Is this the first time you’ve heard about SID? No worries. The video below will brief you on what it’s all about, focusing on this year’s theme“Play Your Part for a Better Internet”. More Than an Invitation, It’s a Challenge In 2015, Insafe, the organization behind the SID global campaign, came up with the slogan “Let’s Create a Better Internet Together”. Although the current and previous themes are essentially not that different, the former’s tone and scope have indeed changed from merely inviting, which anyone can easily turn down, to challenging and reminding Internet users that they can make a difference, no matter how small the effort. We think it is the perfect message that can drive one to respond with greater seriousness and vigilance in taking care of not just what we say online but how we, as privacy- and security- conscious citizens of the Web, should generally respond to the growing sophistication and prevalence of digital threats like exploits and ransomware against businesses and consumers of all ages. Threats in the UK: A Brief Review To help further foster this call for UK citizens to get involved in creating a better and safer online experience, let us refresh ourselves with a four-point list of worrying security findings from previous months that hit the news: •A report in mid-2015, our friends at Symantec named the United Kingdom as the most targeted and cyber-attacked nation in the whole of Europe, with a third of them targeting small- to medium-sized businesses. •The National Crime Agency (NCA) revealed that the UK lost £16 billion to cybercrime and cyber-enabled crimes. One of the main concerns of the organization is the rise of mobile malware due to the increasing number of apps being used for financial transactions. A rife market of users depending on the Internet to procure of goods and services online also proved to be attractive to online criminals. •Speaking of mobile, Ponemon surveyed hundreds of individuals in the UK and reported that majority of Brits would prefer losing their wallets than their smartphones—not because of the value of their device but what is found in it. In fact, they have assessed the data in their smartphones would cost around £6.5 thousand. Although they put great value and importance to their devices, 47 percent of those surveyed don’t think that having data protection features on phones are needed. •In November alone of 2015, the UK was attacked by 1,200 types of malware families. Topping the count were variants from the Kelihos Trojan, the Necurs backdoor, the Bedep Trojan, and the Conficker worm. To add more to the above, our telemetry data has showed that in last 12 months, a total of 154.5M malicious files and 138.2M potentially unwanted program (PUP) have been detected from machines based in the UK. Read More

Lenovo says it is changing its ways: The events of last week reinforce the principle that customer experience, security and privacy must be our top priorities. With this in mind, we will significantly reduce preloaded applications. Our goal is clear: To become the leader in providing cleaner, safer PCs. We are starting immediately, and by the time we launch our Windows 10 products, our standard image will only include the operating system and related software, software required to make hardware work well (for example, when we include unique hardware in our devices, like a 3D camera), security software and Lenovo applications. This should eliminate what our industry calls “adware” and “bloatware.” For some countries, certain applications customarily expected by users will also be included. Lenovo will post information about ALL software we preload on our PCs that clearly explains what each application does. And we will continuously solicit feedback from our user community and industry experts to ensure we have the right applications and best user experience. We view these actions as a starting point. We believe that these steps will make our technology better, safer and more secure. That's quite a turnaround, especially when you compare it to their original head-in-the-sand position of thinking people were just grumbling about the irritating adverts that Superfish-afflicted Lenovo computers were displaying, rather than the serious security and privacy issues the software introduced. If they're true to their word, and chuck out the adware and bloatware, and don't try to sneak it in under the umbrella of "certain applications customarily expected by users" then they are doing all of us a favour. In fact, I'd like to see other PC manufacturers take the same approach. Stop putting crapware on the PCs you're trying to sell. Let users make their own choices about what software they want to install, rather than you forcing software on them that takes up unnecessary disk space, hogs memory and invariably is only there to bring incremental revenue to the vendor. Lenovo, you better be telling us the truth. We'll be watching you.

Could you take the time to read and sign this E-Petition on safer Cycling.. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/41324 Thank you