A few days off: with friends & family, gym, motorcycling, cycling, eating out, shopping, BBQ, playing with dear Calli. Just goes to show you don't always need a "holiday" as such. A change is as good as a rest!
Chinese electric vehicles being driven in Britain could be “weaponised” and should be banned from government use, a report has warned.
Modules within Chinese-made electric vehicles could transmit sensitive data back to the country or even be remotely controlled, the China Strategic Risks Institute (CSRI) warned.
The think tank called for an end to Chinese carmakers being able to win government contracts. Last year it emerged that the Ministry of Defence used electric cars made by Chinese-owned MG.
Whitehall departments are buying up electric cars in an attempt to decarbonise their fleets. The report said the vehicles present a potentially greater security risk than petrol-powered vehicles because they are more likely to be equipped with internet-connected modules capable of collecting data and controlling the car’s functions.
“The UK public remains largely unaware of the dependency, disruption, and data security risks Chinese EVs pose via Chinese manufactured Cellular Internet of Things Modules (CIMs) within them,” it said.
Meanwhile in other news: Lord Mandelson (honorary president of the Great Britain–China Centre) has promised warmer UK relations with China...
Ford Motor Company is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analysing a car’s historical location and other data, according to a patent application published late last month.
“In one example, the controller may monitor user dialogue to detect when individuals are in a conversation,” the patent application says. “The conversations can be parsed for keywords or phrases that may indicate where the occupants are traveling to.”
The tech — labelled as “in-vehicle advertisement presentation” — will determine where a car is located, how fast it is traveling, what type of road it is driving on and whether it is in traffic. It also will predict routes, speeds and destinations to customize ads to drivers, the application said.
The system could pull data from “audio signals within the vehicle and/or historical user data, selecting a number of the advertisements to present to the user during the trip,” the patent application said.
Americans were duped out of more than $5.6 billion last year through fraud schemes involving cryptocurrency, the FBI said in a report released Monday that shows a 45% jump in losses from 2022.
The FBI received nearly 70,000 complaints in 2023 by victims of financial fraud involving bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies, according to the FBI. The most rampant scheme was investment fraud, which accounted for $3.96 billion of the losses.
“The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, the speed of irreversible transactions, and the ability to transfer value around the world make cryptocurrency an attractive vehicle for criminals, while creating challenges to recover stolen funds,” wrote Michael Nordwall, assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division.
Scammers will often make contact through dating apps or social media to build trust over several weeks or months before suggesting cryptocurrency investing, the FBI said. Once the relationship is built, they convince the targets to use fake websites or apps to invest their money, sometimes even allowing the victims to withdraw small amounts of money early on to make it seem legitimate.
