When Airbnb filed to go public in August, it seemed like a solid plan. The company was widely reported to be on an upswing from its COVID-doldrums, the public markets were hot for growth and tech shares, and the pandemic’s caseload in the United States was coming down from its summer highs. It looked great for Airbnb to …
Report: African mobile users pay 3 times more for data and voice The recurring theme of mobile internet prices is that while they are dropping globally, they are not dropping fast enough in Africa. The resulting reality is internet users across the continent pay the highest prices for mobile data relative to average monthly income. …
Consumers in African countries are paying some of the highest rates in the world for internet access as a proportion of income, due to a lack of competition in local markets according to a new report released Tuesday. The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) assessed 136 low and middle-income countries for their annual Affordability Report. …
The chief executive officers (CEOs) of 51 tech companies including Amazon, AT&T, Dell, IBM, Qualcomm, SAP, Salesforce, Visa, Mastercard, JP Morgan Chase, State Farm, and Walmart have signed and sent an open letter to Congress leaders today, asking for a federal law on user data privacy to supersede the rising number of privacy laws that …
As the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation nears its 18 month anniversary, research by security software supplier Egress has suggested that 52% of UK businesses are not fully compliant with the rules, opening the door to severe penalties if they fall victim to a data breach. Egress – which polled 250 decision …
A new Chinese app that lets people swap faces with celebrities is updating its policies after a backlash from users concerned about their privacy and how its convincing fake image technology could be used. The app, called Zao, works by superimposing an image of the user’s face onto a character in a video or GIF …
Federal prosecutors this week charged a Seattle woman with stealing data from more than 100 million credit applications made with Capital One Financial Corp. Incredibly, much of this breach played out publicly over several months on social media and other open online platforms. What follows is a closer look at the accused, and what this …
Two US senators have proposed on Monday a bill in Congress to force tech companies to disclose what data they collect about their users and how it is being leveraged by the platform for profit. Named the Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight And Regulations on Data (DASHBOARD) Act, the bill was proposed by …
Benin held parliamentary elections Sunday leaving citizens without access to opposition candidates and the internet. Social media platforms including WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well as Spacetel—Benin’s leading internet provider—was shut down according to NetBlocks (a digital monitoring organization), Quartz Africa reports. VPNs were also blocked. This makes Benin the latest African country alongside …
Those who live in low-income countries face the least affordable mobile broadband prices in the world. Now, new data from the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) finds that low-income countries saw mobile broadband costs increase for the first time in four years. The data shows that progress on affordability globally has stalled — and in …