Monday, January 28, 2019

Despite Bing And Microsoft Dancing To The Chinese Tunes, Bing Gets Flicked Off And On.


On Wednesday people in China were disturbed when they could not access the Bing Search engine. After investigations involving both the sides, it was revealed that Microsoft Corp.’s search engine Bing was blocked in China was due to an accidental technical error rather than due to censorship. The search engine is once again accessible in China.

“Some reports are saying it is due to technical problems, You should ask other parties.” said Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry. The government typically does not explain its actions or justifications.

The blocking of Bing was a surprise because Microsoft has sought to build a local operation under China’s rules. Alphabet Inc.’s Google, very unlike Microsoft, under some pressure from different quarters, pulled its search engine out years ago in part to avoid government censorship, Microsoft has toed the line and stops content deemed illegal from showing up in results. This may have allowed Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service remained online and available. The Great Firewall of China, blocks thousands of websites including big boys like, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Yahoo, and Google.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company wasn’t yet certain whether the Bing incident reflected a broader issue.

“It’s not the first time that we’ve encountered issues like this for being in China. These do arise periodically, We do adhere to the global network initiative set of principles when it comes to search services in China. And that does mean that there are days when there are either difficult negotiations or even disagreements, but we’re not aware of any ongoing negotiation or disagreement.”
Microsoft President Brad Smith told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Bloomberg

Thursday, January 17, 2019

Have I Been Pwned? Most Probably Yes, See If You Are In This 773 Million Monster list.


Have I Been Pwned, a site run by Troy Hunt, verifies your online credentials, to see if you were involved in a breach. If you were simple guide lines are given to secure your accounts. Recently the site has just gotten its hands on its biggest data base of email addresses and passwords, ever. This list includes almost 773 million unique email addresses and 21 million unique passwords that were used to log in to third-party sites.
I will give a link to comprehensive article about this security breach but if you do not have time, the least thing one could do to secure their online accounts is to ensure that each one is protected by a long, randomly generated password that’s unique to each account. For most people, this means using a reputable password manager, or like me, a simple notebook. Once that is in place, use multi-factor authentication on every site that allows it. Hunt has more advice about passwords here. More info at ARS