Tag Archive for: Twitter

Zimbabwe blocks Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter amid crackdown

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Zimbabwe has blocked Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp messaging app amid a crackdown on days of violent protests, BBC reported on Friday.

A coalition of local human rights groups says at least 12 people have been killed and many more beaten and tortured by security forces this week.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum accused the authorities of cutting off the internet “to mask the massive human rights violations”.

The protests were sparked on Monday by a sharp rise in the price of fuel.

The government has blamed the opposition and political rights groups for the protests, which has seen riot police clashing with protesters in the capital, Harare, and the southern city of Bulawayo after they lit fires and blocked roads using rocks.

There has been looting and some businesses and schools in the two cities have been forced to close. Soldiers are guarding petrol stations, where there are still long queues of motorists looking for petrol.

The UN has called on the government to halt the “excessive use of force” by security forces including firing live ammunition, and allegations of night-time door-to-door searches and beatings.

“Doctors’ associations say more than 60 people were treated in hospital for gunshot wounds, this is not way to react to the expression of economic grievances by the population,” Reuters news agency quotes UN human rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani as saying.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum said it had recorded at least 844 human rights violations in all.

On Thursday, prominent activist Evan Mawarire, who called for a stay-at-home protest on social media, was charged with subverting the government, a crime which carries up to 20 years in jail. He gained fame as a figurehead of the #ThisFlag protests against the former president, Robert Mugabe, in 2016.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa said the rise was aimed at tackling shortages caused by an increase in fuel use and “rampant” illegal trading.

But many Zimbabweans – worn down by years of economic hardship – suddenly found they could not even afford the bus fare to work.

Roads were barricaded by protesters earlier this week

They feel that the president, who is on a tour of Russia and Asian countries this week, is failing to live up to his promises following his election last year in disputed polls.

He is struggling to revive the economy, which is experiencing high inflation while wages have stagnated.

The southern African nation faces a severe shortage of US dollar cash and confidence in its bond notes, currency that can only be traded in Zimbabwe, is low.

The bond notes, or “bollars”, are supposed to be worth the same as the dollar but have lost value because of a lack of foreign currency backing the note, and are now worth much less than a dollar.

The fuel hike means petrol prices rose from $1.24 (₦445.16) a litre to $3.31(₦1,188.29) , with diesel up from $1.36(₦488.24) a litre to $3.11(₦1,116.49).

The new prices mean Zimbabwe now has the most expensive fuel in the world, according to GlobalPetrolPrices.com.

What Data Big Tech Companies Admit To Have On You

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Have you ever asked yourself, “What does the Data big companies such as Google know about me?” The answer is uncomfortable. What Google knows about you includes everything from your clicks on ads to your birthday to the device you’re using right now and the Wi-Fi network it’s connected to. But Google pales in comparison to some of the other big companies that sell your data or collect it out there.

This is what the big six tech companies have officially admitted to collecting as far as personal data about you, according to their official privacy policies.

The Data Big Tech Companies Have On You

Twitter has removed over 1.2 million accounts for promoting terrorism

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Twitter released its biannual Transparency Report today and it shared stats on how it continues to handle terrorist content. Overall, since August of 2015, twitter has removed over 1.2 million accounts that promoted terrorism. During the second half of last year, it permanently suspended 274,460 accounts for this reason, which is slightly less than what was removed during the first half of 2017. Twitter notes that it has now seen a decline in these sorts of removals across three reporting periods and it attributes that pattern to “years of hard work making our site an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism.”

Of those accounts that were removed between July 1st and December 31st last year, 93 percent were flagged by Twitter’s internal tools and algorithms. Around 74 percent were suspended before ever tweeting — stats that are in line with Twitter’s report from the first half of 2017 as well. Government reports of violations are still on the decline. Last September, Twitter reported that government-originating reports accounted for less than one percent of removals. Now, they account for less than 0.2 percent.

In addition to the terrorist content updates, Twitter also shared information on some changes it has made to how it notes when content is being withheld. It’s now differentiating when content is being blocked due to a court order or because of local laws. The Transparency Report also notes that there was a 38 percent increase between the first and second half of 2017 regarding copyright violation takedown notices for both Twitter and Periscope. There was an 18 percent decrease in trademark violation notices.

Twitter makes a point to note the efforts of governments to limit online speech. “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,” Twitter said in a blog post. To address that, Twitter says it uploads request for content withholding to the Lumen database, which collects and analyzes these sorts of requests. “Lumen serves as a critical transparency resource as more freedom of expression comes under fire, by making such requests available for public review,” said Twitter.

Lastly, Twitter reiterated its effort to “increase the collective health, openness and civility of public conversation around the world, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable toward progress.” In regards to that, Twitter also recently hosted a Periscope livestream, taking questions from the public about its policies, and launched a request for public proposals on how to promote healthy, open and civil conversations on its platform.

Engadget

This Is The Man Who Deactivated Trump’s Twitter Account

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The contractor who deactivated President Donald Trump’s Twitter account earlier this month has revealed himself and calls the move a mistake.

Twitter had declined to identify the man, but TechCrunch reported Wednesday that he is Bahtiyar Duysak, a 20-something German citizen of Turkish descent. Duysak worked in customer support with the Trust & Safety division, the team that reviews alerts of bad behavior on the platform, TechCrunch said.

Duysak told TechCrunch he was near the end of his last day working for Twitter when an alert came in about Trump’s account. As a final gesture, he started the process of deactivating the account, closed his computer and left the building.

He didn’t expect the process to actually be completed, he said, but it was. For about 11 minutes on the afternoon of Nov. 2, visitors to Trump’s account found a message saying the page didn’t exist. Twitter initially said the account had been “inadvertently deactivated due to human error” but later placed the blame on a customer service employee who was working a final shift at the company.

Duysak called the move a mistake and suggested a “number of coincidences” might also have played a role, though he didn’t describe those coincidences.

“I had a wild time in America,” Duysak said. “I was tired sometimes. And everyone can do mistakes. I did a mistake.”

After the incident, questions lingered about how the employee had that level of access to be able to delete an account, or what other sorts of tampering might be possible. Buzzfeed News cited a “former senior employee” of Twitter describing relatively easy access to certain account controls. The New York Times said that while “hundreds of employees” can take actions such as disabling accounts, customer service workers cannot access direct messages or tweet through other people’s accounts.

“I didn’t hack anyone,” Duysak goes on to say. “I didn’t do anything that I wasn’t authorized to do.”

Twitter declined to confirm that Duysak was responsible for the deletion but said the company has “taken a number of steps to keep an incident like this from happening again.”

cnet

Critical flaw in Twitter’s code could let hackers take over your account

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A security researcher discovered a critical vulnerability in the advertising code of Twitter, the most popular micro-blogging website in the world, which if exploited could let hackers publish updates from any other account without needing access to the victim’s profile.

The white-hat hacker, writing in a blog post this week (22 May), claimed to have uncovered the issue while exploring Twitter’s code for bugs. He said the flaw could give cybercriminals the ability to “publish entries in Twitter-network by any user of this service.”

The vulnerability was initially found on 26 February 2017 and fixed two days later.

The hacker, known as kedrisch, reported the flaw via Twitter’s bug bounty service – a programme managed by the organisation HackerOne which lets researchers disclose bugs in exchange for rewards.

In this instance, kedrisch was handed a bounty of $7,560 (₦2,872,800) for his efforts.

The issue he found was in Twitter’s advertising code. Essentially, the researcher said flaws existed in how the service’s media library uploaded files such as videos, images and gifs to the platform.

Rules surrounding the responsible disclosure programme mean the flaw is only coming to light now.

In a statement, Twitter said: “The reporter discovered a flaw in the handling of Twitter Ads Studio requests which allowed an attacker to tweet as any user.

“By sharing media with a victim user and then modifying the post request with the victim’s account ID the media in question would be posted from the victim’s account. This bug was patched […] and no evidence was found of the flaw being exploited by anyone other than the reporter.”

Charlie Miller, a security expert well-known for being part of the collective which remotely hacked a 2014 Jeep Cherokee, tweeted: “As former appsec [Application Security] tech lead for Twitter, I’ll just say I’m not shocked this was in code from the ads team.” He did not elaborate further.

 Last December, kedrisch was awarded $1,120 (₦425,600) for finding a less critical flaw which could let a hacker change comments on Twitter’s official forums. This was publicly disclosed on 12 May 2017.
Most recently, Twitter issued a warning to users of its Vine service that a bug potentially exposed users’ email addresses and phone numbers to unnamed third parties. In an email sent to all impacted Vine users, it said the bug affected the Vine Archive for “less than 24 hours”.
Vine was bought by Twitter back in 2012 however the company decided to shut down the popular short video publishing application earlier this year amid a period of heavy job cuts.

“We want to emphasise that this information can’t directly be used to access your account, and we have no information indicating that it has been misused,” Twitter’s email to Vine users stressed. “We take these incidents very seriously, and we’re sorry this occurred,” it added.

IBTimes

Twitter co-founder: ‘Yeah, I’m sorry’ if Twitter helped Trump get elected

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Twitter co-founder Evan Williams wants you to know he’s super sorry for any role the social media platform played in the election of President Donald Trump.

The sort-of apology was made in an interview with The New York Times published on Saturday. Williams’ remorse for possibly helping to create a political monster comes after Trump’s claims that Twitter was key in helping him clinch the election.

“I think that maybe I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Twitter, because I get such a fake press, such a dishonest press,” Trump told Fox News in March.

The Times reports that Williams has only recently heard Trump’s claim for the first time, reflecting on it for a while before speaking out.

“It’s a very bad thing, Twitter’s role in that,” Williams told the Times. “If it’s true that he wouldn’t be president if it weren’t for Twitter, then yeah, I’m sorry.”

Trump’s use of Twitter has long been the source of criticism, especially now as he holds the highest office in the country. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Trump’s aides recently held a social media intervention with the president due to concerns his tweets could have political and legal ramifications.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Williams’ remarks, according to the Times

WATCH: Trump’s outrageous insults throughout his campaign