tech news PQ
Concern raised over Libra Amazon to be investigated The EU Competition Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon. This time it is over the use of thirdparty sellers’ data to gain an unfair advantage. The investigation will examine whether Amazon has been abusing its dual role as seller of its own products and a marketplace operator. EU Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said: “Ecommerce has boosted retail competition and brought more choice and better prices. We need to ensure that large online platforms don’t eliminate these benefits through anti-competitive behaviour. I have therefore decided to take a very close look at Amazon’s business practices… to assess its compliance with EU competitive rules.”
The G7 finance ministers have cast doubt on Facebook’s plans for a digital currency. They have demanded that all regulatory issues are address before ‘Libra’ is allowed to launch. At a recent meeting in Chantilly, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said: “We cannot accept having any exchange currencies with the same kind of power and the same kind of role as sovereign currencies.” German’s Olaf Scholz felt that Facebook’s plans did not appear to be fully thought through.
He was particularly worried that there weren’t sufficient data security protections in place. France is the current chair of the
G7 and it has asked the European Central Bank to set up a task force to look into the whole issue of crypto-currencies and digital coins. The IMF’s chief economist, Gita Gopinath, stressed that Libra raised many issues, including consumer protection, data privacy and potential “backdoor dollarization”. She is worried it could become a reserve currency by default and give Facebook huge power without any regulator oversight. Sound familiar? She was also concerned that Libra would be a go-to currency for the money launderers.
Security agency beats airport scammers A scam to defraud thousands of UK citizens using a fake email address spoofing a UK airport was one of a wide range of cyber attacks successfully prevented by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), says a new report. The thwarting of the airport scam was one example in 2018 of how the UK’s active cyber defence (ACD) programme helped protect the public. The incident occurred last August, when criminals tried to send in excess of 200,000 emails purporting to be from a UK
airport and using a non-existent gov.uk address in a bid to defraud people. The latest ACD report, measuring the impact made by the NCSC (which is part of GCHQ), found that last year it stopped 140,000 phishing attacks and took down 190,000 fraudulent sites. A combination of ACD services has also helped HMRC’s own efforts in massively reducing criminals’ use of their brand. HMRC was the 16th most ‘phished’ brand globally in 2016, but by the end of 2018 it was 146th in the world.
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