Read the latest research on children’s wellbeing as a result of Covid-19 and other news addressing online safety, education and more…
TOP NEWS THIS WEEK:
NEW GOVERNMENT GUIDANCE
The government has released new guidance on how the new National Restrictions to control the spread of the virus will impact education, childcare and children’s social care settings. Read more here.
TWO CHATBOTS ON A FIRST DATE
An experiment known as Bot Battle recorded Blenderbot and Kuki’s first date. The experiment pits two digital chatbots powered by artificial intelligence against each other to see who will respond in the most humanly realistic way. Their conversation ranged from football to politics and religion before discussing whether the queen is really a lizard. Read more here.
HOLOGRAMS OF THE DEAD
As a birthday gift from her husband, Kim Kardashian received a talking hologram of her late father. The technology from Deepfake raises some interesting ethical issues about the right to control the image of someone who has died. Read more here.
CYBERTHREAT AGENCY CONFRONTS COVID RELATED ATTACKS
According to the latest report from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, more than a quarter of cyberthreat incidents it responded to this year were Covid-related. It has already thwarted a total of 15,354 campaigns that used the pandemic as a “lure” to fool the recipients to open malicious software. The NCSC also warns that ransomware attacks, where the user is locked out of their computer in exchange for payment, are becoming more common. Read more here.
MORE NEWS:
Deleted files found on used USB drives
Abertay University investigators sent a warning after having found 75,000 files on 100 used USB drives purchased on an internet auction site. They contained files named “passwords”, images embedded with location, tax returns and other files considered to be of “high sensitivity”. The information can be recovered using publicly available tools which is very concerning according to Prof Karen Renaud. Read more here.
Disappearing messages on WhatsApp
The Facebook-owned chatting app is introducing a disappearing messages feature to its users by the end of November, mimicking the features of rival app Snapchat. The option will automatically erase chats from both the sender and recipient’s phones after 7 days. However, that will not keep the recipients from screenshotting and forwarding any messages, videos, photos they could want to keep. Read more here.
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