EU questions Apple, Google and Microsoft about their scam prevention efforts
The European Union has queried Apple, Google and Microsoft on their efforts to prevent online scams. There is a fourth company under scrutiny.
Booking Holding, which is a Europe based company, and owns travel sites, is also being investigated.
So, this is not an antitrust thing. What's it about this time? Well, the EU wants to ensure that users are protected against online scams, financial fraud, and other security risks that one might encounter online.
According to The Verge, a report by The Financial Times revealed that EU regulators are asking the companies to hand overt details about their methods to combat these threats, as part of the Digital Services Act. Microsoft Bing and Google Search will come under the scanner for fake search results. How about the quality of the results, huh? Or lack thereof?
The EU will evaluate how Apple and Google are handling fraud applications like fake banking apps on their app stores. Let's see now, that shouldn't be a problem. Oh, yes! Both the App Store and Play Store are free of fake apps and malware, right? They're totally safe. How many times have we seen reports of malicious apps on both app marketplaces?
Apple's walled-garden, which does not allow sideloading, which it claims helps keep its App Store highly secure, but this has been proven otherwise multiple times. Still, it is streets ahead of the Play Store. Google might claim that it is protecting Android users by requiring a valid certificate from developers who distribute their apps outside the Play Store. You know, that's how sideloading is going to die. Given the nature of this scrutiny, that might be welcomed as a security move. Hopefully, antitrust officials will reject it. But that's a drama for another time.
As for Booking, it has to share information on how it handled fake accommodation listings on its services.
If the companies security measures are found lacking, it could lead to official investigations, and it could result in a potential fine of up to 6% ofn their annual global turnover. I wouldn't be surprised if they are hit by that fine, but even if they did it would be just another slap on the wrist.
EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said, “We see that more and more criminal actions are taking place online. We have to make sure that online platforms really take all their efforts to detect and prevent that kind of illegal content.”
It's kind of funny. Some Countries in the EU are messing around age-verification laws and such, where users have an option to upload their government-issued ID, credit card information, etc. You know what could happen if hackers breaches the system, and plant a backdoor in the system which is used to verify the IDs of people? It could result in online scams, identity theft, financial fraud. The very thing they're scrutinizing.
It’s challenging when the companies in question are scams themselves.
This is too far. These companies are not scams. Scams are when you pay for something and get nothing, get something absolutely different or get garbage level quality product. MLMs are scams. Get rich quick schemes are scams. Just few examples.
Apple produces quality phones/tablets/laptops. They do not hide that their software sales are “walled garden”. They have like 60% profit on their products, and it is way too much any way you slice it. But it is not a scam. It is bad, uncompetitive behavior.
Google and Microsoft produce plenty of products that are quality including software that are backbone of Internet and Google makes decent phones itself and Android operating system (which also soon will become “walled garden”). A lot of their consumer software products policies are predatory, but most products still have some value. Especially if you know how to protect yourself and understand that they want like any company now to move to subscription model.
You just can not call companies scam when they still make products that make the world run. Quality of some of their products got way worse in recent years. But still, you should not make such blanketed statements without any proof. I can not believe you made me to defend Microsoft.
Major sources of scam
1)Emails.
2)App Markets.
3)Search Result ads.
1)You can not do anything here. If you tight screws any farther, many emails will not be delivered. If you introduce AI to read all emails, it will be a huge invasion of privacy.
2)Some marginal improvements are possible. Tracking information on every app could be published. As soon as one app that uses particular libraries is detected to be scammed, others that use the same libraries or belonging to the same publisher should be immediately checked.
3)A lot of improvement is possible if companies are willing to take less profits on ad sales. This is where AI actually be useful to check for possible website redirects and final website destinations.
Always dig into Apple, Google and Microsoft practices, if you don’t know why, they do.
Personally I’m not bothered by either of them given I avoid all three to a maximum extent, neither am I bothered by any other.
Being bumped, hurt on, by the Web depends I guess of several factors, one of them being the way you travel: places you visit, the way you visit them, your common-sense awareness. Less aware you be more you’ll need 3-rd party defenses though not relying on them : common sense can be closer to bullet-proof than a nonsense behavior covered by whatever shield.
Of course a minimum of computing knowledge is worthy. Two examples which always stun me: 1- lack of unique, complex passwords, 2- Cleaning up a browser on exit (we all know users who have amazing amounts of cookies/localStorage and caches never wiped).
I sometimes ask around me what is asked when buying a new PC: what for, what do you intend to use it for, in other words what do you do on the Web (besides spending hours on a smartphone wasting amounts of saliva). Social websites, music, videos, games … ? I think that what concerns perhaps a majority of users among the youngest is to “have fun”, often blindly.
Should I, personally, use the Web for such futility that I’d likely be far more exposed than I am when focusing on quieter areas.
From there on, if those big technology corporations we are so acquainted to and therefor naively rely on and trust are te vectors of spam then who can we trust, at least on the Web? Make it easy: no one.
Considering the number of scam emails I have received from Apple, Google or Microsoft over the last few years, the main offender appears to be Gmail…
On checking email SPF headers most, if not all, of the scam emails appearing to come from Gmail are not actually sent via Gmail’s systems…
I have to assume same applies for emails that seem to come from Apple and Microsoft email services…
Apple, Google and Microsoft have no control over such emails other than setting DMARC, DKIM, and SPF email authentication…
All of these email authentication methods are hidden from the average email user and the ability to access such detail depends on the manner in which the email user accesses their email (web-based, phone-based or desktop-based) AND the application used for phone- or desktop-based email…
A complicated mess for the average user who does not understand how the underlying systems work to minimise “scam” or “junk” emails…
Too many times have I seen valid emails being classified as “scam” or “junk” or “malware infected” by a provider (which includes Apple, Google and Microsoft) when, in fact, said email was genuine and “none-of-the-above”…
Worse still, some of the paid-for email services that allege to “protect” email users from all “scam”, “junk” or “malware infected” emails actually block emails that do NOT fall into any of these categories!