More Than One Million Right-To-Be-Forgotten Requests Were Submitted To Google And Microsoft Bing

There are a leading number of marketers in the US who are working hard to figure out what is the impact of measures related to the ‘right to be forgotten’ in terms of state laws. And on that note, experts feel the best way to go about the situation is by glancing over results from Europe.

As per recent statistics, more than one million right-to-be-forgotten requests from consumers ended up getting submitted to leading search engines. Both Google and Microsoft Bing received them from the years 2015 to 2021. And around 95.8% of them went to Google.

GDPR failed to take that into account till the year 2016, as per a study conducted by Surfshark.

They revealed how the total volume of requests generated grew during the period of the pandemic from a staggering value of 124.5k during the period before the pandemic in 2019 to around 161.3 k in the likes of 2020 and then around 185k by 2021.

Now as far as which European nations led the pack, well, France was definitely the leader in this regard. Research showed how nearly one out of the four requests arose through the likes of the French nation, giving a staggering 255 requests.

Then came Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. After that, we had the likes of Poland and Sweden, followed up by Belgium and Switzerland.

In terms of request density, it was Estonia that was winning where 53 requests arose from 10,000 individuals while other nations had an average of just 20.

Now, the fastest growing nations in this manner were the likes of Cyprus and Portugal which ended up submitting around three times as many requests in the year 2020 than what was seen in the year 2019. Similarly, places like Iceland, Luxembourg, and even Greece ended up doubling the requests YoY.

But what could be the reason behind this in the first place? Well, it might have to do with the pandemic that arose, as mentioned by Surfshark’s privacy counsel.

They continued to reveal how so many daily activities were soon turning into a more virtual endeavor and that is what encouraged people to get super conscious of the world linked to digital hygiene. Moreover, people started to talk about privacy online and the features linked to it.

And in the same way, we saw the GDPR be enforced and that is what made sure more and more people were sticking to privacy measures as a human right that’s practiced until today.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

1 in 9 Americans 64 or older still don’t have their lives figured out yet

It is believed that older people are wiser and have their lives figured out; however, new research has revealed that 1 in 9 Americans who are sixty-four or older, are still trying to figure out their lives. The research was based on the responses collected from two thousand senior American citizens.

The results showed that 54 percent of the survey participants experienced constant pressure to take wise steps. Whereas seventeen percent of them said that the ability to make decisions gets more challenging as they grow older. Meanwhile, 1 in 7 of the participants admitted that they prefer to prioritize their wants over their needs. By doing this, they can get help from outside.

While 26 percent of them said that consulting others before taking a big step is risky and not an easy thing to do, 67 percent of the participants agreed on taking advice from others before making the final decision.

The survey was carried out by OnePoll at the request of ClearMatch Medicare. Based on the responses received from the poll, it was observed that initially, the participants used to feel positive while taking any step related to finances. Shortly followed by steps related to investment. However, due to certain conditions, it was observed that the participants had started to contact others for a second opinion.

When it comes to sharing, almost forty-four percent of the respondents chose their spouses, as thirty-one percent of them believed they don’t judge and thirty-two percent of them believe they help them with personal decisions. Thirty-seven percent of them took help from their children as well.

When it comes to the struggles they face, twenty percent of them have difficulties choosing workout plans, and similarly, twenty percent find it difficult to have the perfect healthcare plan. Nineteen percent of the participants added finding the right doctor to their list of struggles.

Ben Pajak, the Chief Executive Officer of the Healthcare Website, said that keeping others updated with the healthcare plan is important, and while it is not easy to form a plan, there are ways to help them make the right decisions.

• Also read: New Survey Reveals How Consumers Perceive The World Of Generative AI

When it comes to facing the mistakes they made in their decisions, twenty-three percent of them prefer staying calm about it, twenty-eight percent prefer understanding what went wrong, and another twenty-eight percent identify what other options they could have taken to prevent it.

Jennifer Girdler, VP of sales of the healthcare website, highlighted the need for perfect decisions for senior citizens. According to Jennifer, fifty-five percent of them would try other healthcare plans that are best suited for them, as they are always searching for the perfect match in every aspect of life.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Women Represent a Growing Presence in the Cybercriminal Underground Economy

A new study by Trend Micro has revealed that women make up 30% of cybercriminals. It is a significant shift in the cybercriminal underground economy as it becomes more inclusive of all genders.

According to the research, while women make up around 30% of the population who participate in online communities for cybercriminals, gender appears to be less of an issue than in other online communities. It suggests that the stereotype that cybercriminals are primarily men may not be accurate.

The report also showed that while developers of gaming apps spent $27 billion on advertisements, in-app transactions fell 7%. It shows that even while businesses rely extensively on advertising to make money, the results may not be what they would like.

Data presented in this research is of immense value when it derives an understanding of who may be responsible for cyber and digital crime and how much priority companies and organizations should take on these matters. Criminals who perpetrate such offenses originate from all backgrounds, and there cannot be one single motivation for what sparks their negative intentions.

It precisely means that understanding the multitude of scenarios that harvest cybercriminal behavior is imperative so we can discourage, intercede and prevent as much wrongdoing as possible. The findings of this report give critical observations into the widespread problem of digital crime, thereby helps builds more effective strategies to prevent malicious activity.

TrendMicro's comprehensive study of the ten most popular online hacker forums revealed a striking statistic that female visitors made up significantly more than half of Sinister, with 61%, while other English-language sites reported 40%. On Russian cybercrime websites, 42.6% were women and 57.4% men - indicating that across cultures, an impressive number of females still engage in these digital communities! Notably, Stack Overflow had far fewer women participating at only 12%; this low figure serves as a stark reminder for increased representation within tech fields.

A fascinating study by the authors of a report revealed interesting insights about gender and cybercrime. Using AI tools, they found that 41% of users on XSS forums and 40% in Hackforums were women - far exceeding the prison population percentages of 4-8%. The data analysis was powered by Semrush, an engine marketing solution with machine learning algorithms to detect demographic information from various sources. It suggests that more females engage in online criminal activity than previously suspected!

Trend Micro is reminding us that it's important never to take gender into account when investigating cybercrime, as the digital underworld is open and welcoming of all folks with the right skills. Assumptions about a suspect's identity can lead investigators astray, so they recommend adopting "they/them" pronouns—ensuring neutrality while allowing for any possibility that multiple people may be involved in an incident.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Milestone For Microsoft As Its Bing Search Passes The 100 Million Daily Active User Mark

Things are looking fantastic for Microsoft after the software giant was seen speaking about crossing the 100 million daily active user mark.

For those who might not be aware, this is a huge achievement as it’s the world’s second most popular search engine. And this particular milestone was made possible due to the introduction of the chat capabilities belonging to Bing.

It’s clearly making waves on the web and in case you might not be aware, the new Bing version is dedicated to leveraging some huge language models that are created by the likes of OpenAI. The latter is the creator of ChatGPT and it’s now optimized for the world of search.

When combined with some great real-time capabilities linked to Bing, it might end up giving great results. But for now, we’re still seeing it function as a part of the preview stage. Moreover, we’re seeing it give out some massively impressive results too.

And with time, Microsoft continues to send out improvements that are seen frequently as a means of preventing aggressiveness.

Similarly, the company notes how there are millions making use of this Bing preview that continues to expand to more people out there. And out of such individuals, one-third are really new to this Bing search.

• Related: What Will Be the Biggest Tech Trend of 2023?

This just shows how huge of a role it plays in impacting the new version of Bing Search by Microsoft in terms of its popularity. Microsoft also mentioned how engagement continues to grow as we speak. And so many different users are carrying out different types of searches.

Today, Bing’s mobile version entails the likes of voice search which significantly contributes to the growth of Bing. And with time, around 15% of the users of the chatbot are requesting it to produce more content.

Moreover, one very interesting bit of data that we saw recently had to do with Microsoft claiming that its web search rankings have really taken huge leaps in terms of relevancy. And it’s all thanks to a new language model being used. Today, the quality of search results is higher and better than ever.

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The news is fabulous for Bing. Although it might be holding the second position in terms of popularity and definitely does not have the same number of users as the search engine giant, things are definitely moving in its direction.

There is promising growth here and it is just what Microsoft was in search of and needed to attract more advertisers to its platform. After all, making Bing a profitable endeavor is definitely one of the company’s targets today.

Read next: Remote Work Caused Data Breaches for 62% of Organizations
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

What Will Be the Biggest Tech Trend of 2023?

With markets suffering from shock after shock and the tech industry experiencing one of its worst downturns in decades, all eyes are on the next big trend. Revealing the trend is important because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up shaping the fate of the tech industry as a whole. It turns out that there are several contenders that could prove to be the next big thing.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that AI will obviously have a tremendous role to play here. Its role will also be rather synergistic with that of blockchain, since AI can be used to make it far more secure than might have been the case otherwise.

Security will be another major trend for 2023. Zero trust security has already become quite important, but in spite of the fact that this is the case it can still be improved. With real time computing becoming all the more prevalent thanks to improved cloud infrastructure, it will be interesting to see how the two might end up going together with all things having been considered and taken into account.

AI will also be quite important from a completely different viewpoint. Generative AI has the potential to upset the delicate balance of countless industries. ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion have already started doing that, and it will be interesting to see what comes next since this is just the first wave and there will likely be a lot of improvements in the near future.

All in all, 2023 is shaping up to be the most exciting year for tech since the mid 90s. That was when the internet and personal computers started to become commonplace. Big names like Bill Gates have said that AI can be like the internet, in the sense that we have no way of predicting what it’s true potential will end up looking like. We will just have to wait and see to figure out how it might change things once and for all.

H/T: Counter Point Research

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Remote Work Caused Data Breaches for 62% of Organizations

One of the biggest changes that occurred in the professional landscape in recent years has to do with an increased desire among employees to be able to work remotely. Working from home is no longer a luxury, since the pandemic made it far more normalized than might have been the case otherwise. In spite of the fact that this is the case, it turns out that work from home options don’t come without their fair share of problems for organizations.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a study conducted by Fortinet revealed some concerning insights into the state of remote work. Based on the findings in the research titled Work From Anywhere – Global Study, 62% of organizations offering remote work options ended up suffering from data breaches that could have been prevented if the employees had been coming in to the office.

Around 60% of the 570 organizations who participated in this survey said that they have offered remote work because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up helping their employees balance work and home lives. 55% are trying to go for a hybrid work strategy, since this can offer a middle path that can cater to all involved parties.

However, the security issues that can arise due to working from home simply can’t be ignored. If an employee is working from their residence, they might not have the same level of cybersecurity that would be standardized in office spaces.

This might not be enough to make remote work options go away for good, but it is something that organizations will nonetheless be forced to take into consideration in the short term. Employees will continue to request the option to work from home. It is up to organizations to figure out how they can offer this option to them without compromising on the security of their data. If all else fails, they might not be able to continue allowing employees to work from various remote locations outside the office.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Google One Vows To Offer VPN Services And Dark Web Monitoring To Subscribers For Free

Google One Subscribers are about to be treated after the app recently promised to enhance privacy and security across the platform.

The company is going to soon roll out some very interesting security features in the form of VPN services and monitoring on the dark web with no additional costs attached.

The respective rollout is expected as early as the next week, Google confirmed.

For starters, subscribers will be getting free VPN services that protect user data through the simple process of encryption of their online browsing sessions. Similarly, it hopes to disguise the IP address and that would protect against anyone trying to eavesdrop including hackers located on dangerous networks.

While being the process of transit, unsecured data may be intercepted by the likes of hackers that compromise some very integral privacy features and the general security system, Google confirmed.

This particular VPN service will end up working across different Android, Mac, Windows, and iOS devices while shared with nearly five different group members belonging to the same family.

Google also mentioned how this new free-of-cost VPN service would never be seen tracking, selling, selling, or making use of users’ online activities, be it IP address or the respective network traffic.

Next up, it hopes to introduce more services that monitor the activity of people on the dark web so users know when or if their personal details are getting compromised or not. Therefore, any free service would scan the dark web for more details linked to personal information belonging to members like name, email, phone number, address, and social security numbers. This would further go on to alert users regarding any more sensitive data that are located.

Therefore, subscribers are going to be given the chance to select the type of data they wish to monitor and when it’s found, the respective guidance on this front would be provided by Google so this data remains secure.

If it’s stolen, the necessary protocols for stolen information would be implied. For instance, any lost or stolen data would be sent out as a report to the government. Moreover, users would be similarly forced to sign up for the likes of a credit monitoring service.

And in the case of other data breaches taking place on the dark web, all users would be kept informed at all times.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World