Sharing is a critical life skill, and I’m talking about more than snacks and your favorite toy. It is an essential part of stopping malware. But unlike trading brownies or matchbox cars, sharing malware samples is complicated.
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Your computer is your digital home. And just like a home – it eventually gets dirty and needs cleaning. Not dirty in the usual way, mind you. What I am talking about is digital rubbish – bits and pieces of programs you removed a long time ago but are still haunting your hard drives.
The post How to keep your digital home as clean as possible appeared first on Avira Blog.
According to a new research by Juniper Research, retailers will invest $2.5 billion on IoT within the next five years — four times the investment being made in 2015.
Some of the biggest retail IoT investments are being made in location-based beacon technology. Bluetooth-based beacon technology, like Estimote, transmits location information from beacons to smartphones and allows retailers, once you’ve opted in, to track your whereabouts and communicate real-time via their own app. The retailers can provide customers with personalizedm relevant ads and other useful information.
Forgot your shopping list? No worries, you’ll be reminded of products when you enter the store based on your previous purchases, or access shared shopping lists, and receive relevant special in-store coupons and deals.
Target is among the growing list of retailers testing the technology. It launched a test of beacons in 50 stores. One of the features integrated in Target’s app allows it to push timely recommendations and deals in proximity to a shopper’s location.
For a glimpse of how beacons are taking root at retail, Mobile Commerce Daily recently profiled a pilot program at Illinois-based Niemann Foods’ County Markets. The 44-store chain’s launch of in-store beacons provide shoppers with personalized digital offers, location-specific coupons and in-store maps to streamline the purchasing experience.
The results have been positive, including coupon redemption rates as high as 50 percent, compared to a printed ad coupon industry average of below 2 percent, reports Nathaniel Jones, the electronic marketing manager at Niemann’s.
According to the 2015 Store Operations Survey by Retail Touchpoints, nearly 46% of retailers either now have or plan to use beacons in their stores. For now, most of the beacon programs are being deployed in pilots on a small scale as retailers try to understand how the technology can foster customer engagement. So far, analysts report that the biggest barrier to adoption is getting consumers to turn on the Bluetooth capability on their phones.
Now, in new developments at the other end of the IoT retail spectrum away from the store and more conveniently located in your own home comes the new Amazon Dash Button. The eCommerce giant has begun offering the Wi-Fi-enabled Dash buttons for its Prime customers to install in their homes to make it possible to re-order online without even needing to login to Amazon. The inexpensive (US$4.99) small plastic Dash buttons are designed to be placed throughout the home to make it easy to re-order anything from coffee to soap — from where you use it most — with just a press of the button. No need to hassle with a shopping list, Dash is on the case!
On the downside, the Dash service is still in early stages and currently has limited product availability. However, it is earning the support of major brands from Maxwell House to Clorox. And, for the near-term, Dash does not provide immediate gratification; you still have to await a typical Amazon Prime shipment and delivery timeframe of overnight or later, depending on the product availability. (But that may change with Amazon’s planned deliveries by Drones sometime in the future!)
Also on the downside, think of the results if a button-pushing happy child or a teenager plays with Dash? What to do with twenty bags of dog food delivered at your door?
Looking even further ahead to where retail IoT is headed, Time Magazine asks in its review of Dash: “What happens when consumption becomes even less of a conscious process — when, say, our smart cupboards and refrigerators, empowered to monitor what we’re using, start making buying decisions autonomously?”
Indeed. There are definitely a few things to be worked out about the future of IoT and retail in our lives. Chief among them, we believe, are privacy and security safeguards. All the new retail and other IoT technologies and services hinge on data — your data. They are feeding customer data and behavior back to retailers and their vendors to be tracked, analyzed and recorded.
Both the beacon apps and Dash are opt-in services, and consumers must give their permission and have a choice to use them or not. But increasingly with IoT, consumers will face the question: Are you more concerned with privacy or convenience?
And the same question is of supreme importance to businesses in their adoption of IoT. Business owners, small or large, have to gauge these new IoT opportunities for the potential and risks involved…not to mention the potential for annoying customers.
The IoT may prove to be the biggest game-changer since the Internet itself, with wide-ranging implications to society. And like the Internet before it, all of those implications and protocols that will be needed, aren’t yet known. It’s a brave new world and we all need to get ready for it.
At AVG, our prime concern is with privacy and data security, and that’s why we are involved at the industry level to protect them. For example, we support the OTA IoT Trust Guidelines Framework, which was issued this past month. To read the full Framework Goals you can visit the OTA site.
Just a couple of weeks ago we informed you in a blog post about Mozilla’s Bugzilla and how a hacker gainer access to a privileged account. Now the same thing could happen to you, if your organization uses Bugzilla as well as their email-based permissions.
The post Bugzilla – Where Everyone Can Gain Access To Your Bugs appeared first on Avira Blog.
You have an Android device and the performance is not as good as it was in the first days after you bought it? You want to delete the bloatware applications which are automatically installed from the manufacturer by default but there is no option to do that? If you seek help for problems like these and do some research in the internet, one of the first things to do you will probably read about is “rooting your Android device”.
The post Android – The rooting story appeared first on Avira Blog.
In the wake of increasing drone incidents, including the most recent highly-publicized crashes at the U.S. Open tennis tournament and the opening game of a newly renovated college football stadium in Kentucky, drones got a somewhat surprising defender last week: California Governor Jerry Brown.
Governor Brown last week vetoed a bill that would have barred drones from flying within 350 feet above a property without “express permission” of the property owners. Despite easily passing the state legislature, the bill was widely reported to have opposition by tech industry companies and trade organizations.
Brown said in his veto message that the measure went too far in its restrictions. The bill, which is SB142 by Santa Barbara Democratic Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, would have created a trespassing crime for operating drones within 350 feet above private property without the consent of the property owner.
In his official statement about the veto, Brown noted, “Drone technology certainly raises novel issues that merit careful examination,” and should be looked at “more carefully.” But in his measured response, he suggested the act would be a crime “whether or not anyone’s privacy was violated by the flight.”
Said the Governor, “This bill, however, while well-intentioned, could expose the occasional hobbyist and the FAA-approved commercial user alike to burdensome litigation and new causes of action.”
As industry observer news website Re/Code reported, one of the tech industry’s leading associations, The Consumer Electronics Association, was a vocal opponent of the legislation. Among CEA members are Amazon and Google, both of which are planning drone delivery services. And among other influential participants, Re/Code also reported that GoPro, which recently announced plans for a drone, was in opposition.
“Safe, responsible drone use will transform the way we do business — allowing these devices to assist in search and rescue and disaster relief missions, improve crop production and efficiency, and create safer work environments for infrastructure maintenance.” Gary Shapiro, the CEA president and CEO, said in his statement to Re/Code.
Drones are (literally) at the intersection of technology, security, and privacy. Unfortunately, some bad players have colored the drone issue to date. But there are benefits to be derived from drone technology: They can speed delivery of emergency supplies, they can provide great benefits to agriculture, and they can literally save lives. For example, in natural and/or manmade disasters, drones can be positioned to survey damage, locate lost hikers or disaster victims, and improve efficiency and safety of rescue teams.
There will no doubt be more legal decisions and bills involved. As Re/Code also noted: 46 different states have considered 156 different bills about drones this year. And as American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) policy analyst Jay Stanley recently said about drone policing,” It’s still a bit of a Wild West.”
But as Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, the now-retired US Airways pilot that in 2009 managed to safely land his Airbus A320 passenger jet in the Hudson River, saving all 155 persons aboard, emphasizes: we need better risk management, better regulation of the recreational drone industry, and more enforcement of those regulations when drone operators do what he describes as “stupid, reckless, dangerous things.”
Speaking more than one language has, of course, many advantages. As strange as it might sound, creating safer passwords can be one of them.
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Do you know what a drive-by exploit is and how it works? Read on to find out – and afterwards you maybe even want to help us with a browser experiment!
The post Our Browser, Drive-By Exploits And an Experiment appeared first on Avira Blog.
An elderly man in Bratislava, Slovakia, now has a new Avira t-shirt – and he might not remember how he got it.
The post Avira Rainy Day Rescue appeared first on Avira Blog.
“I know it when I see it,” is how US Supreme Court judge Steward Potter described his definition of pornography. But when it comes to adware, the description is far less titillating: You know it when you CAN’T see how to get rid of it.
The post Know the difference between adware and porn? appeared first on Avira Blog.