7th June 2021 - What articles you need to be reading
Here are the articles that are making waves in digital and search that you should be aware of because they are going to be game changers
Software of Note?
Brave to launch privacy focused search engine
Brave the privacy focused browser has launched their own search engine Brave Search that seeks to catch the wave of privacy. Brave say their will also plan to offer API access which can be used to build other privacy first search engines in the future.
Google Products
Google breaks Android advertising IDs
Google is trying to catch up with Apple on the topic of user privacy by making it harder for Android apps to track users who have opted-out of receiving personalised ads. Once this happens later in 2021 Google will show developers a string of 00000 in place of the Advertising ID starting on Android 12. It will continue to expand to cover all apps that support Google Play in early 2022. If you are looking for best practice around unique identifiers including analytics tracking and fraud prevention it’s advised you read this developers guide.
Social Media
Will Cathcart + Mark Zuckerberg confirm new WhatsApp features
WhatsApp fan blog WABetaInfo recently had a chat with Will and Mark dropped by to add some more context of what features were coming to WhatsApp soon. Some of new features are:
multi-device support in a few months
view once for photos and video (like SnapChat?)
disappearing mode
Media + Tech
Negotiating with ransomware hackers?
Rachel at the New Yorker has written a very in-depth overview of what is the driving force behind ransomware covering the game of cat & mouse between businesses and criminal syndicates.
Norton antivirus enables cryptocurrency mining
NortonLifeLock announced the launch of Norton™ Crypto which is to apparently allow customers to safely mine Ethereum cryptocurrency through it’s Norton™360 platform. The feature will be enabled for all Norton™360 customers over the next several weeks but will be interesting to see what Norton’s cut of the mining might be.
Norton say they are doing this to stop users downloading random mining software tools which skim money and might be a source for ransomware, which are actually reasonable reasons. But it will be interesting to see if Norton pool can gain enough traction to make it a decent pool for miners.
Ecommerce
L’Oréal Canada saw 90% lift in ecom during the 2020 pandemic
L'Oréal Canada opens an expanded distribution center located in Saint-Laurent as part of Project PROGRESS that continues to invest in better meeting the changing needs of their Canadian business. The new expansion offers +57% storage capacity than they had previously.
Pinduoduo passes Alibaba as top shopping platform
The fresh produce giant Pinduoduo actively promotes that it connects 12 million Chinese farmers to 824 million Chinese consumers, bringing affordable groceries to all. The largest agricultural platform in China and possibly the world is app only and has used discounts for group buys which encouraged users to recruit their friends. Last year Pinduoduo introduced next-day pickup service Duo Duo Grocery to help farmers sell more produce directly to their consumers.
Security, Data + Privacy
iOS will ramps up exposing app data sharing
Apple is expanding it’s privacy report to cover what trackers Safari has prevented from following you across the web to also include apps. The new App Privacy Report shows the past 7 days of data (photos, contacts) and sensor access (microphone, location, camera) but also all the app and website activity. It also shows the most frequently contacted domains so you can see where your apps are sending your data….
Amazon launches own identifier for the post cookie world
Max Willens over at Digiday explores some of the rumours surrounding Amazon’s new publisher provided ID. Unlike a number of other publishers that have tried Amazon has the unique advantage of both reach across hundreds of millions of visitors but also full visibility on their transactions. Will this be the killer feature that will finally push Amazon’s DSP into becoming part of the standard media buying package?
Irish pizza chain Apache Pizza flags data breach
The largest pizza chain with over 169 stores confirmed that there was a data vulnerability of it’s customer data. No word on how this was discovered, was their customer information being sold or was it part of a broader security issue linked to the storage or processing of data.
“It includes the names, addresses, contact email and phone number of customers, the pizzas they ordered, their encrypted (hashed) password if they have an Apache Pizza account, and in a small number of cases, their date of birth in connection with birthday orders,”