Could’ve been much, much worse
Online hacking concern OurMine has scored another coup by hacking the Twitter account run by Netflix. Fortunately for Netflix, OurMine is a “white hat” hacker group and they take pride in penetrating online defenses – it was a password this time around – and then gently needling their victims rather than using the hacked accounts for evil. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are among its victims.
OurMine tweeted out their logo and a contact email address along with a short message about “testing your security” on the Netflix account before Netflix likely stepped in and changed up the password. OurMine added that “no one is safe from hackers” before all their tweets were deleted, and sadly, it seems like they’re pretty much right about that.
Bye Bye Birdies
The exodus continues at Twitter with the impending departure of two more upper-level execs, Chief Technology Officer Adam Messinger and VP of Product Josh McFarland. Messinger has been in the Twitter nest for four years and said he’s going to take some time off, while MacFarland is leaving to join venture capital outfit Greylock Partners as an investor, according to Forbes.
Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey recently announced that Keith Coleman, formerly of Yes Inc. and Google, is going to head up the products division. However, Twitter has seen two rounds of layoffs in two years and a steadily sliding stock price, despite it being an icon of social media. Can somebody please turn this company onto a path for growth? Apple? Microsoft? Facebook? Google? Bueller? Anyone?
AT&T vs. The Robots: FIGHT!
Do you ever got those robo calls that say, hey, your credit card account is fine, but wouldn’t you like to get rid of that debt? Or your computer has a virus, or you’ve won a free cruise to Cabo for yourself and all your friends? Well, seems like everyone does and now AT&T is first out of the gate with some tools that will hopefully end calls from those annoying robo spammers.
Called AT&T Call Protect, it’s an app that can block calls at the network level so they never reach you, or will give you a heads up when the phone is ringing that the call is likely a robocall. The app is part of a larger effort among telecoms who formed the “robocall strike force” and the plan is to rid us of these timewasters once and for all – thank god. Currently, the AT&T app works where the service offers HD voice service, which is in most urban areas they cover.
The app is available for free for iOS and Android devices. AT&T does say that the app may block calls from legit callers who are not in your address book, but we’ll take the odd chance of missing that call from long-lost Aunt Debbie if we can stop getting robocalls forever.
