Tag: Twitter

Twitter urges all users to change passwords after glitch

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Twitter Inc urged its more than 330 million users to change their passwords after a glitch caused some to be stored in readable text on its internal computer system rather than disguised by a process known as “hashing”.

The social network disclosed the issue in a blog post and series of Tweets on Thursday afternoon, saying it had resolved the problem and an internal investigation had found no indication passwords were stolen or misused by insiders. Still, it urged all users to consider changing their passwords.

“We fixed the bug and have no indication of a breach or misuse by anyone,” Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said in a Tweet. “As a precaution, consider changing your password on all services where you’ve used this password.”

The blog did not say how many passwords were affected. A person familiar with the company’s response said the number was “substantial” and that they were exposed for “several months.”

Twitter discovered the bug a few weeks ago and has reported it to some regulators, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The US Federal Trade Commission, which investigates companies accused of deceptive practices related to data security, declined comment on the password glitch.

The agency settled with Twitter in 2010 over accusations the site had “serious lapses” in data security that let hackers access private user data on two occasions. The settlement called for audits of Twitter’s data security program every other year for 10 years.

The glitch was related to Twitter’s use of “hashing” and caused passwords to be written on an internal computer log before the scrambling process was completed, the blog said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Disney, Twitter to create live content and advertisements across genres

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The Walt Disney Company and Twitter say they will create live content and advertisements in sports, news and entertainment from the entire Disney portfolio.

This includes sports content from ESPN, as well as videos from ABC, the Disney Channel, Marvel and other Disney properties

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Live video is important to Twitter as it courts users to think of it as the place to check what’s happening at the moment.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Report says Twitter sold users’ data to CA researcher, company denies

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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After the massive Facebook data scandal, a report in The Sunday Telegraph claimed that micro-blogging platform Twitter had also sold users’ data to a Cambridge Analytica (CA) researcher who collected the data of 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge — a charge that Twitter denied on Monday.

According to the report, Twitter sold public data access “for one day” in 2015 to Aleksandr Kogan, then a psychology researcher with University of Cambridge, and his company Global Science Research (GSR).

“GSR paid for one day of access in 2015, Twitter said, and scooped up a ‘random sample’ of public tweets covering a period between December 2014 and April 2015. Twitter added that it ‘did not find any access’ to private information,” the report noted.

In a statement given to IANS, Twitter said that based on the recent reports, they conducted their own internal review and did not find any access to private data about people who use Twitter.

“Unlike many other services, Twitter is public by its nature. People come to Twitter to speak publicly, and public Tweets are viewable and searchable by anyone,” a Twitter spokesperson told IANS.

“In 2015, GSR did have one-time API access to a random sample of public Tweets from a five-month period from December 2014 to April 2015,” he added.

The API access was for one day to pull a random sample from five months of “public” Tweets. According to sources, this is an important distinction from the way CA used other platforms like Facebook to improperly share users’ data, including that of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

According to The Sunday Telegraph report, Kogan said the Twitter data had only been used to create “brand reports” and “survey extender tools” and that he had not violated Twitter’s policies.

However, “the most immediate concern is that GSR could theoretically have correlated Facebook and Twitter data. Still, this shows just how comprehensive the data collection was,” technology portal Engadget reported.

The quiz app “thisisyourdigitallife” developed by Kogan and his firm GSR, collected data from millions of Facebook users without their consent in 2014-2015 which was later shared with the British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica.

The leaked data was said to be inappropriately used by Cambridge Analytica in activities connected with US President Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016.

Twitter said it had banned GSR and Cambridge Analytica from buying data or running adverts on the website and that no private data had been accessed.

“Twitter has also made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned and operated by Cambridge Analytica.

“This decision is based on our determination that Cambridge Analytica operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices,” The Telegraph reported, citing a Twitter spokesperson.

In a first interview after the Facebook data scandal broke out, Kogan told CBS News earlier this month that he was not sure whether he ever read Facebook’s developers’ policy.

“The idea that we stole the data, I think, is technically incorrect. I mean, they created these great tools for developers to collect the data.

“And they made it very easy. I mean, this was not a hack. This was, ‘Here’s the door. It’s open. We’re giving away the groceries. Please collect them’,” Kogan told the TV show host.

Kogan said he believes his assumptions were misguided and that what he did in 2014 “was not right and was not wise”.

Twitter reported a revenue of $665 million — an increase of 21 per cent year-over-year (yoy) — in the first quarter of 2018. The micro-blogging platform now has 336 million average monthly active users (MAUs).

As the deadline for European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) inches closer, Twitter has also updated its “Terms and Privacy Policy” to give its users more transparency over their data.

Twitter is giving users more control over how it shares certain non-public data. The updates will take effect on May 25, when the GDPR comes into force, and will apply globally.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Twitterati takes a dig at government over cash crunch

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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While NDA government has assured that there is no need for panic and the problem is being tackled, cash crunch has suddenly become the hot topic on social networking sites.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has come forward to assure the nation that the cash crunch will be solved soon, twitterati had a field day on the ongoing crisis. The tweets from well-known personalities to common man expressed their utter anguish.

There used to be dry days for alcohol. Now there are dry days for cash. #CashCrunch

— Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) April 17, 2018

Writer Chetan Bhagat was one among those who used twitter to take a jibe at the government.

Dear Finance Minister,

Cashless Economy does not mean Cashless Banks and Cashless ATMs.
We hope you understand.#CashCrunch #CashlessATMs

— Kanhaiya Kumar (@kanhaiyajnusu) April 17, 2018

Another tweet came from former JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar who took a direct hit at Jaitley.

Others took a more direct assault against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government. They tweeted that this could affect BJP’s prospects in the 2019 general elections.

Give me 50 days over scrapped notes, punish me if problems persist: Modi !!!
Okay will do in #2019Elections #CashCrunch#CashlessATMs@ShashiTharoor@RahulGandhi
https://t.co/qnew1A3yFu

— Jayasree Vijayan (@JayasreeVijayan) April 17, 2018

Of course, it’s temporary. Only one more year left. #CashCrunch https://t.co/G47AqXyrq4

— Shirish Kunder (@ShirishKunder) April 17, 2018

Filmmaker and prominent critic of Modi government, Shirish Kunder also tweeted on similar lines stating that the troubles will end next year, indicating a change in the centre after next year’s parliamentary elections.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Twitter collaborates with US researchers to curb online abuse

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Aiming to tackle abuse and hate trolls, Twitter has teamed up with two researchers from Harvard and Princeton Universities to study online abuse.

In an experiment that began on Friday, Twitter will publicise its rules to users to test whether this would improve civility, the researchers wrote on Medium.

“We proposed this idea to Twitter and designed an experiment to evaluate it,” said Susan Benesch, Faculty Associate at Harvard University and J Nathan Matias, Post-doctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. “This project also pioneers an open, evidence-based approach to improving people’s experiences online, while protecting their privacy.”

To protect privacy of the users, Twitter will only give the researchers anonymised, aggregated information, which means the experiment would be conducted without the names or other personal information of any account.

“What makes this effort unique is that we have chosen to conduct it as an open collaboration under a set of legal, ethical and scientific constraints,” the researchers said.

“This will protect Twitter users, safeguard the credibility of our work, and ensure that the knowledge gained from it will be available for anyone to use —even other internet companies.

“This project also pioneers an open, evidence-based approach to improving people’s experiences online, while protecting their privacy,” they noted.

The novel project will supply practical knowledge about preventing abuse online, and inspire further transparent, independent evaluations of many other ideas for reducing online abuse.

As part of the research, the team will test abuse prevention ideas. They are also testing a process for independent, outside evaluation of the policy and design interventions that tech companies make.

After the study, Twitter will prepare an aggregated dataset on an encrypted system and share it with the researchers for the analysis.

The findings will be published in an academic journal and will be available to everyone.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Twitter suspends over a million accounts for promoting terrorism

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Twitter said on Thursday that it has suspended over one million accounts for “promotion of terrorism” since 2015, claiming its efforts have begun to make the platform “an undesirable place” to call for violence.

In its latest transparency report, Twitter said it suspended 274,460 accounts between July and December 2017 “for violations related to the promotion of terrorism.”

The figure is down 8.4 percent from the previous reporting period and is the second consecutive decline, a Twitter statement said.

“We continue to see the positive, significant impact of years of hard work making our site an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism, resulting in this type of activity increasingly shifting away from Twitter,” said the statement from the messaging platform’s public policy team.

Twitter has faced pressure from governments around the world to crack down on jihadists and others calling for violent attacks, while at the same time maintaining an open platform for free speech.

In the latest six-month reporting period, Twitter said 93 percent of the suspended accounts were “flagged by internal, proprietary tools,” and that 74 percent were cut off before their first tweet.

It said government reports of violations related to the promotion of terrorism represent less than 0.2 percent of all suspensions in the period.

Twitter also used the report to express concerns about what it called “legal threats to freedom of expression” online in countries around the world.

“With the passage of new legislation and ongoing regulatory discussions taking place around the world about the future of public discourse online, we are seeing a potential chilling effect with regards to freedom of expression,” the report said.

It cited a Human Rights Watch report suggesting that “governments around the world (are) increasingly look to restrict online speech by forcing social media companies to act as their censors.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Twitterati reacts to the death of Stephen Hawking by remembering his contributions

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The news of the death of Stephen Hawking created ripples across the globe. People belonging to various facets of life reacted against the demise of the British physicist considered by many as one of the greatest scientist of all time.

(Read our coverage here)

Social media sites too are abuzz with posts by people reacting to the death of the 76 year old theoretical physicist. Many took to twitter to mourn his death that happened at his Cambridge home during the early morning hours.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted that Hawking’s death has left the world with an intellectual vacuum. “His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it’s not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of space time that defies measure. Stephen Hawking, RIP 1942-2018,” read his tweet.

His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it’s not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure. Stephen Hawking, RIP 1942-2018. pic.twitter.com/nAanMySqkt

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 14, 2018

Prominent Bollywood personality Farhan Akhtar too took to twitter to condole the demise. “RIP Stephen Hawking. A major loss to the scientific community & to the millions he inspired through his work and life. Condolences to the family.”

RIP Stephen Hawking. A major loss to the scientific community & to the millions he inspired through his work and life. Condolences to the family.

— Farhan Akhtar (@FarOutAkhtar) March 14, 2018

Among many who took to the micro blogging site some also tried to look beyond the scientific contributions he made by being an inspiration for millions. Former US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tweeted that his famous statement that “It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love” as one of his greatest contribution to the world.”

R.I.P. Stephen Hawking. Among his many profound contributions to this world was this simple sentiment: “It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.”

— Samantha Power (@SamanthaJPower) March 14, 2018

Journalist and author Ben Norton on his part paid homage to the genius by reminding his concerns for social justice and welfare. “Stephen Hawking was a staunch supporter of socialized medicine.

He emphasized, “The more profit is extracted from the system, the more private monopolies grow and the more expensive healthcare becomes. The NHS must be preserved from commercial interests,” he tweeted along with a link of Hawking’s interview with the BBC.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

IIT-Bombay alumnus Parag Agrawal is Twitter’s new CTO

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Social media giant Twitter on Thursday announced appointment of Parag Agarwal as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

Although Twitter had announced his appointment within the group in as early as October last year after the former CTO Adam Messinger announced his resignation.

After 5 years I’ve decided to leave Twitter and take some time off. Grateful to @jack for the opportunity and to my team for shipping.

— Adam Messinger (@adam_messinger) December 20, 2016

Agrawal is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and completed his PhD in Computer Sciences from Stanford, USA.

Agrawal joined Twitter as an Ads Engineer in October 2011 and slowly moved up to hold the prestigious title, ‘Distinguished Software Engineer.’ Before Twitter, he was a research intern with AT&T, Microsoft and Yahoo.

One of his major contributions to the social media firm is his leading efforts to imbibe Artificial Intelligence (AI) for using it to increase the relevance of tweets in Twitter users’ timelines.

With AI coming to play, the social media firm had the chance to expand its operations and create safety norms. The invention has helped the firm prevent abuse on the social network.

As the CTO, Parag will be responsible for the advancements in AI in terms of how it can be expanded further and look into the scaling of machines. He will have to oversee the developments across the infrastructure teams, consumer and revenue product, CNBC reports.

Tech majors such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft also use AI to enhance their consumer services segments and internal tools.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow