We don’t want to jinx anything but… It’s definitely coming home.
Now we’ve got that off our chests, it’s time for you to settle in for your five minute read – this week’s Top Tech News.
US tech company Fastly has revealed that a software bug triggered a global internet outage which took several major websites offline on Tuesday.
For around an hour, sites such as The New York Times, Evening Standard, Bloomberg and Le Monde, as well as self-proclaimed front page of the internet Reddit, shopping site eBay, and streaming platform Twitch, were all down.
Fastly, an internet cloud services provider used by many major companies to help speed up loading times by storing versions of their websites in local servers, was quickly identified as the firm behind the issue.
The company's senior vice president of engineering and infrastructure, Nick Rockwell, wrote in a blog: "We experienced a global outage due to an undiscovered software bug that surfaced on 8 June when it was triggered by a valid customer configuration change.”.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority has announced it will take an active role in developing Google’s plans to prevent websites tracking Chrome users.
Under the proposals, the CMA would accept legally binding commitments from Google not to use its proposed replacements for tracking cookies, a set of technologies the search engine calls its Privacy Sandbox, in a way that would harm competition. It is thought to be the first time a competition regulator has been involved at such an early stage in the creation of a new technology.
Under Google’s plans, first announced in January, the company would follow Apple in banning advertisers – including itself – from tracking the browsing of web users. Instead, it wants to use AI to profile individual people, bundling them with those with similar browsing habits in a way that preserves the ability of advertisers to target them with adverts, without needing to invade their privacy.
That same month, the CMA announced a formal investigation into the proposals. In response, Google offered the regulator an unusual deal: it would offer legally binding commitments to involve the regulator in the plans.
WhatsApp has launched its first major privacy-focused advertising campaign in the UK. It follows a customer backlash against changes to its terms and conditions, announced earlier this year.
The platform also said it is standing firm against pressure from governments, including the UK, to compromise on the way that it encrypts messages.
WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, which means messages can only be read on the device which sends one and the device which receives it. WhatsApp itself - and by default its parent company Facebook - cannot view or intercept them, and neither can law enforcement.
In January, thousands of users threatened to leave WhatsApp, wrongly thinking it was going to start sharing messaging data with Facebook following an announcement about changes to its terms and conditions.
A spokesperson for the business said: "To reiterate, nothing about the privacy of people's personal conversations changed in our update,".
Ransomware represents the biggest threat to online security for most people and businesses in the UK, the head of GCHQ’s cybersecurity arm is to warn.
Lindy Cameron, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, will say in a speech that the phenomenon, where hackers encrypt data and demand payment for it to be restored, is escalating and becoming increasingly professionalised.
Speaking to the Rusi thinktank on Monday, Cameron will say that while spying online by Russia, China and other hostile states remains a “malicious strategic threat”, it is the ransomware crisis that has become most urgent.
“For the vast majority of UK citizens and businesses, and indeed for the vast majority of critical national infrastructure providers and government service providers, the primary key threat is not state actors but cybercriminals,” Cameron is to say.
Ransomware incidents have soared over the past two years globally as criminal gangs operating from countries such as Russia and other former Soviet states, which turn a blind eye to their activities, generate tens of millions of dollars by extorting money from companies.
