by Olabisi Olaleye
Over the last couple of weeks, some digital natives were bombarded by subtle warning by the Facebook team, the most popular social media interface.
According to an online site; Gtechnews.com.ng, “What probably looked like an innocent and subtle security warning from ‘Facebook’ is an attempt by cyber criminals to invade users account.
“With a warning that a log in has been done in China, the warning gives two link options that are not only suspicious but fraudulent”.
Although, reactions have continued to trail this news from across the country by social media enthusiasts.
According to one of them, Olalekan Ojo, Facebook like some financial institutions is becoming a bit lackadaisical and is waiting for havoc before being proactive.
“FB algorithm is faulty and it is a century back. They paid some Asian tigers to surf the net for illegal postings, rather than writing a program to detect such. My comparison of FB and some financial institutions is that both entities are biting more than they can chew”.
He explained that cybercrime can be easily curbed if Phishing links are detected early.
“Phishing links are the easiest to detect if there is a right program installed. If the user clicks a link, it warns him of an inherent danger. Some organisations have this warning alert installed on their computers”.
Another enthusiast, Mark Daniel explained that both the user and Face should tighten necessary security around their social media handles.
“Even if you want to open any suspecting link, most establishments would not give you the opportunity to open such links. Why do we have child lock in a car? The kids want to open the car while on motion, but can they do that with the child lock? Many of us are not only ignorant, we are stubborn. Education must go side by side with other forms of control”.
However, Facebook is yet to respond to the scam on its platform.
7 technology trends that dominate 2017
1. IoT and Smart Home Tech.
We’ve been hearing about the forthcoming revolution of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and resulting interconnectedness of smart home technology for years. So what’s the holdup? Why aren’t we all living in smart, connected homes by now? Part of the problem is too much competition, with not enough collaboration—there are tons of individual appliances and apps on the market, but few solutions to tie everything together into a single, seamless user experience. Now that bigger companies already well-versed in uniform user experiences (like Google, Amazon, and Apple) are getting involved, I expect we’ll see some major advancements on this front in the coming year.
2. AR and VR
We’ve already seen some major steps forward for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology in 2016. Oculus Rift was released, to positive reception, and thousands of VR apps and games followed. We also saw Pokémon Go, an AR game, explode with over 100 million downloads. The market is ready for AR and VR, and we’ve already got some early-stage devices and tech for these applications.
3. Machine Learning
Machine learning has taken some massive strides forward in the past few years, even emerging to assist and enhance Google’s core search engine algorithm. But again, we’ve only seen it in a limited range of applications. In 2017, machine learning has updates across the board, entering almost any type of consumer application you can think of, from offering better recommended products based on prior purchase history to gradually improving the user experience of an analytics app.
4. Automation.
Marketers will be (mostly) pleased to learn that automation will become a bigger mainstay in and throughout 2017, with advanced technology enabling the automation of previously human-exclusive tasks. We’ve had robotic journalists in circulation for a couple of years now, and I expect it won’t be long before they make another leap into more practical types of articles. It’s likely that we’ll start seeing productivity skyrocket in a number of white-collar type jobs—and we’ll start seeing some jobs disappear altogether. When automation is combined with machine learning, everything can improve even faster.
5. Humanized big data. (visual, empathetic, qualitative)
Big data has been a big topic for the past five years or so, when it started making headlines as a buzzword. The idea is that mass quantities of gathered data—which we now have access to—can help us in everything from planning better medical treatments to executing better marketing campaigns. But big data’s greatest strength—its quantitative, numerical foundation—is also a weakness. Advancements to humanise big data, for more empathetic and qualitative bits of data and projecting it in a more visualised, accessible way.
7. Everything On-Demand.
Thanks to brands like Uber (and the resulting madness of startups built on the premise of being the “Uber of ____”), people are getting used to having everything on demand via phone apps. In 2017, I expect this to see this develop even further. We have thousands of apps available to us to get rides, food deliveries, and even a place to stay for the night, but soon we’ll see this evolve into even stranger territory.
Anyone in the tech industry knows that making predictions about the course of technology’s future, even a year out, is an exercise in futility. Surprises can come from a number of different directions, and announced developments rarely release as they’re intended.