File-sharing platforms not protecting against malicious content
Cybersecurity company Surfshark has reviewed popular file-sharing platforms and finds that the majority of them don’t scan your files for viruses, nor do they protect you from malicious software on their free plans.
Box and WeTransfer, which together have a total of 138 million registered users, do not scan for viruses on free plans but begin scanning files on paid plans. Dropbox, with 700 million registered users, does not offer scanning at all.
UK regulators hit 4chan with paltry fine for failure to comply with the Online Safety Act
Following an investigation that started back in June, UK regulator Ofcom has issued 4chan with a fine for failure to comply with two requests for information under the controversial Online Safety Act.
Ofcom’s investigation had multiple threads, including looking into whether the site was protecting users from illegal content. After several months, only concerns about failing to respond to information requests were upheld. The fine? Just £20,000 – or a little over $26,500.
64 percent back Online Safety Act but censorship worries persist
A new survey of 2,000 UK consumers shows that 64 percent agree the Online Safety Act protects children, with support higher among parents of young children and lower among ‘empty nest’ parents.
However, the data from verification and anti-fraud platform Sumsub also shows 48 percent concerned it will lead to censorship.
Age verification laws are killing web traffic
With the UK having recently brought the Online Safety Act into force, age verification laws are having a huge effect on traffic to web sites. Predictably, sites which comply with age verification requirements have noticed a marked drop-off in visitor numbers, while the opposite is true for non-compliant sites.
In the UK, it is – currently – only pornographic sites that are supposed to implement age verification (although other sites are supposed to take action to prevent minors from accessing adult material as well). Working via a combination of facial scans and documentation checks, the impact of the law has been felt very quickly.
