Technology News Update: April 2020

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Are ‘anti-virus’ cars in China just a gimmick?

Car brands are looking to tap into the country’s heightened health concerns to help kick-start flagging sales.

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Apple boosted by streaming services despite lockdown

While iPhone sales fell due to the lockdown in China, sales of streaming services jumped.

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Amazon investors told to 'take a seat' as demand jumps

Amazon's sales surged 26%, but costs are also up due to spending on safety precautions and wages.

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Nasa names companies to build Moon landers for human missions

The space agency announces the companies that will develop landers to return astronauts to the Moon.

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How this startup built and exited to Twitter in 1,219 days

By the summer of 2016, Marie Outtier had spent eight years as a consultant advising media agencies and martech companies on marketing growth strategy.

Pierre-Jean “PJ” Camillieri started as a music software engineer before joining one of Apple’s consumer electronics divisions. Inspired by Siri, he left to start Timista, a smart lifestyle assistant.

When the two joined forces to co-found Aiden.ai, the combination was potent — one was a consummate marketer, the other, a specialist in machine learning. Their goal: create an AI-driven marketing analyst that offered actionable advice in real time.

Humans who manage ad campaigns must analyze vast amounts of numbers, but Outtier and Camillieri envisioned a tool that could make optimization recommendations in real time. Analytics are vast and unwieldy, so theirs was a no-brainer proposition with a market crying out for solutions.

The company’s first office was at Bloom Space in Gower Street, London. It was just a handful of hot desks and a nearby sofa shared with four other startups. That summer, they began in earnest to build the company. A few months later, they had a huge opportunity when the still 100% bootstrapped company was selected for Techcrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield competition.

Interviewed by TechCrunch, they explained their proposition: Marketers wanted to know where a digital marketing campaign was getting the most traction: Twitter or Facebook. You might need to check several dashboards across multiple accounts, plus Google analytics to compile the data — and even if you conclude that one platform is outperforming the other, that might change next week as users shift attention to Instagram, potentially wasting 60% of ad spend.

Aiden was intended to feel like just another co-worker, relying on natural language processing to make the exchange feel chatty and comfortable. It queried data from multiple dashboards and quickly compiled it into flash charts, making it easy to find and digest.

Eventually, instead of managing 10 clients, marketing analysts would be able to manage 50 using dynamic predictions as well as visualizations. Aiden incorporated Outtier’s expertise into its algorithms so it could suggest how to tweak a Facebook campaign and anticipate what was going to happen.

Was appearing at Disrupt a significant moment? “It was a big deal for us,” says Outtier. “The exposure gave us ammunition to raise our first round. And being part of the Disrupt Battlefield alumni gave us many meaningful networking and PR opportunities.”

A few weeks later the company had raised a seed round of $750,000. But not without difficulty. By this time Outtier was in the latter stages of pregnancy. Raising money under these circumstances was difficult, but, she says, “it can be done. It’s tougher than ‘normal circumstances.’ It’s a bit like running a marathon, but with a fridge on your back.”

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5 Best Android Apps to Blur Photo Background [Bokeh Effect]

Nowadays, photo editing is easy! Thanks to the number of software available on the internet. In fact, now you don’t really need a desktop computer to edit photos. You can easily edit your photos right from the smartphone. If we talk about Android, we have shared multiple articles on photo editing like best photo editing apps, best collage makers, best photo grid apps, etc.

Today, we will be talking about the apps which let you add bokeh effects to the photos. In photography, the bokeh is the out-of-focus portion of the image produced by the lens. If you have a high-end Android device, then you don’t need a standalone app to blur the background in your photos.

5 Best Android Apps to Blur Photo Background [Bokeh Effect]

However, if you have a mid-end device, then you need to rely on the Android apps to blur the background of your photos. With these Android apps, you can easily blur the unnecessary objects in the picture which you dislike. So, let’s check out the best photo blur background apps for Android in 2020.

1. AfterFocus

If you are searching for an Android app to create DSLR-style background blurred photos, then AfterFocus might be the best pick for you. The app lets you blur the background by simply selecting the focus area. Apart from that, AfterFocus also offers you various filter effects to enhance your overall photo. To select the focus area, the app provides you a unique markup tool.

2. DSLR Camera Blur Effects

This is one of the best and top-rated blur background apps available on the Google Play Store. With this app, you can easily create a fantastic blur background effect picture on the go. To blur the background of any image, just select the blurring tool and select the area. The app provides you multiple blur tools like Circular Blur, Line Blur, Touch to focus, etc.

3. Point Blur

If you are searching for an Android app to blur some part of your photo image, then Point Blur might be the best pick for you. The Point Blur provides you simple and convenient photo editing tool to apply blur effect like DSLRs. You can change the blur brush size to fit as per your need. Apart from that, it also lets you change the level of the effect you use.

4. Blur

As the name of the app says, the Blur app for Android lets you apply the blur effect to your photos. With this app, you can easily remove or blur out the unwanted objects from your pictures. Apart from that, it also got a blur image background effect. That means you can get the DSLR type blurred background effect on your photo by using this app.

5. Snapseed

Well, Snapseed is one of the best Android photo editing app available on the Google Play Store. It’s pretty much like a Photoshop for Android. You won’t believe it, but the app offers more than 29 tools and filters to edit photos. It also got a Lens Blur feature, which can be used to add beautiful bokeh to images.

So, these are some of the best Android apps to add blur effects in pictures on Android. I hope this article helped you! Share it with your friends also.

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TikTok skin trend accused of 'promoting colourism'

A trend that sees lighter-skinned people artificially darken their skin tone has caused a backlash.

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Coronavirus: Facebook reopens some moderation centres

Content reviewers can return to work on a voluntary basis, Facebook tells MPs.

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Drone-to-door prescriptions trial takes flight in Ireland

A trial with the Irish health authority uses drones to bring prescriptions straight to the door.

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Assassin's Creed Valhalla: First look at Viking-themed game

BBC Click's Marc Cieslak speaks to creative director Ashraf Ismail about the Viking-themed game.

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Facebook now allows users in the U.S. & Canada to export photos and videos to Google Photos

Facebook is today rolling out a tool that will allow users in the U.S. and Canada to export their Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos. This data portability tool was first introduced in Ireland in December, and has since been made available to other international markets.

To use the feature, Facebook users will need to click on “Settings,” followed by”Your Facebook Information,” then “Transfer a Copy of Your Photos and Videos.” Facebook will ask you to verify your password to confirm your identity in order to proceed. On the next screen, you’ll be able to choose “Google Photos” as the destination from the “Choose Destination” drop-down box that appears. You’ll also need your Google account information to authenticate with its service before the transfer begins.

The tool’s release comes about by way of Facebook’s participation in the Data Transfer Project, a collaborative effort with other tech giants including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, which focuses on a building out common ways for people to transfer their data between online services.

Of course, it also serves as a way for the major tech companies to fend off potential regulation as they’ll be able to point to tools like this as a way to prove they’re not holding their users hostage — if people are unhappy, they can just take their data and leave!

Facebook’s Director of Privacy and Public Policy Steve Satterfield, in an interview with Reuters on Thursday, essentially confirmed the tool is less about Facebook being in service to its users, and more about catering to policymakers’ and regulators’ demands.

“…It really is an important part of the response to the kinds of concerns that drive antitrust regulation or competition regulation,” Satterfield told the news outlet.

The launch also arrives conveniently ahead of a Federal Trade Commission hearing on September 22 that will be focused on data portability. Facebook said it would participate in that hearing, if approached, the report noted.

In Facebook’s original announcement about the tool’s launch last year, it said it would expand the service to include more than just Google Photos in the “near future.”

The transfer tool is not the only way to get your data out of Facebook. The company has offered Download Your Information since 2010. But once you have your data, there isn’t much else you can do with it — Facebook hasn’t had any large-scale rivals since older social networks like MySpace, FriendFeed (RIP!), and Friendster died and Google+ failed.

In addition to the U.S. and Canada, the photo transfer tool has been launched in several other markets, including Europe and Latin America.

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Twitter Q1: sales up 3% to $808M as it swigs to a loss on COVID-19, mDAUS hit record 166M

Despite traffic for many online properties being at an all-time high, advertising has fallen off a cliff because of the downturn in consumer activity outside the home and the wider economic pressures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. And today, Twitter reported quarterly earnings that bore this trend out.

The ad-based social networking and media company said that in Q1 it made $808 million in revenues, actually up 3% on a year ago, with monetizable daily active users (Twitter’s own metric for measuring its audience) grew 24% to 166 million, an all-time high, adding 14 million average mDAUs since Q4 (152 million) and 32 million since Q1 of last year (134 million).

However, operating income for the quarter swung to a loss of $7 million, working out to a net margin of -1% and diluted EPS of -$0.01.

Analysts had expected, on average, to see $775.96 million in revenues on earnings per share of $0.10, so Twitter beat on sales, and missed on earnings. (Note: Twitter’s analyst consensus, provided to journalists, was a little different and painted a more positive picture: it noted average EPS expectations were -$0.02 on sales of $776 million, with expectations of mDAUs at 164 million. Twitter says that its figures are based on non-GAAP numbers, but even on GAAP EPS Twitter’s actual EPS is a beat on consensus of -$0.02.)

Times have really changed whichever way you look at it. In the same quarter a year ago, Twitter reported sales of $787 million, up 18%; net income of $191 million; and diluted EPS of $0.37.

“In this difficult time, Twitter’s purpose is proving more vital than ever,” said CEO Jack Dorsey in a statement. “We are helping the world stay informed, and providing a unique way for people to come together to help or simply entertain and remind one another of our connections. We’ve delivered our strongest ever year over year mDAU growth. Public conversation can help the world learn faster, solve common problems, and realize we’re all in this together. Our task now is to make sure we retain that connection over the long term with the many people new to Twitter.”

The company said that the quarter played out in “two distinct periods”, January through early March, which largely performed as expected, it said, and eearly March through the end of the quarter, “when the pandemic became global.”

None of this should come as a surprise. Twitter itself announced more than a month ago that it was removing its own financial guidance because of the instability of its business due to COVID-19 — noting only that it would be lower than expected:

“While the near-term financial impact of this pandemic is rapidly evolving and difficult to measure, based on current visibility, the company expects Q1 revenue to be down slightly on a year-over-year basis,” it wrote at the time. “Twitter also expects to incur a GAAP operating loss, as reduced expenses resulting from COVID-19 disruption are unlikely to fully offset the revenue impact of the pandemic in Q1.”

It did point out one bright spot, which is that it is picking up many more users because of increased “conversation about COVID-19 as well as ongoing product improvements.” Then, it said that quarter-to-date average total mDAU was around 164 million, up 23% from 134 million in Q1 2019 and up 8% from 152 million in Q4 2019.

Generally, Twitter’s fortunes this quarter are in line with results from Alphabet/Google and Facebook, which also reported earnings this week that reflect the impact of reduced advertising revenues due to fallout from the the public health crisis.

But even without the impact of COVID-19 on Twitter’s primary business of advertising, the company had been facing a tough time leading into the quarter. Like eBay, Twitter has been the subject of activist investor activity pushing for leadership and operational changes to improve growth and profitability. (Coincidentally, the same activist investor, Elliott, has been behind both efforts.) Unlike eBay, however, Twitter has managed to keep its CEO in place — co-founder Jack Dorsey — but has had to concede board seats as part of a wider financing package and strategy to refocus the business. There may be questions on the call today to see if all of that has been put on ice given how other factors are now in play.

One outcome from the deal it had cut with investors was to provide more actionable plans that translated to growth and profit, and on that front at least Twitter is playing ball.

It notes that it has “shifted resources and priorities to increase focus on our revenue products, particularly performance ads beginning with MAP [mobile application promotion ads], with the goal of accelerating our long-term roadmap.” This has included an ad server rebuild that should be finished by the end of Q2 to implement microservices architecture for more efficiency and to make it easier to make changes on the fly. It’s also implementing direct response advertising, also with the aim of adding new features that it can charge advertisers for.

“We have increased our focus and the relative prioritization of our revenue products, and will shift and add product and engineering resources as practical to increase our pace of execution on this critical work,” it noted in the earnings letter.

Breaking out some specific numbers, advertising accounted for the lion’s share of sales at $682 million, with data licensing making up much of the remainder. US revenues were $468 million, up 8% year-over-year, while international was at $339 million, down 4%.

No layoffs announced (not yet) but as with others like Spotify, Twitter is putting a hold on hiring. The company had committed to increase headcount this year by at least 20% (alongside its CEO relocating to Africa temporarily and many other optimistic plans) but this is now being slowed down — to what extent, it did not say, but it did note that 2020 total expense growth would now be “considerably less” than the 20% it had projected.

More to come.

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Coronavirus: NHS dashboard to predict protective gear shortages

Tech firms will help the NHS spot where kit is running scarce, but privacy campaigners are concerned.

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15 Best Operating Systems For Hackers [2020]

Lots of people consider ‘Hacking’ as evil and illegal thing. However, it’s not true at all. Hacking has always been a part of computing, and it’s a much broad subject that you think. The work of an ethical hacker is to find loopholes or vulnerabilities in-network or any other protocol.

There are lots of people who are willing to learn ethical hacking. There are lots of courses available on the web, which can help you learn ethical hacking in a few years. If you are also willing to learn to hack, then you should start using Linux distro immediately.

15 Best Operating Systems For Hackers [2020]

So, in this article, we have decided to share a list of the best Linux based operating system that hackers use. So, let’s check out the best operating systems for hackers.

1. Kali Linux

It is one of the most modern OS that is being used by hackers for pen testing and lots of security exploits. This is a Linux based OS that provides you privacy and safety from the vulnerabilities that other OS have in it. So you must try out this cool OS on your PC.

2. Backtrack

The other well-known Linux based Operating system is backtrack that is being used from a few previous years and best known as the OS for network cracking and pen-testing. And it’s also one of the best OS that can perform various network hacks with privacy.

3. Pentoo

This is one of the best OS for hackers that is just in the form of Live CD. In this, you just have to create a bootable USB of this OS and then simply boot on your PC, and there is no requirement to install it, you just have to run it on your PC and carry out your security research.

4. Nodezero

Another good operating system that every pentester would love to try out on their PC. This OS is being developed after the great necessity of many things that are not present in another Linux based OS.

5. Parrot-sec forensic os

It is an operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux mixed with Frozen box OS and Kali Linux to provide the best penetration and security testing experience for the attackers and security testers. It is an operating system for IT security and penetration testing developed by the Frozen box Dev Team.

6. Network Security Toolkit (NST)

The other best OS for security testing which comes in the form of Live CD and you can directly boot on your computer, and you can easily run this OS on your PC and do various hacks on your PC.

7. Arch Linux

Well, Arch Linux is a Linux distribution for computers based on IA-32 and x86-64 architectures. It is composed predominantly of free and open-source software and supports community involvement.

8. GnackTrack

After the release of backtrack 5. this OS is being developed and is now one of the best OS used for pen testing and network cracking, and it is based on a Linux distribution. Other than that, the operating system offers plenty of default apps like Opera, Firefox, Chromium, etc.

9. Bugtraq

Well, Bugtraq is a distribution based on GNU/Linux aimed at digital forensics, penetration testing, Malware Laboratories, and GSM Forensics and is one of the best choices of attackers. The operating system offers a wide range of tools like forensic tools, malware testing tools, audit tools, network tools, etc.

10. DEFT Linux

Digital Evidence and Forensic Toolkit (DEFT) is an open-source distro of Linux that is built around the Digital Advanced Response Toolkit (DART) software. Deft is Ubuntu customization. Computer forensics and incident response tools that DEFT Linux includes can be used by IT auditors, investigators, military, and police.

11. Knoppix STD

This operating system is actually a collection of hundreds if not thousands of open source security tools. This is a Live Linux distro, which means that it can run directly from a bootable CD. Ever tool provided by the Knoppix STD is divided into categories for easy understanding.

12. BlackArch Linux

This is another Linux based penetration testing distro for penetration testers and researchers. The latest version of BlackArch Linux has more than 1400 penetration testing tools.

13. Samurai Web Testing Framework

This is basically a live Linux environment that can be taken as a web-based pen-testing platform. The Samurai Web Testing Framework holds numerous free and open-source hacking tools that could be very useful for detecting vulnerabilities or loopholes in the website

14. Caine

It is a security-focused Linux distribution and it is based on Ubuntu. This distro can be run from the hard disk after installation. This is one of the best distros which you can use for ethical hacking. It offers a few useful tools for memory testing, network analysis, and forensics.

15. Fedora Security Spin

This Linux distro is run by a community of security researchers and developers. Lightweight Xfce Desktop Environment powers the distro. It features some essential tools for security research. You will find a lot of tools to test firewalls, analyze networks, and to crack passwords, etc.

16. Live Hacking OS

Well, this is one of the best Linux distribution which is loved by hackers. The Linux distro brings some excellent tools and utilities for ethical hacking, penetration testing, and countermeasure verification. It includes the graphical user interface GNOME inbuilt.

17. ArchStrike Linux

This is one of the best Linux distribution for hacking purposes. It’s a penetration testing & security layer on top of the famous Arch Strike Linux distro. The operating system follows the rules of Arch Linux, and it’s an Arch Linux repository for security professionals with tons of tools.

18. BackBox

Well, it is one of the best-operating systems which is widely used by hackers. The operating system is based on Ubuntu Linux, and it brings in a wide range of penetration testing tools. The Linux distribution could be excellent for those who are looking for more practical security research.

19. BlackBuntu

It is another best operating system that is widely used by hackers. Well, the operating system is based on the GNOME desktop environment. That means you could expect lots of tools specially designed for security research. Not just hackers, BlackBuntu is also one of the favorite operating systems for security training students.

20. Dracos Linux

Well, Dracos Linux is the last one on the list, and it’s one of the favorite operating systems of hackers. The operating system is widely used by hackers, and it’s based on Linux from scratch. Guess what? Dracos Linux is fast, reliable, and rich in features. Talking about the features, the operating system brings in lots of security testing tools.

Which is the best OS for cybersecurity?

All of the operating system listed in the article was meant for cybersecurity purposes only.

Best Linux Distro For Cyber Security?

There are plenty of Linux distro listed in the article. Our favorites were Parrot OS, BlackArch, and Knoppix STD.

Can I hack passwords?

It all depends on you how you utilize your skills. We don’t recommend password cracking for evil purposes.

So, above are the Best OS For Hackers. I hope this article helped you! Share it with your friends also. If you know any other such OS, let us know in the comment box below.

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How To Convert PowerPoint To Word? (PPT to Word)

While working professionally, lots of times, we need to convert PowerPoint files To Word file, but PowerPoint does not allow you to do it directly. If you are searching for how you can convert .PPT to .Doc, then this article is for you.

How To Convert PowerPoint To Word?

You can convert PowerPoint files To Word file in 2 different ways; we have shared both the way with step by step instructions, just follow the steps & you are done. In both ways, you first have to convert your PPT file to PDF; then you can convert it in Word File.

1. Convert PPT To Word Online

There are tons of online websites available out there that allows you easily convert your PowerPoint file to Word in just few click. Follow the below instructions.

Step 1: First of all go to https://smallpdf.com/ppt-to-pdf

Note: You can not convert directly from PPT to DOC. First, you have to convert your PPT into PDF then PDF to DOC.

Step 2: Click on choose file & select the PPT file that you want to convert in DOC.

Step 3: The conversion process will take some time, depending up your file size; after completing, you can download it just by clicking the Download button.

Step 4: After Downloading a PDF file, go to https://smallpdf.com/pdf-to-word.

Step5: Upload PDF file here, after converting Download the word file.

That’s how you can convert PPT to Word online; let’s understand how you can do it offline.

Must Read: How To Edit PDF Files For Free

2. Convert PPT To Word Offline

Step 1: Open the PPT in Powerpoint that you want to convert, click on the file menu.

Step 2: In the end, you will get an option as Export, click on that then click on Create PDF/XPS Document.

Step 3: From save as window, select the location where you want to save it, click on Publish.

Now you have successfully converted your PPT file to PDF.

You can directly open the PDF file in Word, then save it as Doc & you are done.

That’s how you can easily convert PowerPoint files To Word file; We hope this article is helpful for you, If the article is useful for you in any manner do share it on social media, Stay connected with us for future updates.

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15 Best Free Android Spy Apps in 2020 [Latest Apps]

Well, if we look around, we will find that Android is right now the most used mobile operating system. Compared to every other mobile operating system, Android provides users with far more features and customization options. Not just customizations, but the app availability is also quite high on Android mobile OS.

Just take a brief look at the Google Play Store, you will find apps and games for every different purpose over there. On techviral, we have shared lots of articles on Android apps like the best utility apps, best sound apps, etc. Today, we are going to cover another interesting topic of Android.

Today, we are going to share a list of best spy apps for Android that everyone would love to have on their smartphones. These apps serve for a great purpose and it can be used to track your other or kid’s smartphone. So, let’s explore the list of best Android spy apps 2019.

15 Best Free Android Spy Apps in 2020 [Latest Apps]

It’s worth noting that there are plenty of Android spy apps available on the Google Play Store, but mentioning all of them is not possible. So, in this article, we have listed the one that’s popular and used by many. So, let’s explore the list of best spy apps in 2020.

1. Spy Camera OS

Ever wanted to capture someone’s photo without knowing them? This app can help you in need. Spy Camera OS provides a smart way to capture photos with a hidden camera interface. No one would ever notice that you are capturing the pictures while they are operating your smartphone.

2. Ear Spy

This is an awesome app to record even low voices. You just need to place your phone in the other room and can listen to the voices of that room through your Bluetooth handset. This app actually records the sound and then amplifies its recording and give you the amplified clear voices.

3. Ip Cam Viewer

This awesome app allows to remotely view and control your IP Camera, DVR, Network Video Recorder, traffic cameras, CCTV or WebCam from an android device. In its new version, you can also get the notification on detecting motion on the device. This app can automatically start recording whenever it detects motion.

4. Automatic Call Recorder

This is another best Spy App that one can have on their Android smartphone. This app gets automatically launched whenever you make or receive any call. It records all the conversation b/w speakers and also the surrounding noise of the device in which it is installed.

5. Monitor Call Sms Location

This is another good spy app to remotely monitor SMS, Photo, Location, call logs, and many more things on an Android device. This will exact location of the targeted device through a web-portal even if GPS disabled on the target device. The app comes with the three-day free trial option.

6. Anti Spy Mobile

Don’t know whether you have installed any spyware software on your phone? Use this app to instantly find the spyware. The Android app uses advanced detection techniques to detect new spyware. So, with this app, you can easily protect yourself from Android spyware.

7. Hidden Eye

Ever wanted to know who tried snooping on your phone while you were away. Your friends or family member might have tried to unlock your phone. Hidden Eye is a simple app with no frills that will photograph the person when they try to unlock your phone.

8. AppLock

Applock is the most downloaded app lock in Play Store. Protect privacy with password, pattern, fingerprint lock. AppLock can lock Facebook, Whatsapp, Gallery, Messenger, SMS, Contacts, Gmail, Settings, incoming calls, and any app you choose. Prevent unauthorized access and guard privacy. Ensure security.

9. Truecaller: Caller ID & Dialer

It is the only dialer app you’ll ever need with the ability to identify unknown callers and block unwanted calls. See names and photos of people who call, even if they aren’t saved in your phonebook. And know when friends are free to talk, making your calling experience smarter and more delightful.

10. Cell Tracker

You can use the cell tracker Android app to keep track of the location of your smartphone. With the help of this app, you can track all the locations you have visited in the last few days with your Android phone. To check the locations visited you have to launch the app and click on “View Now”. No need to turn on the GPS.

11. Secret Calls

Ever wanted to hide call logs of specific contacts? This app can help you in doing it. The app lets you select a private contact. Once done, it automatically hides the incoming and ongoing calls of the selected contact. Another thing is that the app leaves no traces of its installation. That means, no one will know that you are using a standalone app to hide the call records.

12. Spy Camera

This is another Spy app on the list which provides one-touch to capture image feature. The app has lots of useful features. With the help of this app, you can find your lost phone because this app allows you to set up a number. When you lost your phone, just SMS to this phone, and it will take a picture and upload it to drive.

13. Whoscall – Caller ID

Whoscall, the best caller ID App that identifies unknown calls and blocks annoying spams, robocall & telemarketing with more than 50 million downloads and over 1 billion numbers data. It also got the call blocker that can be used to blacklist or whitelist contacts stored on your smartphone.

14. Norton Family parental control

Norton Family parental control is an Android app that is meant to keep kids safe online. However, this is nothing sort of a spy app. The app can help you to supervise the online activity. You can easily keep track of sites which your friend visit and what they search if you install Norton Family Parental control on their phone.

15. Smart Hide Calculator

The app doesn’t help users to spy on others. But, it can give you a detective type of feeling. A smart hide calculator is a fully functional calculator app but with a little twist. Once you enter the password and press the ‘=’ button, then boom you are presented to an interface where you can hide, unhide pictures, videos, documents, or files with any file extension.

16. Hidden Eye

Ever wanted to know who tried snooping into your phone while you were away. Your friends or family member might have tried to unlock your phone. Hidden Eye is a simple app with no frills that will photograph the person when they try to unlock your phone.

17. Background Video Recorder

This is another best Android spy app that helps users to record what’s happening behind them. Background Video Recorder is a camera app that records videos silently on the background. The app eliminates the camera shutter sounds, camera previews, and it can also record videos when the screen is off.

18. Kids Place

Kids Place is another best parental control app in the list, and its meant to protect your kids’ online activities. However, if you don’t have kids, you can use the app to track other devices. The app gives you full control over different devices, and you can control everything, including calls, text, internet browsing, apps, etc.

Which is the best-hidden spy apps for Android?

There are several types of spy apps listed in the article. Some apps like Spy Camera OS, Smart Calculator, Hidden Eye, etc work in the background.

Are these apps free to download?

Most of the apps listed in the article were free to download and use.

Are these apps safe to use?

All apps were available on the Google Play Store. That means these apps have gone through several security checkups. So, these are safe apps to use.

So these are the best Android Spy Apps that will convert your android into a spy device. I hope this article helped you! Share it with your friends also.

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Web sleuths spot British Museum gaffe online

The museum mistook a Turkish copyright notice for the name of a postcard-printing company.

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Extreme E teams will have one woman and one man driving

Extreme E teams will field one female and one male driver during races when the new climate aware racing series begins in 2021.

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Coronavirus: How does contact tracing work and is my data safe?

Millions in the UK will soon be asked to download an app that helps to limit coronavirus spreading.

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YouTube stars including Saffron Barker unite for lockdown livestream fundraiser

Jack Maynard, Lady Leshurr and Big Narstie are among the names raising cash for the NHS.

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Instagram ‘pods’ game the algorithm by coordinating likes and comments on millions of posts

Researchers at NYU have identified hundreds of groups of Instagram users, some with thousands of members, that systematically exchange likes and comments in order to game the service’s algorithms and boost visibility. In the process, they also trained machine learning agent to identify whether a post has been juiced in this way.

“Pods,” as they’ve been dubbed, straddle the line between real and fake engagement, making them tricky to detect or take action against. And while they used to be a niche threat (and still are compared with fake account and bot activity), the practice is growing in volume and efficacy.

Pods are easily found via searching online and some are open to the public. The most common venue for them is Telegram, since it’s more or less secure and has no limit to the number of people who can be in a channel. Posts linked in the pod are liked and commented on by others in the group, with the effect of those posts being far more likely to be spread widely by Instagram’s recommendation algorithms, boosting organic engagement.

Reciprocity as a service

The practice of groups mutually liking one another’s posts is called reciprocity abuse, and social networks are well aware of it, having removed setups of this type before. But the practice has never been studied or characterized in detail, the team from NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering explained.

“In the past they’ve probably been focused more on automated threats, like giving credentials to someone to use, or things done by bots,” said lead author of the study Megan Greenstadt. “We paid attention to this because it’s a growing problem, and it’s harder to take measures against.”

On a small scale it doesn’t sound too threatening, but the study found nearly 2 million posts that had been manipulated by this method, with more than 100,000 users taking part in pods. And that’s just the ones in English, found using publicly available data. The paper describing the research was published in the Proceedings of the World Wide Web Conference and can be read here.

Importantly, the reciprocal liking does more than inflate apparent engagement. Posts submitted to pods got large numbers of artificial likes and comments, yes, but that activity deceived Instagram’s algorithm into promoting them further, leading to much more engagement even on posts not submitted to the pod.

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When contacted for comment, Instagram initially said that this activity “violates our policies and we have numerous measures in place to stop it,” and said that the researchers had not collaborated with the company on the research.

In fact the team was in contact with Instagram’s abuse team from early on in the project, and it seems clear from the study that whatever measures are in place have not, at least in this context, had the desired effect. I pointed this out to the representative and will update this post if I hear back with any more information.

“It’s a grey area”

But don’t reach for the pitchforks just yet — the fact is this kind of activity is remarkably hard to detect, because really it’s identical in many ways to a group of friends or like-minded users engaging with each others’ content in exactly the way Instagram would like. And really, even classifying the behavior as abuse isn’t so simple.

“It’s a grey area, and I think people on Instagram think of it as a grey area,” said Greenstadt. “Where does it end? If you write an article and post it on social media and send it to friends, and they like it, and they sometimes do that for you, are you part of a pod? The issue here is not necessarily that people are doing this, but how the algorithm should treat this action, in terms of amplifying or not amplifying that content.”

Obviously if people are doing it systematically with thousands of users and even charging for access (as some groups do) that amounts to abuse. But drawing the line isn’t easy.

More important is that the line can’t be drawn unless you first define the behavior, which the researchers did by carefully inspecting the differences in patterns of likes and comments on pod-boosted and ordinary posts.

“They have different linguistic signatures,” explained co-author Janith Weerasinghe. “What words they use, the timing patterns.”

As you might expect, strangers obligated to comment on posts they don’t actually care about tend to use generic language, saying things like “nice pic” or “wow” rather than more personal remarks. Some groups actually warn against this, Weerasinghe said, but not many.

The list of top words used reads, predictably, like the comment section on any popular post, though perhaps that speaks to a more general lack of expressiveness on Instagram than anything else:

But statistical analysis of thousands of such posts, both pod-powered and normal, showed a distinctly higher prevalence of “generic support” comments, often showing up in a predictable pattern.

This data was used to train a machine learning model, which when set loose on posts it had never seen, was able to identify posts given the pod treatment with as high as 90 percent accuracy. This could help surface other pods — and make no mistake, this is only a small sample of what’s out there.

“We got a pretty good sample for the time period of the easily accessible, easily findable pods,” said Greenstadt. “The big part of the ecosystem that we’re missing is pods that are smaller but more lucrative, that have to have a certain presence on social media already to join. We’re not influencers, so we couldn’t really measure that.”

The numbers of pods and the posts they manipulate has grown steadily over the last two years. About 7,000 posts were found during March of 2017. A year later that number had jumped to nearly 55,000. March of 2019 saw over 100,000, and the number continued to increase through the end of the study’s data. It’s safe to say that pods are now posting over 4,000 times a day — and each one is getting a large amount of engagement, both artificial and organic. Pods now have 900 users on average, and some had over 10,000.

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You may be thinking: “If a handful of academics using publicly available APIs and Google could figure this out, why hasn’t Instagram?”

As mentioned before, it’s possible the teams there have simply not considered this to be a major threat and consequently have not created policies or tools to prevent it. Rules proscribing using a “third party app or service to generate fake likes, follows, or comments” arguably don’t apply to pods, since in many ways they’re identical to perfectly legitimate networks of users. And certainly the threat from fake accounts and bots is of a larger scale.

And while it’s possible that pods could be used as a venue for state-sponsored disinformation or other political purposes, the team didn’t notice anything happening along those lines (though they were not looking for it specifically). So for now the stakes are still relatively small.

That said, Instagram clearly has access to data that would help to define and detect this kind of behavior, and its policies and algorithms could be changed to accommodate it. No doubt the NYU researchers would love to help.

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