After Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) asked Facebook Free Basics supporters to send in specific responses to the net neutrality consultation paper, the social network has started an email campaign to gather support. The plea is that TRAI’s net neutrality rules should not “end up depriving people of the opportunity to come online”. Facebook has already…
The government has dropped the idea of defining the term marketplace, casting a cloud over the model widely used by e-commerce companies to circumvent foreign investment rules. Marketplaces are websites that connect buyers to sellers, offering services such as warehousing, logistics and payments. There is no definition of an online marketplace under current FDI (foreign…
If its followers were a country, it would be twice as populous as China. These 2.5 billion people give an hour every day to their faith—email. As with all things Internet related, email gained adherents at a prodigious rate. The first email message was sent in 1971, but widespread use began only by 1995. In…
As I write this Egypt’s Free Basics initiative has been shut down for its 3 million customers availing of Etisalat’s internet service free of cost. And Google LOONS project reaches 3 million free internet service customer milestone in Sri Lanka. Here in India a lot of grist for the media mill has been at…
The rise in number of complaints about loss of money to fraudulent transactions is due to the negligence of both consumers and banks, says Dr Nagarathna, coordinator of Advanced Centre for Research, Development and Training in Cyber Laws and Forensics, National Law School of India University. Even High Court judges and policemen have been victims…
Adding unknown people as friends on social media and revealing personal details and information can have disastrous results, cyber crime experts have warned. A recent quiz hosted by Kaspersky Lab involved 18,000 internet users from 16 countries with 1,348 respondents from India. The results found that 30% of social network users share their posts, check-ins…
Nasscom issued a press statement, wherein they have said that ‘differential pricing’ proposed by telecom companies and their partners should be allowed for ‘public interest’ services. They said, “.. regulator should have the power to allow differential pricing for certain types/ classes of services that are deemed to be in public interest”, adding, “any differential…
hennai-based meme creators, Chennai Memes, have launched an online campaign to combat child pornography, urging web users to report such sites to the cyber crime police. A member of the group recently stumbled upon several Facebook pages and WhatsApp groups which upload and circulate pictures of young girls, as well as pornographic material involving children.…
In the wake of massive protests against Facebook’s Free Basics service, ET’s Neha Alawadhi and Krithika Krishnamurthy take a look at the alternative methods to ensure internet connectivity for all. How to Connect Rural India Ad-based model Mozilla, in partnership with Grameenphone, gave 20 MB free data to users in Bangladesh after they viewed an…
Over the last few months, the activism against Facebook’s free internet in India has been called “elitist” and “self-righteous.” An opinion piece in The New York Times, for instance, called the opposition “elite Indian condemnation of internet for the poor.” Most voices that have come out in criticism of Free Basics—which provides free but limited…