Highlights: Scammers in India are using Google Maps to dupe people. Posing themselves as legit businesses, they promise to deliver booze in exchange of an advanced payment. Google has been working hard in developing Maps as a standalone app that can provide users with a platform for ease of commuting and communication. However, it has been found that people are taking negative advantage of the company’s service. In yet another incident of exploitation of Google Maps, it has been reported that scammers in India are using the service to mint money by offering an option to deliver alcohol at people’s doorsteps. The information about this whole operation was busted by a Twitter user @DrunkenPandaman, who claimed that thousands of images posted on Google Maps have the same phone number on them. According to Android Police, when contacted on this number, the person (or a group of people) on the other side would promise to make home delivery of alcohol in exchange for an advance payment. But how does this scam run? Image Source When a person contacts the scammer on the provided phone number, he/she sends a list of available alcohol along with prices. Once selected, the the scammer asks for an advance payment via either Paytm or by sharing card details. The scam seems to be flourishing because apparently authorised and licensed businesses are flashing messages warning buyers to beware of scammers. Image Source There are two possible reasons that could be helping these types of scams to flourish. First is the lack of understanding of technology. Several reports have mentioned that a lot of people in India are first time users of the internet on smartphones and they do not have the complete understanding of such scams that can dupe them. Scammers usually wait for such victims, and unfortunately, these gullible users are available in abundance in the country. The second reason could be the inability of Google’s systems to catch these scammers. Google has been pushing artificial intelligence and machine learning in its systems to make them more efficient. It can be argued that Google’s algorithms could have caught those behind such booze scams because of the dissemination of the same number in thousands of images. With just a bit of research, we stumbled upon a tweet that had a link to a user who has contributed over 8000 images and literally zero reviews, ratings, videos or answers. Google has provided a response saying that they are always working to develop better ways to check the negative intent of scammers. “Spammers and others with negative intent are a problem for consumers, businesses and technology companies that provide local business information. We’re always working on new and better ways to fight these issues and keep our information up to date,” Google was quoted as saying. “We use automated and manual systems to detect for spam and fraud, but we tend not to share details behind our processes so as not to tip off spammers or others with bad intent. We take allegations of fraud very seriously. When an issue like this one is reported to us, we investigate the claims. Upon completion of the investigation, we take actions in line with our findings,” the company added. Related Read: Google removes massive trove of malware apps and shoddy reviews from Play Store using Machine Learning
from Latest Technology News http://bit.ly/2BeSMl1
Highlights: Google internally testing new features for Gmail. Testing is in very early stages. Leaked screenshot shows only one of many testing apps. In September of 2018, Google had announced that it would be shutting down Inbox in March 2019. The reason given was that there was too much of feature overlap between Inbox and Gmail. Since then, we’ve seen more and more features migrate from Inbox to Gmail, such as smart replies and most recently, the Material Design. Now a Redditor has shared a screenshot of some new features that Google is allegedly testing internally. The screenshot shared is from a revamped version of the Gmail app, being tested internally. The screenshot shared by the Reddit user along with his post shows three distinct new features being tested. The first is Bundles, a feature that clubs emails based on the nature of the topic. We already have this categorization in Gmail, but the Inbox-feature allows for mass archiving of emails. For example, if you have too many emails from tourism companies, you can mass archive them in one swipe instead of having to go through a multiple-step process. The second feature in the app screenshot is the ability to display only pinned items. The third feature spotted is the ability to quickly create reminders and schedules. This last one isn’t lifted from Inbox, but potentially from Google Tasks, but there is no knowing until the feature actually rolls out. The Redditor who posted the screenshot says that the screenshot is from one of many versions being tested right now and is in no way final or even indicative of the final product. In addition to that, he also says that the experiments are in very early stages. Google has been working on revamping Gmail over the last year, having brought a number of interesting features to the e-mail service slowly, but steadily. The recent most update was the switch to the Material design theme, which brought a whole new level of aesthetics to the e-mail service. 
Highlights: Twitter CEO talks about edit feature for Tweets. It could have a 5 to 30 second delay to make edits in case of typos. American stand-up comedian Joe Rogan is not only famous for his time on the stage but also for getting significant information out on his podcast. Few months ago, Elon Musk appeared on it and was seen smoking weed, sparking all sorts of headlines, and now this time it was Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who was in the hot-seat delving out future plans regarding the tweet. No, Dorsey didn’t smoke-up but discussed a feature that will let Twitterati edit their Tweets. Although the executive did not discuss the feature in detail, he touched upon the subject in bits and pieces. Replying to Rogan’s question, Dorsey said that Twitter will get “The ability to edit, like if you make a typo or something like that. But also the ability for people to see the original”. He added that the reason Twitter doesn’t have edit is that it was built on SMS (text messaging). “Once you send a text, you can’t take it back. So when you send a tweet it goes to the world instantaneously. You can’t take it back. You could build it as such so maybe we introduce a 5-second to 30-second delay in the sending. And within that window, you can edit. The issue with going longer than that is it takes that real-time nature of the conversational flow out of it,” Dorsey explained the reason for not having an edit option yet. To this, Rogan pointed out that clarity is important in a Tweet (to send out the exact message that a user wants to say). Dorsey said, “It depends on the context. If you’re in the context of an NBA game, you want to be fast and in the moment. You want to be raw. But if you’re in the context of considering what the president just did or making a particular statement, then you probably need some more time. And we can be dynamic there.” This is not the first time that Dorsey has talked about a feature to edit tweets. Last year, Dorsey said that the company has to carefully consider use cases for the edit button before making it a reality. “A lot of people want the edit button because they want to quickly fix a mistake they made. Like a misspelling or tweeting the wrong URL. That’s a lot more achievable than allowing people to edit any tweet all the way back in time,” Dorsey was quoted as saying. He added that Twitter will ideally prevent unlimited editing, because then anyone could abuse the feature to alter their controversial or damning statements later on. Dorsey noted that the company wants to implement a solution that solves a problem. “We have been considering this for a while and we have to do in the right way. We can’t just rush it out. We can’t make something which is distracting or takes anything away from the public record,” the top Executive said. Currently, WhatsApp has a delete feature according to which a user has a seven minute window to delete the message. Facebook’s Unsend feature follows the same roadmap but has been in a controversy because critics have argued that this could be a handy feature for abusers who can erase evidence of their misdeeds and make people more comfortable in speaking up. Dorsey seems to have taken a note of it and give the feature a good think before rolling it out. Related Read: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey banks on AI to help company curb fake news dissemination ahead of 2019 general elections in India
