The immediate reaction of a lot of cyber-security professionals to the news that Microsoft Excel would support Javascript was, “What could go wrong.” The clear implication being that a lot could go wrong, that this is creating a lot of risk and that this was an unnecessary step. It is true, including Javascript support in […]
May 2018
The security dashboard of the world’s most popular sites, SecureTheWeb.info, uses data collected by a Python script that visits the sites. This Python script in turn relies on the underlying OpenSSL implementation on the computer where it is running. This is a limitation because the script cannot check for protocols that Python or OpenSSL don’t […]
So you are traveling to the US, and you’re wondering about the potential search of your electronic devices by Customs and Border Patrol when you enter. You have reason to be concerned. CBP has been going through people’s devices with no declared probable cause, and the numbers have been going up, from 0.002% of all […]
Jan 2017
I’ve been collecting PayPal phishing emails for a while, here are some of them.
Ads on mobile news sites can be ugly and annoying. Just look at these examples. With iOS 9 and a recent enough iPhone you can install ad blockers. I expect that a similar solution is available for Android. I have no idea about Windows phone users. However, many sites now detect ad blockers and prevent […]
Feb 2016
While teaching a course on data journalism I came across Google Fusion Tables. It’s not quite Excel or Google Sheets, in some ways it’s more, but it lacks many, many functions. It seems good for mapping, but you have to bring your data and shape files. Here is a sample of what it does.
Mar 2015
Today Mint published an article with a series of charts and tables on the topic of women getting married and having children between the very young ages of 15-19 years. It is a subject worthy of serious attention. However, the Mint charts suffer from fundamental statistical flaws and do little to illuminate the issues or […]
ICICI Bank has launched a new Twitter-based banking service, only the second such service in the world the bank proudly claims. That is two too many. Some things are meant to go together, but banking and social networking are not. While many news and tech sites in India reported on this feature, most outlets faithfully […]
Sep 2014
Smartphone ownership in India has grown very quickly, going from less than 10 million to over 100 million in the past three years. Additionally, there are now over three times as many wireless broadband subscribers as wired subscribers. And yet for many Web destinations in India, mobile devices, nearly synonymous with smartphones, only account for […]
Jun 2014
Gaana, an Internet music broadcasting service based in India, recently added videos and lyrics to songs available from the service. Shazam, a music identification service, also integrates videos and lyrics for songs that people identify, or “tag”, with the app. The two services have implemented these features in different ways, and one of them is […]