain” or “female brain” using machine-learning algorithm seem to add little beyond what has been known since the inception of modern science – that men, on average, have larger heads.</p> <p><em>Written by Cordelia Fine. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-there-male-and-female-brains-computers-can-see-a-distinction-but-they-rely-strongly-on-differences-in-head-size-143972">The Conversation.</a> </em></p>

Art

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Can’t go outside? Even seeing nature on a screen can improve your mood

<p>Are you feeling anxious or irritated during the coronavirus lockdown? Do you constantly want to get up and move? Maybe you need a moment to engage with nature.</p> <p>Getting into the great outdoors is difficult at right now. But our research soon to be published in <em>Australian Forestry</em> shows you can improve your mood by experiencing nature indoors. This could mean placing few pot plants in the corner of your home office, or even just looking at photos of plants.</p> <p>Our work adds to <a href="https://theconversation.com/biodiversity-and-our-brains-how-ecology-and-mental-health-go-together-in-our-cities-126760">a compelling body of research</a> that shows being around nature directly benefits our mental health.</p> <p><strong>Biophilia</strong></p> <p>Public gardens and parks, street verges with trees and bushes, and even rooftop gardens bring us a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10630732.2019.1637694">broad range of benefits</a> – boosting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(00)00317-2">physical health</a>, reducing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2013.12.011">air pollution</a>, and even <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/bs4040394">lowering crime rates</a>.</p> <p>But inside, in your hastily constructed home office or home school room, you may be unable to take full advantage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-for-wellbeing-science-tells-us-how-to-design-urban-spaces-that-heal-us-82437">urban nature</a>.</p> <p>Embracing the notion of “biophilia” – the innate human affinity with nature – while locked down inside may improve your productivity and even your health.</p> <p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/building-a-second-nature-into-our-cities-wildness-art-and-biophilic-design-88642">biophilia hypothesis</a> argues modern day humans evolved from hundreds of generations of ancestors whose survival required them to study, understand and rely on nature. So a disconnection from nature today can cause <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1010043827986">significant issues for humans</a>, such as a decline in psychological health.</p> <p>In practice at home, connecting with nature might mean having large windows overlooking the garden. You can also <a href="https://makeitwood.org/documents/doc-1624-pollinate-health-report---february-2018.pdf">improve working conditions</a> by having natural materials in your office or school room, such as wooden furniture, natural stones and pot plants.</p> <p><strong>Indoor plants</strong></p> <p>Our research has demonstrated that even a small number of plants hanging in pockets on along a busy corridor provide enough nature to influence our physiological and psychological perceptions.</p> <p>These plants even caused behavioural differences, where people would <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1618866717306763">change their route</a> through a building to come into contact with the indoor plants.</p> <p>We surveyed 104 people, and 40% of the respondents reported their mood and emotions improved in the presence of indoor plants.</p> <p>They felt “relaxed and grounded” and “more interested”. The presence of indoor greenery provides a place to “relax from routine” and it made the space “significantly more pleasant to work in”.</p> <p>As one person reported:</p> <p><em>When I first saw the plants up on the wall brought a smile to my face.</em></p> <p><em>Whenever I walk down the stairs or walk past I mostly always feel compelled to look at the plants on the wall. Not with any anxiety or negative thoughts, rather, at how pleasant and what a great idea it is.</em></p> <p><strong>Looking at wildlife photography</strong></p> <p>Our research also explored whether viewing images, posters or paintings of nature would make a difference.</p> <p>We photographed the plants from viewpoints similar to those the corridor users experienced. Survey responses from those who only viewed these digital images were almost the same as those who experienced them in real life.</p> <p>While we can’t say for sure, we can hypothesise that given the importance of vision in modern humans, an image that “looks” like nature might be enough to trigger a biophilic response.</p> <p>However, physically being in the presence of plants did have some stronger behavioural effects. For example corridor users wanted to linger longer looking at the plants than those who viewed the photographs, and were more likely to want to visit the plants again. Maybe the other senses - touch, smell, even sound - created a stronger biophilic response than just sight alone.</p> <p>So the good news is if you can’t get to a nursery – or if you have a serious inability to keep plants alive – you can still benefit from looking at photographs of them.</p> <p>If you haven’t been taking your own photos, search the plethora of images from wildlife photographers such as <a href="http://gimesy.com/">Doug Gimesy</a>, <a href="http://lanting.com/">Frans Lanting</a> and <a href="https://www.tanyastollznow.com/">Tanya Stollznow</a>.</p> <p>Or check out live camera feeds of a wide range of environments, and travel to far-flung places without leaving the safety of home.</p> <p>While we haven’t tested the mood-boosting effects of live videos, we hypothesise their physiological and psychological effects will be no different than digital photographs.</p> <p>Here are seven places to help you get started.</p> <ul> <li>The <a href="https://bushblitz.org.au/">Bush Blitz</a> citizen science app launched a new online tool today. The species recovery program encourages children to explore their backyard to identify different species.</li> <li>“From the bottom of the sea direct to your screen”: watch this <a href="https://www.natureaustralia.org.au/what-we-do/our-priorities/oceans/ocean-stories/reef-cam-underwater/">underwater live stream</a> of Victoria’s rocky reef off Port Phillip Bay</li> <li>The Coastal Watch website offers <a href="https://www.coastalwatch.com/surf-cams-surf-reports">live camera feeds on beaches</a> around Australia.</li> <li>Watch the running water, trees and occasional fauna in California’s <a href="https://explore.org/livecams/zen-den/live-redwood-cam-1">Redwood Forest River</a>.</li> <li>In pastoral Australia, go on a <a href="https://youtu.be/qqYFgqN_q-w">four-hour drive through the country side</a> along tree-lined roads.</li> <li><a href="https://www.zoo.org.au/animal-house/">Zoos Victoria</a> has set up live cameras that show its animals in natural (and nature-like) environments from Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo.</li> <li>Yellowstone National Park may be closed right now, but <a href="https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm?sf174893829=1">webcams are stationed</a> in various locations throughout the park.</li> </ul> <p><em>Written by Cris Brack and Aini Jasmin Ghazalli. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/cant-go-outside-even-seeing-nature-on-a-screen-can-improve-your-mood-135320">The Conversation.</a></em></p>

Retirement Life

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The Gates Foundation’s prophetic coronavirus pandemic simulation

<p>On 18 October last year, the Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the John Hopkins Centre for Health Security held a pandemic simulation exercise, with the aim of “educating senior leaders” about an adequate response to the type of crisis the planet is currently in the grips of.</p> <p>The simulation was called <a href="http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about">Event 201</a>. Fifteen participants took part in a mock pandemic emergency board. This included representatives from the UN Foundation, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Johnson &amp; Johnson, Lufthansa and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.</p> <p>Representing Australia was ANZ board member <a href="http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/players/halton.html">Jane Halton</a>, who incidentally has been <a href="https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/morrison-shuts-down-parliament-hands-nation-corporations">appointed</a> to the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission by Scott Morrison. The NCCC is a local body of corporate representatives designed to coordinate the economy during the very real COVID-19 crisis.</p> <p>The Event 201 scenario involved a new coronavirus – a disease that causes respiratory tract infection – that developed in pigs in South America and then infected farmers. The virus spread around the world, with some people developing mild flu-like symptoms, while others perished.</p> <p>Stranger than fiction</p> <p>Watching the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoLw-Q8X174&amp;app=desktop">highlights of Event 201</a> – which took place just five and a half months ago – is eerie. Simulated “GNN” newsreels appear between footage of emergency board discussions, one of which involves an immunologist outlining that efforts to find a vaccine during the outbreak failed.</p> <p>The Gates Foundation’s Christopher Elias asserts that keeping global supply chains open would take “knowledge that only the private sector has”, while the UN could play a role coordinating the various private entities. But, it’s clear to Elias that this aspect of the response would rely upon corporations.</p> <p>The most distressing part of the highlights comes when the issue of the “overwhelming amounts of dis- and mis- information circulating over the internet” is broached. The board members go on to discuss whether internet shutdowns would be necessary to deal with fake news.</p> <p>Think about it – as we sit locked down in our homes during a real pandemic, with newly imposed restrictions on gatherings with others outside of our own households – what would it be like if the government and private business decided to close down the main mode of communications?</p> <p>Too little too late</p> <p>Event 21 led to seven key recommendations, all of which, it would seem now, came too late. These suggested that governments and business sectors should plan for a pandemic situation, which would include stockpiling medical supplies and investing in <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/should-child-vaccination-be-compulsory/">vaccination</a> development capabilities.</p> <p>The outcome of the simulated pandemic was catastrophic, with 65 million people dying in the first 18 months. The outbreak was small at first and seemed controllable. But, once it started spreading through the poor neighbourhoods of megacities, it exploded, with cases in nearly every country.</p> <p>“We have to ask, did this need to be so bad?” says a GNN mock news presenter. “Are there things we could have done in the five to ten years leading up to the pandemic that would have lessened the catastrophic consequences?”</p> <p>The presenter concludes, “We believe the answer is yes.” However, that timeframe to prepare is now lost.</p> <p><em>Written by Paul Gregoire. Republished with permission of <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/the-gates-foundations-prophetic-coronavirus-pandemic-simulation/">Sydney Criminal Lawyers.</a> </em></p>

Art

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Can police demand the password to my phone or computer?

<p>Many will recall last year’s <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/fbi-cracks-apples-encryption/">battle between the United States Justice Department and technology giant Apple</a>, whereby the former spent millions of dollars trying to force the latter to unlock the IPhone of a gunman allegedly involved in the San Bernadino terrorist attack.</p> <p>The Justice Department felt the need to take such action because it knew the United States constitution would never allow the forced disclosure of an individual’s personal identity information in circumstances where it may incriminate them.</p> <p>However, the situation in Australia is different. Here, there is a legal mechanism for police to <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/encrypted-communications/australia.php">force the disclosure</a> of an individual’s passwords, personal identification numbers and private encryption keys to enable them to access an individual’s smartphone or computer during the investigation of a <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/criminal/offences/commonwealth-offences/">Commonwealth offence</a>.</p> <p>That mechanism is contained in <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca191482/s3la.html">section 3LA</a> of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) (“the Act”), which provides that “a constable may apply to a magistrate for an order to provide any information or assistance that is reasonable and necessary” to allow them to access data stored on “a computer or data storage device.”</p> <p>A “constable” is defined by <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca191482/s3.html">section 3 of the Act</a> as “a member or special member of the Australian Federal Police or a member of the police force or police service of a State or Territory”.</p> <p>Police can apply to a magistrate for an “assistance order” requiring the owner or user of a computer or data storage device to provide such information they can establish <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/police-powers-to-stop-require-identification-and-search-in-nsw/">a reasonable suspicion</a> that the device holds or can enable access to evidential material relevant to a crime.</p> <p>The subject of the order is not required to be suspected of any crime. He or she merely needs to be the owner of the device that police reasonably suspect holds information relating to an offence.</p> <p>If the application is successful, the subject will be required to provide the password/s enabling police to gain access to the device/s, as well as any decryption information in order to make data accessible and intelligible to police.</p> <p>Failure to comply with an assistance order is a criminal offence. When the law was first enacted, the maximum penalty was 6 months imprisonment. However, authorities have since raised the maximum penalty to 2 years behind bars.</p> <p><strong>A climate of paranoia</strong></p> <p>The <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/num_act/ca2001112/sch1.html">Commonwealth Cybercrime Act</a> inserted section 3LA into the Crimes Act in October 2001. The Cybercrime Act was passed through federal parliament in a post-September 11 climate of mounting fear about the threat of terrorism and <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/section-308h-of-the-crimes-act-computer-hacking-and-high-tech-offences/">cybercrime</a>.</p> <p>That Act created seven new criminal offences: three serious computer offences and four summary computer offences. It also extended police investigative powers in relation to search and seizure of electronically stored data.</p> <p><strong>The circumstances behind section 3LA</strong></p> <p>In his 2004 University of Queensland paper titled <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/journals/UQLawJl/2004/1.html?context=1;query=%22ca191482">Handing Over the Keys</a>, Nikolas James points to several reasons why a law that provides police with such pervasive power was passed at the time.</p> <p>The EU’s Convention on Cybercrime recommended that countries implement laws that guaranteed authorities could access user data under the threat of imprisonment. And France suggested that the convention be open to all countries.</p> <p>The Australian laws at the time were seen as inadequate when it came to the growing threat of cybercrime. Police were pushing for new powers, as encrypted data represented a significant obstacle to the gathering of evidence.</p> <p>The Australian business community was also losing faith in the ability of law enforcement to guard against the rising cost of <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/do-we-need-new-technology-laws-in-nsw/">cybercrime</a>. And the public’s perception of the threat posed by cybercrime helped enable authorities to broaden their reach.</p> <p><strong>Mass surveillance</strong></p> <p>Mr James also lists Australia’s involvement in the <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/rip-government-accountability-in-australia-a-privacy-guide-for-journalists/">Five Eyes global electronic surveillance alliance</a> as a reason the law was allowed to pass with little fanfare. The alliance is comprised of the USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and was established under the <a href="https://www.my-private-network.co.uk/vpn-provider-14-eyes-country-something-know/">UKUSA Agreement</a> back in 1946.</p> <p>The Five Eyes agreement allows security agencies of these nations to collect and share private and commercial communications data with one another. In Australia, strong encryption had been hampering operations, and section 3LA helped facilitate data access.</p> <p><strong>The implications of section 3LA</strong></p> <p><a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/turnbull-continues-assault-on-civil-liberties/">Civil liberties</a> groups have always been highly critical of the provision. They point out that the wording of the section is vague and the scope of the investigative powers it provides is almost unlimited. They argue that the section’s intrusion on the privacy of the populace – including those who are not suspected of an offence – is not justified or outweighed by the benefit it provides to law enforcement.</p> <p>Electronic Frontiers Australia <a href="https://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Privacy/cybercrimeact.html">described</a> the passing the Cybercrime Act as a “knee-jerk reaction to recent well-publicised virus attacks,” that “introduces an alarming law enforcement provision requiring release of encryption keys or decryption of data, contrary to the common law privilege against self-incrimination.”</p> <p>The digital rights protection organisation <a href="https://www.efa.org.au/Publish/cybercrime_bill.html">further pointed out</a> that the law has the potential to lead to the imprisonment of an individual who has genuinely forgotten their password or encryption keys.</p> <p>The provisions under section 3LA also have the potential to enable police to access whole computer networks. If an officer has a reasonable suspicion a computer contains some evidential information, they can obtain an order, which will also provide access to any other computer it’s connected to.</p> <p>And with the scope of the internet, the potential reach is virtually unlimited.</p> <p><strong>Brandis plans to broaden powers</strong></p> <p>In July this year, Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-14/facebook-google-to-be-forced-to-decrypt-messages-fight-terrorism/8707748">announced</a> proposed new laws that will require social media and technology companies like Facebook and Google to allow Australian security agencies access to people’s encrypted messages.</p> <p>Attorney general George Brandis has actually been pushing for these laws <a href="https://www.itnews.com.au/news/attorney-generals-new-war-on-encrypted-web-services-375286">since early 2014</a>.</p> <p>In a submission to the Senate inquiry into the comprehensive revision of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2013C00361">Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 2014</a>, the attorney general’s office stated that these laws “would operate in a similar fashion to orders made under section 3LA.”</p> <p>“Section 3LA permits agencies that have seized physical hardware… under a search warrant to apply for a further warrant requiring a person to ‘provide any information or assistance that is reasonable and necessary’ to allow information held on the device to be converted into an intelligible form,” the authors wrote.</p> <p>Co-convenor of the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Community David Vaile told <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/about/">Sydney Criminal Lawyers®</a><a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/digital-surveillance-an-interview-with-the-cyberspace-law-and-policy-communitys-david-vaile/"> in August</a> that the trigger for social media companies starting to use encryption on a wider scale was revelations that the NSA had been hacking into Google data centres.</p> <p>This information was revealed when Edward Snowden leaked classified documents from the NSA in mid-2013. The thousands of documents exposed by Snowden informed the public that global surveillance programs were being conducted by the NSA, along with other Five Eyes nations.</p> <p><strong>Big brother is watching</strong></p> <p>In his 2004 paper, Mr James outlined that by “undermining the effectiveness of encryption, section 3LA redirects the flow of power away from business and private citizens towards law enforcement agencies.”</p> <p>Encryption empowers citizens to protect themselves against cybercrime without the need of police protection. But by applying the provisions of section 3LA, law enforcement can now shift that balance of power, making individuals more reliant on those agencies.</p> <p>The provision also works to monitor citizens through panoptic surveillance, according to Mr James.</p> <p>The panoptic surveillance effect of this law is that individuals are aware that, at any time, police have the potential to access their personal computers and smartphones. So people may begin to self-regulate their behaviour on these devices, as at any moment they might be subject to the investigation of authorities.</p> <p>Mr James warned that as the population becomes aware such provisions exist, “citizens will willingly and obediently reduce the space within which they feel free to live, to play, to act and to create away from authority’s scrutiny and judgment.”</p> <p><em>Written by Paul Gregoire. Republished with permission of <a href="https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/can-police-demand-the-password-to-my-phone-or-computer/">Sydney Criminal Lawyers.</a></em></p>

Travel Tips

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How to unfollow a page on Facebook using your phone or computer

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Unfollowing a page on Facebook is easy as you don’t have to unlike the page either.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Unfollowing the page means that notifications and updates won’t appear in your News Feed, but you’ll be able to access the page and its posts if you go to it manually.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There are two ways to unfollow a page on both mobile and desktop.</span></p> <p><strong>How to unfollow a page on Facebook on your computer</strong></p> <ol> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Log in to Facebook on a browser on your computer.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Get to the page you want to unfollow.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hover over the “Following” button on the page and select “unfollow this page”.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">You will receive a notification that says “You have unfollowed [page] and will no longer see posts from this page in your News Feed”. Click on “Done”.</span></li> </ol> <p><strong>How to unfollow a page on Facebook from your News Feed</strong></p> <ol> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Select the three dots in the upper right hand corner on the page’s post in your News Feed. </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Select “Unfollow [page].</span></li> </ol> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">See? Simple! Onto mobile devices.</span></p> <p><strong>How to unfollow a page on Facebook from your mobile device</strong></p> <ol> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Open the Facebook app on your iPhone or Android phone.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Go to the page that you want to unfollow.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Select the three dots in the top right corner and hit “Following”.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Select the “Unfollow” option under the “In Your News Feed” section. You are also able to turn off page notifications in this section by tapping on “Edit Notification settings”.</span></li> </ol> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Unfollowing a page on Facebook from your News Feed on mobile is the same as it is on a computer.</span></p>

Technology

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Hackers are getting smarter by targeting councils and governments

<p>In recent weeks, <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/city-of-johannesburg-held-for-ransom-by-hacker-gang/">Johannesburg’s computer network was held for ransom</a> by a hacker group called Shadow Kill Hackers. This was the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49125853">second time</a> in three months a ransomware attack has hit South Africa’s largest city. This time, however, hackers didn’t pose the usual threat.</p> <p>Rather than denying the city <a href="https://www.hkcert.org/ransomware.hk/ransomware-basic.html">access to its data</a>, the standard blackmail in a ransomware attack, they threatened to publish it online. This style of attack, known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware#Leakware_(also_called_Doxware)">leakware</a>, allows hackers to target more victims in a single attack – in this case the city’s citizens.</p> <p>The latest Johannesburg attack was the second leakware attack of this type ever recorded, and a similar attack could hit Australia soon. And although our current cyberattack defences are more advanced than many countries, we could be taken by surprise because of the unique way leakware operates.</p> <p><strong>A new plan of attack</strong></p> <p>During the Johannesburg attack, city employees received a computer message saying hackers had “compromised all passwords and sensitive data such as finance and personal population information”. In exchange for not uploading the stolen data online, destroying it and revealing how they executed the breach, the hackers demanded four bitcoins (worth about A$52,663) - “a small amount of money” for a vast city council, they said.</p> <p><em><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299645/original/file-20191031-187903-1ykyg4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299645/original/file-20191031-187903-1ykyg4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <span class="caption">The hacker group operated a Twitter account, on which they posted a photo showing the directories they had access to.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ShadowKillGroup/twitter</span></span></em></p> <p>In this case, access to data was not denied. But the threat of releasing data online can put enormous pressure on authorities to comply, or they risk releasing citizens’ sensitive information, and in doing so, betraying their trust.</p> <p>The city of Johannesburg decided <a href="https://coingeek.com/we-shall-not-pay-the-ransom-johannesburg-tells-hackers/">not to pay the ransom</a> and to restore systems on its own. Yet we don’t know whether the data has been released online or not. The attack suggests cybercriminals will continue to experiment and innovate in a bid to defeat current prevention and defence measures against leakware attacks.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299644/original/file-20191031-187898-hhld2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299644/original/file-20191031-187898-hhld2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <span class="caption">This login screen message was displayed on computers in Johannesburg following the attack.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">pule_madumo/twitter</span></span></p> <p>Another notable leakware attack happened a decade ago against the US state of Virginia. <a href="https://www.govtech.com/security/Cyber-Criminal-Demands-10-Million.html">Hackers stole</a> prescription drug information from the state and tried obtaining a ransom by threatening to either release it online, or sell it to the highest bidder.</p> <p><strong>When to trust the word of a cybercriminal?</strong></p> <p>Ransomware attack victims face two options: <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361372316300367">pay, or don’t pay</a>. If they choose the latter, they need to try other methods to recover the data being kept from them.</p> <p>If a ransom is paid, criminals will often decrypt the data as promised. They do this to encourage compliance in future victims. That said, paying a ransom <a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/paying-the-coverton-ransomware-may-not-get-your-data-back/">doesn’t guarantee the release or decryption of data</a>.</p> <p>The type of attack experienced in Johannesburg poses a new incentive for criminals. Once the attackers have stolen the data, and have been paid the ransom, the data still has extractive value to them. This gives them <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.06247.pdf">duelling incentives</a> about whether to publish the data or not, as publishing it would mean they could continue to extort value from the city by targeting citizens directly.</p> <p>In cases where victims decide not to pay, the solution so far has been to have strong, separate and updated <a href="https://www.csoonline.com/article/3331981/how-to-protect-backups-from-ransomware.html">data backups</a>, or use one of <a href="https://www.nomoreransom.org/en/index.html">the passkeys available online</a>. Passkeys are decryption tools that help regain access to files once they’ve been held at ransom, by applying a repository of keys to unlock the most common types of ransomware.</p> <p>But these solutions don’t address the negative outcomes of leakware attacks, because the “<a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/bm/Documents/risk/cayman-islands/2017%20Deloitte%20-%20Taking%20data%20hostage%20-%20The%20rise%20of%20ransomware.PDF">hostage</a>” data is not meant to be released to the victim, but to the public. In this way, criminals manage to innovate their way out of being defeated by backups and decryption keys.</p> <p><strong>The traditional ransomware attack</strong></p> <p>Historically, <a href="https://www.techopedia.com/definition/4337/ransomware">ransomware attacks denied users access to their data, systems or services</a> by locking them out of their computers, files or servers. This is done through obtaining passwords and login details and changing them fraudulently through the process of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing">phishing</a>.</p> <p>It can also be done by encrypting the data and converting it to a format that makes it inaccessible to the original user. In such cases, criminals contact the victim and pressure them into paying a ransom in exchange for their data. The criminal’s success depends on both the value the data holds for the victim, and the victim’s inability to retrieve the data from elsewhere.</p> <p>Some cybercriminal groups have even developed complex online “<a href="https://www.computerworld.com/article/3173698/ransomware-customer-support-chat-reveals-criminals-ruthlessness.html">customer support</a>” assistance channels, to help victims buy cryptocurrency or otherwise assist in the process of paying ransoms.</p> <p><strong>Trouble close to home</strong></p> <p>Facing the risk of losing sensitive information, companies and governments often pay ransoms. This is <a href="https://www.synergetic.net.au/ransomware-attacks-on-the-rise-in-australia/">especially true</a> in Australia. Last year, 81% of Australian <a href="https://www.synergetic.net.au/ransomware-attacks-on-the-rise-in-australia/">companies</a> that experienced a cyberattack were held at ransom, and 51% of these paid.</p> <p>Generally, paying tends to <a href="http://www.rmmagazine.com/2016/05/02/ransomware-attacks-pose-growing-threat/">increase the likelihood</a> of future attacks, extending vulnerability to more targets. This is why ransomware is a rising global threat.</p> <p>In the first quarter of 2019, <a href="https://www.mcafee.com/enterprise/en-us/assets/reports/rp-quarterly-threats-aug-2019.pdf">ransomware attacks went up by 118%</a>. They also became more targeted towards governments, and the healthcare and legal sectors. Attacks on these sectors are now more lucrative than ever.</p> <p>The threat of leakware attacks is increasing. And as they become more advanced, Australian city councils and organisations should adapt their defences to brace for a new wave of sophisticated onslaught.</p> <p>As history has taught us, it’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/01/systems-shut-down-in-victorian-hospitals-after-suspected-cyber-attack">better to be safe</a> than sorry.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126190/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/roberto-musotto-872263">Roberto Musotto</a>, Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Postdoctoral Fellow, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/edith-cowan-university-720">Edith Cowan University</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/brian-nussbaum-874786">Brian Nussbaum</a>, Assistant Professor at College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-at-albany-state-university-of-new-york-1978">University at Albany, State University of New York</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hackers-are-now-targeting-councils-and-governments-threatening-to-leak-citizen-data-126190">original article</a>.</em></p>

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7 alarming things a hacker can do when they have your email address

<p><strong>1. Send emails from your address</strong></p> <p>This is probably the most obvious thing hackers can do with your email address, and it’s a nuisance for sure. Once hackers have your email address, they can use it to target more than just you, sending out email blasts to anyone (maybe even everyone!) in your contact list. As Garry Brownrigg, CEO &amp; Founder of <a href="https://www.quicksilk.com/">QuickSilk</a>, explains, “They can ‘spoof’ an email message with a forged sender address – they don’t even need your password for this.” The things they send can be anything from harmful malware to scams and requests for money; either way, you’d certainly rather they didn’t come from your address.</p> <p>And although it’s mostly harmless (most savvy internet users are able to catch on when they receive a scam email from a friend’s address), it could still be a problem in some cases. “If a criminal really wanted to hurt someone, they could use this as a way to hook a romantic partner, hack the victim’s employer, get the person in trouble at work, or cause any number of problems in their personal or professional life by impersonating them online,” says Jason Glassberg, co-founder of <a href="https://www.casaba.com/">Casaba Security</a> and former cybersecurity executive at Ernst &amp; Young and Lehman Brothers.</p> <p><strong>2. Send phishing emails</strong></p> <p>Since there isn’t a lot that hackers can do with just the email address, they’re not going to stop there. “When a hacker knows your email address, they have half of your confidential information – all they need now is the password,” warns Greg Kelley of <a href="https://www.vestigeltd.com/">Vestige Digital Investigations</a>. They employ a few different methods to access it, the most common being the phishing email. This is an email, in the guise of being a legitimate email from a trusted source, designed to trick you into logging in. “They might create a legitimate-sounding email that appears to be sent from a service such as Amazon, eBay, Paypal or any number of other popular services… Links in phishing emails will always direct the user to a purposefully built website that looks identical to the real service,” explains Ray Walsh, a digital privacy expert at <a href="https://proprivacy.com/">ProPrivacy.com</a>. “However, if people use the login on that fake website, the hacker instantly receives the credential and password for the real account.”</p> <p>Another way they can do this, ironically, is by sending you an email saying that your account is compromised or has been accessed from a new device, so you need to change your password for security reasons. (You’ve almost definitely had one of those at one point or another!) When you change your password, then your account really is compromised and the hacker has your password. Once hackers have your password, the range of things they can do becomes much greater.</p> <p><strong>3. Access your online accounts</strong></p> <p>Nowadays, our emails do double duty as our logins for scores of social media sites, in addition to Google Docs, online retailers, and so on. Internet users also have a very understandable tendency to use the same passwords for all of these accounts. And even if you don’t use the same password, the hacker can click the old ‘forgot password’ button and use the resulting email – which comes to your email address, which they do have the password for – to change the password, and voilà. Your accounts are their accounts, and they have access to anything on them that you do.</p> <p><strong>4. Access personal information</strong></p> <p>The things hackers can do with your information seem to be something of a chain reaction. Once a hacker has access to your online accounts, just think about all of the information that is right at their fingertips. Allan Buxton, Director of Forensics at SecureForensics, sums it up: “At a minimum, a search on Facebook can get a public name and, unless privacy protections are in place, the names of friends and possibly pictures,” he says. “Throw that email address into LinkedIn, and they’ll know where you work, who your colleagues are, your responsibilities, plus everywhere you worked or went to school. That’s more than enough to start some real-world stalking. That’s just two sites – we haven’t talked about political views, travel or favourite places they might glean from Twitter or Instagram.”</p> <p>Glassberg admits that such ‘real-world stalking’ is rare, sure, but anything is possible in an era where people document nearly everything online.</p> <p><strong>5. Steal financial information</strong></p> <p>Things start to get really problematic if hackers are able to find your credit or debit card information – which, more likely than not, you’ve sent via email at one point or another. Your online bank accounts can also be a major target for hackers, especially if you use your email address as a login for those, too. And, needless to say, once a hacker has access to those, your money is in serious jeopardy. “This is one of the biggest risks you’ll face from an email hack,” Glassberg says. “Once [hackers] have the email, it’s easy to reset the bank account and begin issuing transactions.” In addition to potentially being devastating of your finances, this can also hurt your credit score, as <a href="https://www.beenverified.com/">BeenVerified</a>’s Chief Communications Officer Justin Lavelle explains: “Cybercriminals can use your credit card details, open bank accounts in your name, and take out loans. It will likely ruin your credit card’s rating and your credit report will take a hit.”</p> <p><strong>6. Blackmail you</strong></p> <p>As if things weren’t scary enough, hackers can use your personal info to ruin, or threaten to ruin, your reputation. This is fairly rare, but it can happen, especially if a hacker finds something that the user wouldn’t want to be seen publicly. “[Hackers] can use this access to spy on you and review your most personal emails,” says Daniel Smith, head of security research at <a href="https://www.radware.com/">Radware</a>. “This kind of information could easily be used to blackmail/extort the victim.”</p> <p><strong>7. Steal your identity</strong></p> <p>This is definitely a worst-case scenario, but “once the hacker has your personally identifiable information, they can steal your identity,” Brownrigg warns. With information like your tax file number and credit card info, identity theft can sadly be well within reach for hackers. So, if you start noticing signs someone just stole your identity, consider that your email address may have been compromised.</p> <p><strong>How you can stay safe from hackers</strong></p> <p>Hopefully, though, you won’t have to encounter any of these problems, and there are some measures you can take to keep your information safe. Avoid using your verbatim email address as a login for other sites, and make sure that your password is strong and difficult to guess. You should also change those passwords every couple of months or so for maximum security. Glassberg also recommends securing your email account with two-factor authentication. This “[requires] a one-time code to be entered alongside the password in order to gain access to the email account,” he told RD. “In most cases, the code will be texted to the person’s phone, but there are also apps you can use, like Google Authenticator.”</p> <p>And, of course, just use common sense. Don’t share information or type in your email password on public WiFi networks, and be smart about the information you share over email.</p> <p><strong>What to do if you think you’ve been hacked</strong></p> <p>Starting to notice some strange online activity? There are a couple of ways you can try to get ahead before it gets too bad. If you hear about spam emails being sent from your address, change your password immediately. You should also tell your contacts so that they know to ignore anything coming from you. Finally, Lavelle offers some other suggestions: “Change your email settings to the highest privacy setting, scan your computer for malware and viruses, and be sure your browsers are updated,” he says.</p> <p><em>Written by Meghan Jones. This article first appeared in </em><em><a href="https://www.readersdigest.com.au/true-stories-lifestyle/science-technology/7-alarming-things-a-hacker-can-do-when-they-have-your-email-address">Reader’s Digest</a>. For more of what you love from the world’s best-loved magazine, </em><a href="http://readersdigest.innovations.com.au/c/readersdigestemailsubscribe?utm_source=over60&amp;utm_medium=articles&amp;utm_campaign=RDSUB&amp;keycode=WRA93V"><em>here’s our best subscription offer</em></a><em>.</em></p> <p><img style="width: 100px !important; height: 100px !important;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7820640/1.png" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/f30947086c8e47b89cb076eb5bb9b3e2" /></p>

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