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"Ransomware has been in the news repeatedly over the past few years. This is the insidious malware that will lock your data or device (smartphone or PC) and displays a screen-wide message that demands money from you to release it, which it does by sending you an unlock code."

"The response on Twitter was predictably splenetic. Suárez's supporters claimed the images were manipulated, their argument promoted by a rather well-done diptych which did the rounds. The left-hand image - which had been photoshopped to remove the marks - purported to be the "real" unaltered version, while the right hand side - Gentile's original image - was labelled the fake."

"99 percent of the names submitted to the list are accepted; the court called this "wildly loose." The database has grown from 227,932 names in 2009 to its current stratospheric heights. There is no official, public procedure for having your name removed from the list. The US government is seeking to end the trial by invoking state secrecy."

"Privacy campaigners say the plan for the regional centres revives talk of "pseudonymised information" being extracted from medical records. That refers to a process whereby some personal identifiers are removed but not enough to make information completely anonymous."

Apple has found out that a Chinese iPhone App company are boosting their own ratings. Now they have been removed from the App Store.

"Turkey has finally restored access to YouTube, 67 days after the government blocked the video-sharing website. The Turkey's telecommunications authority (TIB) lifted the ban on Tuesday, removing YouTube from the "blocked sites" listed on its website. The move came four days after the country's Constitutional Court ruled that the ban violated Turks' free speech rights and ordered the ban be lifted."

""This project also came on the heels of a very public debate about structural sexism in Wikipedia. [This] began when writer Amanda Filipacchi wrote a New York Times op-ed on a problematic editorial practice being implemented by a number of Wikipedia editors: women were being removed from the 'American Novelists' category and moved into a subcategory for 'American Women Novelists.'" Filipacchi's piece set the internet on fire, sparking a mass call for reform."

"Halifax's system, which is currently at the proof-of-concept stage, uses a piece of wearable technology known as the Nymi band; it monitors and stores a user's heartbeat via an electrocardiogram (ECG). Users must wear the Nymi on one wrist, and touch its top sensor with the opposite hand for it to work. The Nymi pairs with a smartphone via Bluetooth, using a companion app for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. Removal of the wristband invalidates biometric authentication."

"The BBC complained that a 2007 article about the ousting of Merrill Lynch's CEO had been pulled from certain Google searches in Europe. The Guardian revealed that six articles had been pulled from search results, including three from as far back as 2010 about a Scottish referee who was forced to resign after lying about a penalty and one from 2011 about French workers making Post-it art."

"HTTP/2 is a more modern protocol that essentially speeds web browsing up using new ways of transporting data between the browser and server across the internet. It is backwards compatible with HTTP1.1 and uses most of the same technologies, but it is more efficient and allows servers to respond with more content than was originally requested, removing the need for the user's computer to continually send requests for more information until a website is fully loaded."

"The OS is a marvel of paranoid terribleness, with lots of marvellously bad features. The one I was most interested in is its covert insertion of watermarks into every file that it touches, either on the OS's launch disk or removable USB sticks."

"EFF's Legal Director Corynne McSherry offers five lessons to keep in mind: 1. (Lots of) mistakes will be made: copyright takedowns result in the removal of tons of legitimate content. 2. Robots won't help: automated filtering tools like Content ID have been a disaster, and policing copyright with algorithms is a lot easier than policing "bad speech." 3. These systems need to be transparent and have due process. A system that allows for automated instant censorship and slow, manual review of censorship gives a huge advantage to people who want to abuse the system. 4. Punish abuse. The ability to censor other peoples' speech is no joke. If you're careless or malicious in your takedown requests, you should pay a consequence: maybe a fine, maybe being barred form using the takedown system. 5. Voluntary moderation quickly becomes mandatory. Every voluntary effort to stem copyright infringement has been followed by calls to make those efforts mandatory (and expand them)."

"Following backlash, the company said it removed the alarm function from the smartwatch, but reports maintain the employees are still being required to wear the device so their location can be tracked."

"A Dutch surgeon formally disciplined for her medical negligence has won a legal action to remove Google search results about her case in a landmark "right to be forgotten" ruling. The doctor's registration on the register of healthcare professionals was initially suspended by a disciplinary panel because of her postoperative care of a patient. After an appeal, this was changed to a conditional suspension under which she was allowed to continue to practise."

"The Court found that the fundamental right to privacy is greater than the economic interest of the commercial firm and, in some circumstances, the public interest interest in access to Information. The European Court affirmed the judgment of the Spanish Data Protection Agency which upheld press freedoms and rejected a request to have the article concerning personal bankruptcy removed from the web site of the press organization."

"The latest incident has revived questions about who should be responsible for removing harmful content from the internet: the networks that host the content, the companies that protect those networks, or governments of the countries where the content is viewed."

""Somehow the little brats worked out that if enough users gave the app a one-star review it would get booted off the App Store. Tens of thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk's rating plummeted overnight from 4.9 to 1.4. The app has had to beg for mercy on social media: 'I'm only five years old myself, please don't kill me.'""

"YouTube will rely more on machine learning and less on human reviewers during the coronavirus outbreak. Normally, algorithms detect potentially harmful content and send it to human reviewers for assessment. But these are not normal times, and in an effort to reduce the need for employees and contractors to come into an office, YouTube will allow its automated system to remove some content without human review."

"The ships would use the internet of things - connecting a range of devices over the internet - to gather data, such as weather conditions and shipping information, and plot the shortest, most efficient and safest routes. By removing the potential for human error, the companies believe the technology could dramatically cut the number of accidents at sea."

"In 2016, Danish politician Mette Gjerskov used Facebook to post a link to her own blog post on the TV2 website, which included an image of the statue. Facebook automatically displayed the image with the link, leading the company to then take down the link. The explanation provided by Facebook was that the image had "too much bare skin or sexual undertones.""