Today’s Tech Sightings
Study: Up to 48 Million Twitter Accounts Are Bots
Twitter, according to a joint study released by the University of Southern California and Indiana University, has more than 48 million bot accounts – and some of them could be among your followers. Twitter has about 319 million active monthly users. The study found that between 9 and 15 percent of those are bots. Writer Dan Tynan offers some tips to help you identify Twitter bots.
Tech Giants Join Google to Fight Order to Hand Over Foreign Emails
Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Cisco have all come to Google’s aid after a Pennsylvania court ordered it to hand over emails stored overseas to the FBI. In an amicus brief, the tech firms argued that the FBI warrant seeking emails stored abroad is an invasion of privacy outside the borders of the United States and invites other countries to do the same. Google had vowed it would fight the order. It’s not clear what type of data the court order requires.
Musk’s Pledge to Fix South Australia’s Energy Issues Attracts Other Countries
A few days ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledged to solve South Australia’s energy crisis within 100 days or he will do it for free. Storms have left the Australian state with severe outages and its power companies scrambling to meet demand. To address the issue, Tesla would install a 100 megawatt battery storage system. Soon after the pledge was made, other interested parties in Ukraine, New Zealand and other countries contacted Musk for more details.
More:
- Ransomware Warning for Phones, Watches and TVs
- Mirai is the Hydra of IoT Security: Too Many Heads to Cut Off
- Today’s Web Is Built on Pillars of Sand
- Why Giving a Device Your Name Is a Serious Privacy Risk
- Facebook, Instagram Bar Developers From Scanning Profiles for Surveillance
- Rogue Robot Blamed for Human Colleague’s Death
- Windows Vista Has Just 30 Days to Live
- Life at the ‘End of the World’ Isn’t All Looting and Pillaging