Amazon hints at new German datacenter, but probably not for the reasons you might think

Summary: Amazon’s big datacenter push into Germany may seem like a response to U.S. government surveillance. If privacy groups are right, it won’t change what might already be happening. But it does signal a nod towards a burgeoning privacy-minded customer base.

 

 

Amazon on Friday gave the biggest hint that it could expand further and deeper into Europe, as it expands its global cloud offering.

As per a report by The Wall Street Journal, senior vice president for Amazon Web Services, Andy Jassy, said the company is prioritizing where it locates its datacenters. Germany could be the latest country on deck to receive its own datacenter located “on their own soil.”

You might be excused to think it’s a response in the wake of the U.S. National Security Agency surveillance leaks scandal.

It’s about half-right.

What’s significantly more likely, as Jassy hinted, is that it’s more to do with “data sovereignty requirements” — specifically knowing where your data is stored, and under which legal jurisdiction.

That’s a major proponent of the new European data protection and privacy legislation that’s currently going through the European Parliament, which sped up in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks.

There’s no doubt there’s a push-pull effect going on here, but it’s not the be-all and end-all by a long shot.

Amazon currently serves 10 geographical regions — including both U.S. coasts, Dublin, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, and China — which allows customers to pick their region of choice, and therefore legal jurisdiction to a greater or lesser extent.

There is a slight problem with that, though.

There are two points worth noting. Let’s not forget that the U.S. authorities can spy on EU cloud data, and under U.S. law, the U.S. government has that right — even if under international law it does not. When you’re the world’s foremost superpower, who cares — right?

And secondly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says Amazon may not encrypt the fiber cables that connect its datacenters. That means any Amazon datacenter in Europe may very well be vulnerable to NSA’s data vacuums, particularly MUSCULAR, which allows the U.S. and U.K. totap into those private networks.

Counter-surveillance is likely not very high on Amazon’s list. With it being a U.S.-headquarter company, and NSA programs notwithstanding, the U.S. Justice Dept. can always serve it a court order that requires it hands over data wherever it’s stored in the world.

Despite this, there are good business reasons for Amazon to builds its European network around Germany. Because the country’s privacy rules allows it to play hardball with the rest of the world.

Germany is a strong advocate of privacy — not least due to its not-so-recent history that spurred on a national distrust of nationwide and global surveillance machines — and as a result is one of the more privacy-conscious and aware nations in the world. It’s also one of the very few countries that took the original European privacy laws, ratified in 1997, as a benchmark and bolstered them considerably. For instance, Germany doesn’t recognize the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor requirements like other EU nations, forcing German companies using U.S. cloud providers must take further measures to remain compliant.

What’s Hot on ZDNet

•          Office for iPad sets the gold standard for tablet productivity
•          Microsoft’s Office for iPad: A cloud revenue boon
•          Makulu Linux 5 Xfce: The most fun you can have with Linux?
•          Facebook’s Connectivity Lab: Drones, satellites and lasers, oh my!

And that’s where Amazon steps in. Because its cloud business, according to the Journal’s citations, could be far stronger in the country. And if it expands to Germany, it not only serves the burgeoning German IT industry, but it can also take in surrounding nation state’s business as their laws are somewhat weaker.

It makes sense for Amazon to set up shop in the strongest state for data protection and privacy, and serve the surrounding country’s customer base with that high level of privacy awareness.

Amazon needs European business. Yes, to many, the idea of talking about Brussels-based bureaucrats and European trade and investment may be about as interesting as a conversation with said bureaucrats — with all due respect to them. But the reality is that’s Europe has the capital, the spending, the desire to expand technologically, and frankly where the population and customer base is.

And crucially, Germans being the more privacy conscious states in the G20, the country’s businesses want an in-country solution to their cloud problems — particularly, but not exclusively, as a result of the U.S.’ extraterritorial sticky fingers.

 

Source From: (http://www.zdnet.com)

 

For Expert & trusted Services

Call us @  1-855-787-7886  or

Email us at  “support@tecmend.com”,

Our Expert will get in touch with you shortly.

Pay Us After Resolution

 

Visit: http://www.tecmend.com

 

 

Computer tech scams can start with a phone call: Plain Dealing

You might not think you could get a computer virus by phone, but when Terry Davis’ computer got hacked, it started with a call.

Davis was heading out for a brunch appointment last month when he got a call from a woman who reported Microsoft was having difficulty updating his operating system.

Davis answered her questions. Yes, it seemed he hadn’t received updates lately. Yes, his computer seemed slow. And come to think of it, there were some times when he’d had trouble accessing screens.

She told him her company was an authorized Microsoft contractor and could fix the problem in just 10 minutes.

That’s about how long it took to wind up with an infected computer.

When Microsoft – the real company – surveyed computer users a couple years ago, it found about 15 percent had been contacted by callers offering bogus tech help.

A whopping 79 percent of those who were conned into installing remote access software on their computer suffered from financial losses. Some became ID theft victims after scammers grabbed personal data from their computers. Some bought bogus computer tech support plans after thieves tricked them into believing their computers were malfunctioning. Many had to pay legitimate techs to remove the malware they’d been tricked into installing.

When the Federal Trade Commission sued six tech support scam operators last year, it estimated they had ripped off tens of thousands of consumers between them. Five used boiler rooms to cold-call victims. Another used web sites to snare people searching the Internet for computer help.

If you don’t know much about computer code – and most of us with computers fall into that category – it’s easy to get sucked in.

The woman who called Davis at his home in Berea quickly transferred him to a tech who talked Davis into downloading software – a program Davis belatedly realized allowed the tech to remotely access his computer.

The tech then led Davis to a utility called the event viewer, which is a log of computer activity. Most of the time that activity is logged as normal, but when a hiccup occurs – a program unexpectedly quits or a page won’t open – the event viewer logs the entry with a symbol that looks like a red X or a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark inside.

Those symbols are in every computer, and they’re not a big deal.

But to the uninitiated, they look like very bad news indeed, especially when you’ve got someone you believe is a tech from a reputable company telling you that each symbol represents a serious issue. That’s exactly the spot Davis found himself in.

“He proceeded to show me…more than 1,800 errors of various types that, at the time, I did not realize were normal errors stored in a record over months and years of use,” Davis said.

Once Davis was sufficiently concerned, the tech tried to sell him repair contracts ranging from a $59 one-time session to a $499 five year plan. Davis said no and hung up.

As he rushed out the door, Davis said, he had a nagging feeling he should uninstall the software, but since he feared being late for brunch, he didn’t. He did send a quick email to Microsoft later that night. The next day, when he went to delete the program, he could no longer find it.

Soon, his computer began behaving erratically.

That’s when he received a response from the real Microsoft telling him it doesn’t cold-call people to offer computer help.

While Davis dodged paying for a bogus protection plan, he had installed a rogue program on his computer, one he had to pay a legitimate company to help him clean up.

“It cost me $100 and two days of my time,” Davis said. He said he still isn’t sure whether the scammers accessed the data stored on his computer.

A Bay Village reader inadvertently contacted scammers herself, using a toll-free number she found when she went online to look for “Facebook help.”

She at first believed she was talking to someone from Facebook, but became uneasy when the tech sent her a code to allow him to access her computer. When she declined, she recalled, “he said that he had spent 40 minutes helping me and almost pleaded with me to give the code.”

The FTC and OnGuardOnline.gov offer these tips for avoiding computer help scams:

• Never install software on your computer at the urging of someone who calls you unprompted. And don’t fall for it if someone you don’t know offers you a “free” security scan.
• Don’t trust your caller ID. Scammers spoof numbers, and they frequently pretend to be affiliated with well-known companies to get your trust.
• Don’t stumble around the Internet looking for tech support. Scammers can be really good at pushing their names high in Internet search results – and they also take advantage of “fat-finger typing,” which is when you mistype an address. Make sure you’re dealing with a legitimate company with a good reputation.
•  Don’t pay in response to ransomware scams that freeze your computer. Some of these scams display a screen that says you must buy particular software to get control of your computer back. Or the warnings look like they’re from the FBI or Department of Homeland Security and threaten that unless you immediately pay a fine, you’ll be prosecuted for engaging in some illicit activity on your computer.

 

 

Source from: (http://www.cleveland.com)

 

For Expert & trusted Services

Call us @  1-855-787-7886  or

Email us at  “support@tecmend.com”,

Our Expert will get in touch with you shortly.

Pay Us After Resolution

 

Visit: http://www.tecmend.com

FTC cracks down on tech support scam run from India

Phone con attempted to convince people that their computers had a virus and then sign them up to multi-year contracts

 

 

The US Federal Trade Commission has carried out a huge international crackdown on a number of “tech support” scams being run out of India which have conned people in the UK, US, Canada and elsewhere out of millions of pounds since 2008.

As explained by the Guardian in 2010, the scams used “boiler room” tactics, dialling through phone books for English-speaking countries. People who answered the phone were told the call came from Microsoft or their internet service provider, and that the person’s computer was “reporting viruses”. The caller would then perform an unnecessary “fix” on the computer and charge the person for it – and sometimes sign them up to multi-year “support” contracts. The cost could run to hundreds of pounds.

People in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were targeted because they, like the people carrying out the scam, are English-speaking. The Guardian understands that the scam was worth millions of pounds a year to the organised gangs carrying it out.

At the FTC’s request in six cases, a federal district judge froze the US assets of 17 people and 14 companies that have been accused of taking part in the operations. The FTC has also shut down 80 internet domain names and 130 phone numbers used in the US to carry out the scams.

The FTC is seeking an end to the scams, and repayments for people who were conned out of money.

Though the FTC said it could not put a figure on how many people had been scammed, or how much they had lost, Microsoft – which has been working with the commission for the past two years to try to catch the criminals – provided data on more than a thousand people who had been scammed, whose losses averaged $875 each.

Microsoft has repeatedly pointed out that it would not call people about any problems with their computers. In some cases, the scammers would try to sell antivirus software from reputable companies, and in some cases would install new copies of Windows on a machine. However the licence key used on the software allowed Microsoft to trace it back to its buyer, which aided the investigation.

The fraud occurred in several English-speaking countries. Joining the FTC in the enforcement action were the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency. David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said it was working with law enforcement officials in India to catch the alleged perpetrators. The commission has also referred the cases to the US justice department for possible criminal prosecution.

The companies whose assets have been frozen are: Pecon Software; PC Care247; Connexxions Infotech; Connexxions IT Services Private Ltd; Zeal IT Solutions; Lakshmi Infosoul Services Private Ltd; Virtual PC Solutions, First PC Solution; Direct PC Solution; Virtual IT Supports; Global Innovative Service; 24x7pchelp; 24x7pctech; Transfront Solutions; New World Services; Megabites Solutions; Mega Bits; Greybytes Cybertech; Bluesystemcare; Shine Solutions Private Ltd. The FTC has also named 17 people who were singly or together directors of the accused companies.

The companies involved had US locations which were used to funnel money back to India. Some also have UK offices. However the FTC asserts that the companies used “virtual” offices which were in fact just mail-forwarding facilities. The scam also used voice-over-internet phone lines to make them appear to be calling from inside the country being targeted, when in fact the caller was in India.

The Guardian’s own investigations have found that one gang was using locations and accounts in Canada to transfer money from the scams back to India.

The defendants have been charged with violating the FTC Act, which bars “unfair and deceptive” commercial practices, breaching the Telemarketing Sales Rule and illegally calling numbers that are on the National Do Not Call Registry.

The scheme involved getting a computer user to look at a program called “Event Viewer” that is a standard part of the Windows operating system. That displays logs of events occurring on the computer, sometimes with the label “Warning” or “Error” – but which in fact have no significance to the smooth running of the computer. The caller would then say that these were due to “viruses”, that they had been alerted to them remotely, and that they could fix them. They then would use a remote login program to appear to “fix” the computer.

“Clearly the defendant’s [modus operandi] was to exploit these fears about malware hiding in the machine,” said the FTC chairman, Jon Leibowitz. “These scams fleeced English-speaking consumers worldwide likely to the tune of tens of millions of dollars and resulted in innumerable Do Not Call violations in the US.”

 

Source from: (http://www.theguardian.com)

 

For Expert & trusted Services

Call us @  1-855-787-7886  or

Email us at  “support@tecmend.com”,

Our Expert will get in touch with you shortly.

Pay Us After Resolution

 

Visit: http://www.tecmend.com

IBM and others facing the cloudy business of accounting for the cloud

 

 

FORTUNE — Last week’s disclosure that the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting an investigation into how IBM reports its cloud computing revenue poses more questions than answers. The New York-based tech giant admitted it has been cooperating with the SEC since last May but said little else about the particulars of the case. One thing is clear: It’s likely this won’t be the last probe into the often inconsistent methods used to account for software-as-a-service products.

The cloud itself isn’t the problem — it’s the way it happens to be packaged and sold. Unlike traditional, on-premise software, cloud-based tools are usually paid for via multi-year contracts. Customers are charged a monthly subscription fee, which means a recurring revenue stream that can be tricky to account for because it spans the course of several years (and because, sometimes, customers back out of contracts). This gets especially complicated at large companies that lump cloud-computing sales in with non-cloud products.

“Accounting rules were written when we were all trading goods with each other,” says Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, a billing platform used by many cloud computing companies. “As we move away from a manufacturing economy to a service economy it gets pretty complex.”

MORE: Can social media fix the Washington Post?

IBM (IBM) may be a good example of this phenomenon. Over the past few years, the company has been shifting from its roots as a hardware and on-premise software vendor, toward a future as a cloud and services purveyor. To that end, it’s made several acquisitions, including a recent $2 billion bid to acquire SoftLayer Technologies, which rents out computing power to customers.

“Any time you put two companies together, it’s reasonable to expect that they will have slightly different accounting practices,” says Cowen & Co. analyst Peter Goldmacher. “These are different companies with different policies and different revenue models. You’ve got an involved situation made complicated by taking different delivery models and accounting practices and putting them together.”

That’s not the only problem for companies like IBM — and Oracle (ORCL) and SAP (SAP) — that have made acquisitions in the cloud computing space. This clash of cultures also complicates commissions, because salespeople used to selling traditional software are used to collecting a hefty, one-time check for every deal they close. And while embracing these new, high-growth technologies are a necessary evolution for so-called legacy companies, it’s not clear just how much money they’re actually making from the cloud because these fledgling businesses are often bundled with other, non-cloud products. IBM, for example, has said its cloud computing business was up 70% during the first half of this year. But it hasn’t given any frame of reference because it doesn’t actually break out what those revenues used to be or are currently.

MORE: What’s going on with Apple and the ITC?

It will likely be a while before investors can tell exactly what these large tech companies are making from these new businesses and how well they’re folding in their cloud-based acquisitions. Even cloud heavyweight Amazon.com (AMZN) isn’t yet required to break out revenue from its growing cloud computing products, Amazon Web Services. According to Cowen & Co.’s Goldmacher, investors should pause before becoming too enamored with subscription-based revenue, however attractive a recurring revenue stream may seem: “… we are concerned that investors are taking false comfort in these models because the income statement and balance sheet can be lagging indicators on the real trajectory of the business,” he wrote in a recent report. But Goldmacher is also quick to note that it’s unlikely anything nefarious is going on, even if the SEC has reason to launch an investigation. “My belief is that this is just really complicated,” says Goldmacher. “The more complicated an undertaking the more likely you are to make a mistake.”

In other words, until these new cloud-computing businesses get large enough to require more transparency — and until accounting practices for subscription-based products become more standardized at all tech companies, large and small- — it’s likely there are plenty more mistakes (and SEC investigations) ahead.

 

Source form: (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com )

 

For Expert & trusted Services

Call us @  1-855-787-7886  or

Email us at  “support@tecmend.com”,

Our Expert will get in touch with you shortly.

Pay Us After Resolution

 

Visit: http://www.tecmend.com

Facebook and Google in tech cold war

 

 

Facebook and Google are locked in a high-stakes, multi-billion dollar battle to shape the future.

Both companies are spending like crazy on emerging technologies. Their aims: when their current businesses are disrupted — and they will be — they’ll have a fallback plan.

“While Facebook is doing well now, it knows that its core business could degrade just as MySpace’s did,” said Carl Howe, analyst at Yankee Group.

That’s why Facebook (FB, Fortune 500) has poured billions of dollars into a photo sharing network, facial recognition software, a chat app and now virtual reality company Oculus. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), in turn, has invested billions in driverless cars,wearable gadgets, military robots and — most recently through its purchase of Nest — connected home devices like smoke detectors and thermostats.

It’s as if Facebook and Google are now combatants in Silicon Valley’s version of a Cold War arms race.

“Facebook and Google are high technology titans engaged in a real world game of ‘Monopoly’ to grab the choicest technology properties in a bid to maintain and extend their dominance with each other as well and various other rivals,” said Laura DiDio principal analyst at consultancy ITIC.

Related: Facebook to buy virtual reality company Oculus for $2 billion

These are long-term bets. For all their attempts to diversify, neither company’s purchases have helped them expand beyond their core business models just yet. Both Google and Facebook generated about 90% of their revenue from advertising last year.

By buying Oculus, Facebook is betting that the next tech wave could be ruled by wearable devices. Google is making a similar bet with Glass and its Android Wear smartwatch platform.

 

Punch a shark with the Oculus Rift

The big question is whether Facebook bought the right wearable company.

Related: Smartphones are fading, wearables are next

Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call with analysts Tuesday that he believes virtual reality has a chance to become the communications platform of the future.

But Oculus is unlike most wearable devices — it is closed off from the rest of the world, taking over most of your senses, including your entire field of vision. That’s great for gaming but it’s not like we’re going to be able to walk down the street with these things as we do today with smartphones and could even do one day with smartwatches and Google Glass.

“Oculus has a lot of cool, very immersive applications,” said Ron Gruia, principal consultant at Frost & Sullivan. “At the same time, Oculus is very isolating, limiting its usefulness.”

Even if it doesn’t succeed, the bet seems to be worth it for Facebook. The company spent $2 billion on Oculus but only $400 million in cash — loose change for a company with $11.5 billion in its corporate coffers.

But in the emerging Cold War between Facebook and Google, Facebook can’t take quite as many risks. Google has $59 billion in cash and can lose a bet every once in a while, as it did with Motorola Mobility. (Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion in 2011 but subsequently shed most of the assets, including the recent sale of Motorola’s smartphone business to Lenovo for about $3 billion.)

Google’s mission of cataloging information is also broader than Facebook’s “connecting people” goal. So while Facebook can make wild bets like it is with Oculus, it has less wiggle room than Google in ensuring they pay off. Investors showed their disapproval on Wednesday as well. Shares of Facebook were down more than 3%.

But give both companies credit for knowing they can’t rest on their laurels. Google CEO Larry Page and Facebook’s Zuckerberg seem to recognize that it’s not easy to stay on top of the tech world forever.

Numerous firms that were once industry titans fell to Earth after they failed to adapt to a new wave of technology. In fact, both companies literally have their headquarters in the graveyard of former tech darlings.

Facebook’s Menlo Park offices are in the former home of Sun Microsystems, which Oracle(ORCL, Fortune 500) snapped up in 2010. And Google lives in the former headquarters of Silicon Graphics Inc. — the once-mighty computing company that filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

 

First Published: March 26, 2014: 12:52 PM ET

 

Source From: (http://money.cnn.com)

 

For Expert & trusted Services

Call us @  1-855-787-7886  or

Email us at  “support@tecmend.com”,

Our Expert will get in touch with you shortly.

Pay Us After Resolution

 

Visit: http://www.tecmend.com