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hofffuglsang60 · 19 days

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How To Run Microsoft Professional Service Ads +how They Compare To Google Native Services Ads

They each appear on the high of the SERP and the local map pack for relevant local searches and have a photograph, critiques, and the location of close by advertisers. However, advertisers will notice some main variations between Google’s Local Services ads and Microsoft’s Professional Service Ads. Best of all, Microsoft’s Professional Service Ads can show alongside your current search ads on the same SERP and compete in a special ad auction. Learn how advertisers can use them to save time and cut back price per acquisition. To get started, you’ll first have to create a knowledge feed for Microsoft’s Professional Service Ads. For individual practitioners, this could be a simple spreadsheet that you just upload as quickly as into Microsoft Advertising to get started. Once you’ve prepped your knowledge feeds, save them as a CSV, TSV, XLSX, or ZIP file and log in to your Microsoft Advertising account. Luckily, Microsoft Advertising has an ad type called Professional Service Ads to help advertisers promote their experience in their goal markets. We’re going to cowl everything you want to find out about this ad type in this article. To get began, Microsoft recommends using guide or enhanced CPC bidding and setting the bid between $3-5 CPC. microsoft ads agency should attraction to advertisers who need to spend less time building keyword lists. It would also give Microsoft Advertising the ability to adjust your bidding on keywords that are extra likely to full your objective. To assist advertisers stay on pace with automation and competition in a dynamic ad surroundings, Microsoft will no longer provide manual bidding for model new campaigns for the Microsoft Audience Network after April 24, 2023. As the system was phased in, MSN Search (now Bing) confirmed Yahoo! and adCenter promoting in its search results. Microsoft effort to create AdCenter was led by Tarek Najm, then general supervisor of the MSN division of Microsoft. In June 2006, the contract between Yahoo! and Microsoft had expired and Microsoft was displaying only ads from adCenter until 2010. Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) is an online advertising platform developed by Microsoft, the place advertisers bid to display brief ads, service offers, product listings and movies to web users. It supplies ppc promoting on search engines Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, in addition to on other web sites, mobile apps, and videos. Instead, advertisers can present important particulars about their services and enterprise on to Microsoft by way of a unique feed. This permits them to customize how their ads present, what job sorts they may help with, and get in contact with information for interested potential shoppers. Another replace to concentrate on is the deprecation of broad match modifier keywords for search ads. Microsoft’s Professional Services Ads are designed to be arrange quickly and simply. This means these new Professional Service Ads could permit you to serve multiple ads on the same SERP and enhance your visibility without growing your present search ads’ CPC. In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, related data for SEOs, entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs to optimize and develop their companies -- and careers. New options in Microsoft Advertising may assist advertisers adjust ad technique to ever-evolving shopper shopping habits. This is designed in an effort to improve workflow and total efficiency for ad managers with belongings across multiple campaigns and ad teams. For instance, somebody who searches for mobile might even see ads related to smartphones or cell phones. Microsoft Ads additionally supplies APIs that can be used to manage promoting campaigns. Enhanced CPC permits Microsoft Advertising to routinely regulate your bid based on the possibility it'll convert. The aim could be to optimize your ad spend in the course of the customers more than likely to transform. Over the last yr, Microsoft introduced vertical ad formats permitting advertisers in certain verticals to include the information consumers discover most helpful in ads. This spring, Microsoft announced the rollout of a number of options for Microsoft Advertising. Once microsoft ads agency is created and uploaded, making a Professional Service campaign is similar to your different Microsoft Advertising campaigns, with a number of notable quirks. Google’s Local Service Ads have a lot of attain and advertisers can freely management and update important parts of their ads, similar to their weekly price range or job type. But LSA advertisers lack a few of the freedom to optimize or replace their Local Service Ads like they would any other Google Ads marketing campaign. Google doesn’t show any search phrases from their Local Service Ads and doesn’t permit negative keywords either. Optimizations like bid adjustments and even daily budgets are additionally not obtainable for Local Service Ads.

#microsoft ads service #microsoft ads management company #microsoft ads agency #microsoft ads services

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simpsonpennington94 · 9 months

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Microsoft Commits To Eu's Digital Services Act Dsa For Transparency In Ads

We perceive that reaching the right audience is essential for the success of your promoting efforts. That’s why we leverage the superior focusing on choices offered by Microsoft Advertising to make sure that your ads are shown to the proper individuals, on the right time, and in the proper context. Microsoft Advertising, previously generally identified as Bing Ads, presents a powerful platform for companies to reach a vast and diverse audience. With the Microsoft Search Network, businesses can reach as much as 655 million month-to-month unique searchers online, an underestimated pool of untapped potential. microsoft ads services Microsoft has a status for recommending merchandise such as Bing and Edge via alerts or pop-ups in Windows. For occasion, a beforehand noticed pop-up in the handle bar of the Edge browser reminded customers that Microsoft's browser adopts the same tech as Google, however with the added trust of Microsoft. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is a regulation in EU law that aims to update the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000 relating to illegal content material, transparent promoting, and disinformation. If you aren't already profiting from the Microsoft Advertising alternatives, then get in contact with us right now and we’ll show you how one can grow your business utilizing this platform. As you can see, while it will not be Google’s billion-strong audience, Microsoft Advertising nonetheless has a significant attain, allowing you to connect with clients you would possibly have in any other case ignored. Microsoft Advertising is a latest rebranding of Bing Ads, with the name change occurring in the spring of 2019. An earlier report by Windows Latest's Mayank Parmar indicated that Microsoft is aggressively promoting Bing on Chrome. If you’re trying to learn the way we will provide consistent and sustainable progress for your business, get in contact with our pleasant group at present. We’ve obtained a real interest in studying about different businesses like yours, and exploring what objectives you wish to achieve and why. July continues the pattern of speedy change within the digital advertising world, fueled by volatility on Google... To build model consciousness and to extend gross sales we created a variety of cross-channel ad campaigns which delivered a 61% ROI for Saints. In truth, we needed to halt considered one of our campaigns due to success being so excessive that that they had hit capacity. Desktop search market, which implies that roughly one in five individuals are utilizing Bing, Yahoo, or AOL over Google. Worldwide, that accounts for 44 million desktop searchers that you wouldn't have reached should you neglected Microsoft Advertising. The advert highlighted numerous benefits of utilizing Bing, together with Microsoft Rewards and AI chats. Additionally, with Microsoft Audience Network, you'll have the ability to reach audiences across premium websites, apps, and experiences which are unique to Microsoft, corresponding to MSN, Outlook.com, and Microsoft Edge. Microsoft Advertising offers access to a novel and various audience by way of its default search engine standing for Microsoft Edge, the default web browser for Windows gadgets. This will allow you to reach tens of millions of customers worldwide who may not be as accessible through different promoting platforms. While Google is undoubtedly a powerhouse within the internet marketing area, it’s important to contemplate the benefits of diversifying your advertising efforts throughout a number of platforms.

#microsoft ads services #microsoft ads agency

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kraghfog39 · 9 months

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Develop Your Business With Microsoft Ads

Our skilled PPC managers have a minimal of 3+ years of experience operating high-converting campaigns. The Upgrow group has been a valuable extension of the SingleStore advertising group. They have helped us scale our demand technology by way of well executed digital advertising campaigns, providing precisely the staffing we have wanted to meet our growth goals. Are you able to unlock the full potential of your ad spend with an experienced Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) agency? There’s no minimal finances for running a marketing campaign on Microsoft Advertising. Most firms have to spend £500-£800 per 30 days to get any results although. Monthly budgets can reach the tens or tons of of 1000's for larger companies. Most brands build great merchandise solely to fail in reaching their perfect prospects. Upgrow makes use of full-stack advertising to generate consistent, certified visitors who purchase. microsoft ads services This means we're recognised for our high stage of competency in serving to our customers exceed their goals. This ensures our PPC specialists are always up to speed with the latest platform developments in Bing ppc management. This timeline permits us to offer you the necessary assist and steerage to make certain that your launch is successful. We perceive that time is of the essence, and as a premier Bing Ads agency, we’re dedicated to delivering top-notch service to get you up and working promptly. Our full-service Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads) administration is often priced at either $3,000 per 30 days or 12% of your ad spend, whichever is larger. Microsoft has premium properties folks have interaction with daily throughout work and life. By tapping into the ability of their viewers community prospects can dramatically broaden their attain and enhance performance. If, after the first 60 days, you’re not happy along with your outcomes, let us know. Send us a written discover and you’ll receive a full refund of all paid monthly agency charges. We provides you with options once we know what you want, how many channels you have and the way aggressive your targets are. It is inconceivable to say without a review and discussion of your marketing and wider business goals, however 9 instances out of 10 you will note a significant enchancment in your efficiency. Outlook has 200 million distinctive month-to-month guests, MSAN has 500 million unique monthly guests and Microsoft additionally has a lot of publishing partners.

#microsoft ads services #microsoft ads agency

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Convicted monopolist prevented from re-offending

This Sunday (Apr 30) at 2PM, I’ll be at the San Francisco Public Library with my new book, Red Team Blues, hosted by Annalee Newitz.

In blocking Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, the UK Competition and Markets Authority has made history: they have stepped in to prevent a notorious, convicted monopolist from seizing control over a nascent, important market (cloud gaming), ignoring the transparent, self-serving lies Microsoft told about the merger:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/644939aa529eda000c3b0525/Microsoft_Activision_Final_Report_.pdf

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/27/convicted-monopolist/#microsquish

Cloud gaming isn’t really a thing right now, but it might be. That was Microsoft’s bet, anyway, as it plonked down $69b to acquire Activision-Blizzard — a company that shouldn’t exist, having been formed out of a string of grossly anticompetitive mergers that were waved through.

Activision-Blizzard is a poster-child for the failures of antitrust law over the past 40 years, a period in which monopolies were tolerated and even encouraged by the agencies that were supposed to prevent monopolies from forming and break up the ones that slipped past their defenses. Activision-Blizzard is a giant, moribund company whose “innovation” consists of endless sequels to its endless sequels, whose market power allows it to crush its workers while starving competitors of market oxygen, ensuring that gamers and game workers have nowhere else to go.

Microsoft is another one of those poster-children, of course. After being convicted of antitrust violations, the company dragged out the legal process until George W Bush stole the presidency and decided not to pursue them any further, letting them wriggle off the hook.

The antitrust rough ride tamed Microsoft…for a while. The company did not use the same dirty tricks to destroy, say, Google as it had used against Netscape. But in the years since, Microsoft has demonstrated that it regrets nothing about its illegal conduct and has no hesitations about repeating that conduct.

This is especially true of cloud computing, where Microsoft is using exclusivity deals and illegal “tying” (forcing customers to use a product they don’t want in order to use a product they desire) to lock customers into its cloud offering:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-says-microsofts-cloud-practices-anti-competitive-slams-deals-with-rivals-2023-03-30/

Locking customers into Microsoft’s cloud also means locking customers into Microsoft surveillance. Microsoft’s cloud products spy in ways that are extreme even by the industry’s very low standards. Office 365 isn’t just a version of Office that you never stop paying for — it’s a version of Office that never stops spying on you, and selling the data to your competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Microsoft’s Activision acquisition was entirely cloud-driven. The company clearly believes the pundits who say that the future of gaming is in the cloud: rather than playing on a device with the power to handle all the fancy graphics and physics, you’ll use a low-powered device that streams you video from a server in the cloud that’s doing all the heavy lifting.

If cloud gaming comes true (a big if, considering the dismal state of broadband, another sector that’s been enshittified and starved by monopolists), then Microsoft owning the Xbox platform, the Windows OS, and the Game Pass subscription service already poses a huge risk that the company could grow to dominate the sector. Throw in Activision-Blizzard and the future starts to look very grim indeed.

It’s a nakedly anticompetitive merger. As Mark Zuckerberg unwisely wrote in an internal memo, “it is better to buy than to compete.”

(These guys can not stop incriminating themselves. FTX got mocked for its group-chat called “Wirefraud,” but come on, every tech baron has a folder on their desktop called “mens rea” full of files with names like “premeditation-11.docx.”)

Naturally, the FTC sued to stop the merger (after 40 years, the FTC has undergone a revolution under chair Lina Khan and is actually protecting the American people from monopoly):

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake97g/ftc-sues-to-block-microsoft-acquisition-of-call-of-duty-publisher-activision-blizzard

The FTC was always in for an uphill battle. “Cloud gaming,” the market it is seeking to defend from monopolization, doesn’t really exist yet, and enforcing US antitrust law against monopolies over existent things is hard enough, thanks to all those federal judges who attended luxury junkets where billionaire-friendly “economists” taught them that monopolies were “efficient”:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

But the FTC isn’t the only cop on the beat. Antitrust is experiencing a global revival, from the EU to China, Canada to Australia, and South Korea to the UK, where the Competition and Markets Authority is kicking all kinds of arse (see also: “ass”). The CMA is arguably the most technically proficient competition regulator in the world, thanks to the Digital Markets Unit (DMU), a force of over 50 skilled engineers who produce intensely detailed, amazingly sharp reports on how tech monopolies work and what to do about them.

The CMA is very interested in cloud gaming. Late last year, they released a long, detailed report into the state of browser engines on mobile phones, seeking public comment on whether these should be regulated to encourage web-apps (which can be installed without going through an app store) and to pave the way for cloud gaming:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

The CMA is especially keen on collaboration with its overseas colleagues. Its annual conference welcome enforcers from all over the world, and its Digital Markets Unit is particularly important in these joint operations. You see, while Parliament appropriated funds to pay those 50+ engineers, it never passed the secondary legislation needed to grant the DMU any enforcement powers. But the DMU isn’t just sitting around waiting for Parliament to act — rather, it produces these incredible investigations and enforcement roadmaps, and releases them publicly.

This turns out to be very important in the EU, where the European Commission has very broad enforcement powers, but very little technical staff. The Commission and the DMU have become something of a joint venture, with the DMU setting up the cases and the EU knocking them down. It’s a very heartwarming post-Brexit story of cross-Channel collaboration!

And so Microsoft’s acquisition is dead (I mean, they say they’ll appeal, but that’ll take months, and the deal with Activision will have expired in the meantime, and Microsoft will have to pay Activision a $3 billion break-up fee):

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-tech-blocked-microsoft-stopped

This is good news for gaming, for games workers, and for gamers. Microsoft was and is a rotten company, even by the low standards of tech giants. Despite the sweaters and the charity (or, rather, “charity”) Bill Gates is a hardcore ideologue who wants to get rid of public education and all other public goods:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation

Microsoft has a knack for nurturing and promoting absolutely terrible people, like former CEO Steve Ballmer, who has played a starring role in Propublica’s IRS Files, thanks to the bizarre tax-scams he’s pioneered:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

So yeah, this is good news: Microsoft should have been broken up 25 years ago, and we should not allow it to buy its way to ongoing dominance today. But it’s also good news because of the nature of the enforcement: the CMA defended an emerging market, to prevent monopolization.

That’s really important: monopolies are durable. Once a monopoly takes root, it becomes too big to fail and too big to jail. That’s how IBM outspend the entire Department of Justice Antitrust Division every year for twelve years during a period they call “Antitrust’s Vietnam”:

https://onezero.medium.com/jam-to-day-46b74d5b1da4

Preventing monopoly formation is infinitely preferable to breaking up monopolies after they form. That’s why the golden age of trustbusting (basically, the period starting with FDR and ending with Reagan) saw action against “incipient” monopolies, where big companies bought lots of little companies.

When we stopped worrying about incipiency, we set the stage for today’s Private Equity “rollups,” where every funeral home, or veterinarian, or dentists’ practice is bought out by a giant PE fund, who ruthlessly enshittify it, slashing wages, raising prices, stiffing suppliers and reducing quality:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

Limiting antitrust enforcement to policing monopolies after they form has been an absolute failure. The CMA knows that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure — indeed, we all do.

From Apr 26–28, Barnes and Noble is offering a 25% discount on preorders for my upcoming novels (use discount code PREORDER25): The Lost Cause (Nov 2023) and The Bezzle (Red Team Blues #2) (Feb 2024).

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A promotional image from the Call of Duty franchise featuring a soldier in a skull-mask gaiter giving a thumbs up on a battlefield. It has been altered so that he is giving a thumbs-down gesture. Superimposed on the image is a modified Microsoft 'Clippy' popup; Clippy's speech-bubble has been filled with grawlix characters; the two dialog-box options both read 'No.']

Image: Microsoft, Activision (fair use)

#pluralistic #labor #digital markets unit #gaming #brexit #cma #competition and markets authority #antitrust #monopoly #incipiency #microsoft #activision #blizzard #activision-blizzard #cloud gaming #cloud #mergers

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blazing-dynamo · 2 months

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How does one format epubs? I have a lot of free time and love formatting, I'd love contributing to the effort of fixing all the doctor who epubs!

It’s complicated, but doable.

First, it depends on the style of PDF. There are some that are crisp scans of every page, scanned by the Camels, (btw the camels if you’re still around you’re a real one.) and for those, I open them in Microsoft Word, because word is like 80% good at converting it, where other PDF eaters suck.

From there, I check out some common problems:

1. Footers: just remove them all. They don’t help in ePub land

2. Headings: for consistency, I change all the Headings to Agency FB, because it’s included in windows and matches the vibe of the headings in the book

3. Chapter Breaks: I turn on the “View Whitespace” mode, and delete everywhere that says section break, and then make sure there’s a page break at the end of every chapter, after the title page, foreword, etc. I also add “Chapter X” on the line before the title of the chapter. The EDAs are not consistent in how they handle chapter titles and I crave consistency so I add it.

4. Table of Contents. Word is Too Powerful™️ and recognizes the table of contents and imports it as a smart, clickable ToC, which, again, we don’t need. You can’t really edit it or anything so I just delete it, and type up a new one, leaving off the page numbers because we won’t need them in epic land.

5. Formatting. This is the bulk of the issue. I use word WildCards, which are similar to RegEx, to find all cases of a lowercase letter or comma followed by a paragraph mark, and replace it with the same character followed by a space. Then I also look for instances of a paragraph mark followed by a lower case letter, and replace it with space plus the letter. Then I replace all Tab characters with a space. Then I look for paragraph marks followed by a space and replace them with just a paragraph mark. This gets like 94% of the bad formatting that the Calibre/kindle/etc auto ePub conversion makes reading insufferable. I try to catch as many of the rest while doing the remaining steps.

6. Formatting cont’d: then, I change the Normal style to be 12pt Garamond. This isn’t important because this is ultimately up to the reader’s chosen font in their eReader, and I don’t embed Garamond, but putting it in Garamond makes it easier for me to notice when something is wrong because I’m used to seeing Garamond while making these.

Then, I use Find/Replace to add a highlight to everything that has the same indent as the Normal style, so I can then see everything weird because it won’t be highlighted. I then scrub through the book and set the problem paragraphs to the Normal style, which then Corrects the indents. I make sure when I do this to watch for italics and make sure that the style didn’t revert them to normal. This happens on short paragraphs with one or two words, and one of which is italicized, as well as paragraphs where the entire thing is italicized.

I also in this step scrub through to find mid-chapter breaks, the favorite storytelling device of the EDAs, and make them uniform. Word will make it into various levels of after-paragraph spacing, but I set the paragraph to normal, and then just leave two empty paragraphs between the sections. This tends to import the best across devices and fonts.

Finally, I make sure that after each chapter and chapter break, the first paragraph isn’t indented, to match the style of the print EDAs.

7. Still formatting, but different. I then do a scrub through and make sure I didn’t screw anything up or forget something. The problem with RegEx is that it will do exactly what you tell it to, even if that’s not what you wanted to happen. So oftentimes my table of contents or copyright page is borked, and I have to go fix it. Once I have it in a decent shape, I

8. Import into Calibre. Just drag and drop the DocX into Calibre and it’ll get added as a book. I then use the metadata editor to download the metadata from the web, so it’ll have good info on it. None of the online sources regocnize this as a series, though, so I add it myself.

9. Convert to ePub: in the Calibre library list I right click the book and convert it to ePub, default settings. DocX->ePub conversion is really simple because they are both just HTML pages under the hood, so it imports perfectly.

10. (Bonus steps) once an ePub, I press T to edit the book, and import Agency FB and Agency FB Bold, and then press the Table of Contents button, to select where the in-reader chapter list points to. And then I use just hyperlinks to make the in-book ToC clickable to take it to the same place.

The uglier, hand-typed PDFs are basically the same, but then I also have to do a bunch of spell check to catch all the typos. And then those don’t have italics at all, so depending on the book, and if I have a copy of it physically, I scan the physical book with my eyeballs to catch italics and add them back to the DocX. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the baffling choice to just remove them completely.

I know from importing the PDFs a long time ago there’s another person who scanned/typed the books, but I haven’t seen the state of them to know if they’ll need extra TLC.

It’s kind of a whole lot! But also if I get a The Camels PDF I can knock it out in about an hour.

If you wanted to take a crack at it, by all means! Though I really need a proofer, so if you wanted to just start reading and use the form links I have in the folders to report the issues you find, that would be wonderful. Bonus points, you get to read the EDAs lol.

#dw #doctor who edas #eighth doctor #eighth doctor adventures #EDAs #ebook #epub

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mariacallous · 4 months

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An indictment from the US Department of Justice may have solved the mystery of how disgraced cryptocurrency exchange FTX lost over $400 million in crypto. The indictment, filed last week, alleges that three individuals used a SIM-swapping attack to steal hundreds of millions in virtual currency from an unnamed company. The timing and the amount stolen coincides with FTX's theft. Meanwhile, in a letter obtained by WIRED this week, seven lawmakers have demanded the DOJ stop funding biased and inaccurate predictive policing tools until the agency has a way to ensure law enforcement won’t use them in a way that has a “discriminatory impact.”

In Florida, prosecutors say a 17-year-old named Alan Winston Filion is responsible for hundreds of swatting attacks around the United States. The news of his arrest was first reported by WIRED days before law enforcement made it public. It was the culmination of a multi-agency manhunt to piece together a trail of digital breadcrumbs left by the teenager. In Ukraine, unmanned aerial vehicles have been powerful tools since the Russian invasion began in February 2022. But as the war rages on, another kind of unmanned robot has increasingly appeared on the front-lines: the unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV.

For months lawyers affiliated with an India based hacker-for-hire firm called Appin Technology have used legal threats to censor reporting about the company’s alleged cyber mercenary past. The EFF, Techdirt, MuckRock, and DDoSecrets are now pushing back, publicly sharing details for the first time about the firm's efforts to remove content from the web. It’s a dangerous world out there, so we’ve also got a list of some major patches issued in January that you can use to update your devices to keep them secure.

And there’s more. Each week, we highlight the news we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

China’s Hackers Keep Targeting US Water and Electricity Supplies

For years Western security officials have warned about the threat of China collecting data about millions of people and the country’s hackers infiltrating sensitive systems. This week, Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray said hackers affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party are constantly targeting US critical infrastructure, such as water treatment plants, the electrical grid, and oil and gas pipelines. Wray’s testimony, at a House subcommittee on China, came as the FBI also revealed it removed malware from hundreds of routers in people’s homes and offices that had been planted by the Chinese hacking group Volt Typhoon.

“China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities,” Wray said in the public appearance. “Low blows against civilians are part of China’s plan.” The FBI director added that China has a bigger hacking operation than “every other major nation combined,” and claimed that if all of the FBI’s cyber-focused agents were assigned to work on issues related to China, they would still be outnumbered “by at least 50 to 1.”

While concerns about the scale of China’s espionage and cyber operations aren’t new, the US intelligence community has been increasingly vocal and worried about critical infrastructure being targeted by Volt Typhoon and other groups. “The threat is extremely sophisticated and pervasive,” NSA officials warned in November. In May 2023, Microsoft revealed it had been tracking Volt Typhoon intrusions at communications and transportation infrastructure, among other critical infrastructure, in US states and Guam.

The FBI and DOJ, also revealed this week that they remotely removed the KV Botnet malware from hundreds of routers infected by Volt Typhoon. The impacted routers, from Cisco and Netgear, were mostly at the end of their life, but were being used as part of wider operations. “The Volt Typhoon malware enabled China to hide, among other things, pre-operational reconnaissance and network exploitation against critical infrastructure like our communications, energy, transportation, and water sectors,” Wray said. It isn’t the first time US officials have obtained a court order to remotely wipe devices infected by hackers, but the move is still rare.

‘Untraceable’ Monero Transactions Have Been Traced, Police Claim

Since the first cryptocurrencies emerged more than a decade ago, there has been the assumption that the blockchain-based digital currencies are anonymous and untraceable. They are, in fact, very traceable. Researchers have shown how people can be linked to the transactions they make and law enforcement have used the techniques to help bust illicit dark web markets and catch pedophiles. There are, however, still some privacy-focused cryptocurrencies that appear to be less traceable than Bitcoin. This includes Monero, which is increasingly being adopted by sellers of child sexual abuse materials.

This week investigators in Finland said Moreno-tracing helped reveal the identity of a hacker who allegedly attacked psychotherapy company Vastaamo in 2020, stealing thousands of patient records and threatening to leak them unless people paid a ransom. Investigators from the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation claim they used heuristic analysis to infer where funds were moved to. The investigators did not reveal the full methods of how they allegedly traced the Monero payments, however, they add to the growing body of evidence that cryptocurrency tracing firms and investigators may be able to track the currency.

Russia Likely Behind a Spike in GPS Interference, Officials Say

Planes flying over Europe have faced a spike in accuracy issues with GPS systems used for navigation in recent months. The head of Estonia’s Defense Forces has claimed that Russia is likely the source of this interference, according to an interview with Bloomberg. “Someone is causing it, and we think it’s Russia,” Martin Herem told the publication, adding that Russia may be testing its electronic warfare capabilities and “learning” the most effective tactics. Across Europe, and particularly the Baltics region, there has been a reported increase in GPS jamming, with Finland reporting large interferences in December and pilots repeatedly reporting issues with their navigation systems.

Vault 7 Hacking Tools Leaker Joshua Schulte Sentenced to 40 Years

In 2017, the Vault 7 leaks exposed some of the CIA’s most sophisticated hacking tools, including how the agency could compromise routers, phones, PC, and TVs. Joshua Schulte, a former CIA engineer in the agency’s Operations Support Branch who prosecutors identified as being behind the data breach and responsible for leaking the materials to Wikileaks, was convicted in numerous trials in recent years. Schulte, who denied the allegations, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for the espionage and also for possessing thousands of child abuse images. Judge Jesse Furman, sentencing Schulte, said he had caused “untold damage to national security.” In June 2022, The New Yorker published this comprehensive investigation into the data breach and Schulte’s troubled history working at the agency.

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leeanndicicco · 5 months

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Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

Google may be forced to sell part of its ad business after being charged with violating the European Union’s antitrust laws. Following a lengthy investigation, the European Commission suggested that “mandatory divestment” is the only way the search engine can resolve the issue.

Why we care: If Google does sell part of its ad business, it could mark the start of a new digital marketing era with a more competitive market and fairer pricing. This could potentially lead to more transparency, greater campaign control for advertisers and increased innovation, which could prompt the creation of new ad tools.

What’s happening: The European Commission conducted a report into the operation of Google Ads and found that the search engine typically tends to favor its own ads, causing difficulties for competing providers.

When discussing potential solutions, the commission said that behavioral improvements would not be enough to rectify the matter. Instead, it has recommended that the search giant sells off part of its business.

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

“The Statement of Objections from the European Commission sets out claims that are not new and relate to a narrow part of our advertising business. It fails to recognize how advanced advertising technology helps merchants reach customers and grow their businesses — while lowering costs and expanding choices for consumers.

“Ad tech is fiercely competitive and constantly evolving. We compete with hundreds of companies in this space, including household names like Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta as well as specialized advertising technology companies like Criteo, The Trade Desk, and many others. Even media companies and retailers now offer competing advertising technologies.

“The digital advertising market enjoys competitive pricing, lively innovation, and robust competition — helping advertisers, publishers, and consumers. We look forward to showing how our ad tech tools help make the internet open, and accessible — and how breaking them would diminish the availability of free, ad-supported content that benefits everyone.”

Has this happened before? Earlier this year, nine U.S. states (Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia), joined forces to bring a similar lawsuit against Google.

The states accused the search engine’s ad business of violating antitrust regulations. To rectify the matter, they urged Google to break up its Ad Manager suite, claiming it was exploiting its online advertising dominance. Google denied the claims and asked for the case to be dismissed.

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

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New on Search Engine Land

<![CDATA[ @media screen and (min-width: 800px) #div-gpt-ad-3191538-7 display: flex !important; justify-content: center !important; align-items: center !important; min-width:770px; min-height:260px; @media screen and (min-width: 1279px) #div-gpt-ad-3191538-7 display: flex !important; justify-content: center !important; align-items: center !important; min-width:800px!important; min-height:440px!important; ]]>

About the author

Nicola Agius is Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land after joining in 2023. She covers paid search, paid social, retail media and more. Prior to this, she was SEO Director at Jungle Creations (2020-2023), overseeing the company’s editorial strategy for multiple websites. She has over 15 years of experience in journalism and has previously worked at OK! Magazine (2010-2014), Mail Online (2014-2015), Mirror (2015-2017), Digital Spy (2017-2018) and The Sun (2018-2020). She also previously teamed up with SEO agency Blue Array to co-author Amazon bestselling book ‘Mastering In-House SEO’.

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#seo

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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The Federal Election Commission has tossed out claims by the Republican National Committee that Google’s spam filters in Gmail are illegally biased against conservatives, according to an agency letter obtained by CNN.

The decision resolves a joint FEC complaint filed last year spearheaded by the RNC that alleged Gmail’s automated filters had sent Republican fundraising emails to spam at a higher rate than for Democratic candidates during the 2020 election cycle. The RNC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FEC decision to dismiss the complaint and close the case is the latest defeat for Republicans who have sought on multiple occasions to bring the agency’s powers to bear against tech platforms over allegations of anti-conservative bias. In 2021, the FEC dismissed a similar RNC claim against Twitter over the company’s decision to temporarily suppress the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop, saying the content moderation decision appeared to have been made “for a valid commercial reason.”

The FEC took the same stance on the Gmail filtering issue in a letter to Google last week, and which the company provided to CNN on Wednesday.

In the Jan. 11 letter, the FEC said its review “found no reason to believe that [Google] made prohibited in-kind corporate contributions” to Democrats in the form of more favorable email filtering treatment.

In order to be considered a violation, the FEC wrote, “a contribution must be made for the purpose of influencing an election for federal office,” adding that Google’s public statements have made clear its spam filtering exists “for commercial, rather than electoral, purposes.”

Even if it were true that Gmail spam filtering happened to favor Democratic campaigns over Republican ones, the FEC wrote — an allegation the commission neither explicitly endorsed nor rejected — that outcome would not necessarily make Gmail’s underlying conduct an illegal campaign contribution.

In its letter, the FEC cited Google’s public statements claiming that its reasons for spam filtering include blocking malware, phishing attacks and scams.

“In sum, Google has credibly supported its claim that its spam filter is in place for commercial reasons and thus did not constitute a contribution within the meaning of the [Federal Election Campaign Act],” it wrote.

Documents related to the case will be made available to the public by Feb. 10, according to the letter.

“The Commission’s bipartisan decision to dismiss this complaint reaffirms that Gmail does not filter emails for political purposes,” said José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson. “We’ll continue to invest in our Gmail industry-leading spam filters because, as the FEC notes, they’re important to protecting people’s inboxes from receiving unwanted, unsolicited, or dangerous messages.”

While the FEC did not weigh in directly on Gmail’s practices, the letter highlighted the limitations and context surrounding a 2022 academic study that the RNC had leaned heavily upon in its initial complaint.

The study by North Carolina State University researchers had involved an experiment testing the spam filters of Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo! Mail. Its findings suggested that of the three email providers, Gmail was the likeliest to mark emails from Republican campaigns as spam.

The RNC had cited the study’s findings as evidence of “illegal, corporate in-kind contributions” to Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden, and called for an FEC investigation.

But the FEC’s letter cited several factors that cast doubt on the RNC’s interpretation of the research, including the study’s own statements of limitations and a Washington Post interview with one of the study’s lead authors, who had said Republicans were “mischaracterizing” the paper.

The study itself acknowledged that it covered a short period of time, and that its findings could have been affected by campaigns’ own tactical decision-making as well as other variables the study did not account for, the FEC wrote, adding that in its response to the RNC allegations Google had said the researchers used a sample of 34 email addresses “when Gmail has 1.5 billion users.”

“Though the NCSU Study appears to demonstrate a disparate impact from Google’s spam filter, it explicitly states that its authors have ‘no reason to believe that there were deliberate attempts from these email services to create these biases to influence the voters,’” the FEC added.

Meanwhile, a separate RNC lawsuit against Google over the same Gmail filtering issue is still ongoing. And Google has continued with an FEC-approved pilot project that allows political campaigns to bypass Gmail’s spam filters. More than 100 political entities are participating in that program, a Google spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday.

#us politics #news #cnn #cnn business #conservatives #republicans #gop #republican national committee #Federal Election Commission #google #spam filter #gmail #campaign emails #Federal Election Campaign Act #José Castañeda #North Carolina State University #the washington post #bias #2023

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patsmarketing · 7 months

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PPC Management Tips for Small Businesses

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be an effective way for small businesses to reach their target audience and drive online traffic and conversions. Here are some PPC management tips tailored for small businesses:

Set Clear Goals: Define your PPC goals. Are you looking to increase website traffic, generate leads, boost sales, or raise brand awareness? Having clear objectives will help you create targeted campaigns.

Know Your Budget: Small businesses often have limited budgets, so it's crucial to allocate your budget wisely. Start small and gradually increase your spending as you see positive ROI.

Choose the Right Platform: Select the PPC platform that aligns with your target audience and goals. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Microsoft Advertising are popular choices. Each platform has its own strengths and user base.

Keyword Research: Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant keywords for your business. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to find keywords with low competition and reasonable search volume.

Ad Copy and Landing Pages: Craft compelling ad copy that's relevant to your keywords and appealing to your target audience. Ensure that your landing pages match the ad's message and provide a seamless user experience.

Negative Keywords: Use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant traffic and save money. This is especially important for small budgets where every click counts.

Geographic Targeting: Use geographic targeting to focus your ads on the regions where your target customers are located. This can help you avoid wasting budget on irrelevant clicks.

Ad Scheduling: Schedule your ads to run during the times when your audience is most active and likely to convert. This can optimize your budget and increase conversion rates.

Ad Extensions: Utilize ad extensions to provide more information and encourage clicks. Extensions like site link, callout, and structured snippet extensions can enhance your ad's visibility and relevance.

Monitor and Optimize: Regularly review your PPC campaigns and make data-driven optimizations. Adjust keywords, ad copy, and bidding strategies based on performance. A/B testing can help you identify what works best.

Quality Score: Pay attention to your Quality Score on platforms like Google Ads. It can affect your ad's position and cost per click. A higher Quality Score can help you achieve better results with a smaller budget.

Use Remarketing: Implement remarketing campaigns to re-engage visitors who have previously interacted with your website. These audiences are often more likely to convert.

Keep an Eye on Competitors: Monitor your competitors' PPC efforts and adjust your strategies accordingly. Look for opportunities where you can outperform them.

Seek Professional Help: If you're not experienced in PPC management, consider working with a professional or agency. They can help you make the most of your budget and avoid costly mistakes.

Track Conversions: Implement conversion tracking to measure the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns. Understand which keywords and ads lead to conversions and focus your budget on those.

Remember that successful PPC management requires ongoing attention and adjustment. Small businesses can compete effectively in the PPC space with a well-thought-out strategy and a commitment to continuous improvement.

For more details visit https://www.patsmarketing.ca/.

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yungmalta · 8 months

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Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#seo #digital marketing #search engine optimize

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txshelby · 8 months

Text

Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#search engine optimization #seo agency

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n-orway · 9 months

Text

Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#seo agency #digital marketing #digital marketing agency

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meer-kat · 9 months

Text

Google Ad business faces breakup after being charged with EU antitrust violations

What has Google said? Google released a statement today criticizing the commission’s findings. Dan Taylor, Vice President of Google Ads, wrote:

In 2020, Google was also accused of breaching antitrust laws again in order to sustain its position as the leading search engine. This case is set for trial in September.

Deeper dive: You can read Google’s full response to the European Commission announcement about its advertising technology.

Add Search Engine Land to your Google News feed.

Related stories

New on Search Engine Land

About the author

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/jedi-digital-marketing/social-media-management

#digital marketing #digital marketing agency #seo agency

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ivan-fyodorovich-k · 1 year

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But many of the experts I spoke with were skeptical of how much AI will progress from its current abilities, and they were adamant that it need not advance at all to hurt people—indeed, many applications already do. The divide, then, is not over whether AI is harmful, but which harm is most concerning—a future AI cataclysm only its architects are warning about and claim they can uniquely avert, or a more quotidian violence that governments, researchers, and the public have long been living through and fighting against—as well as who is at risk and how best to prevent that harm. ...Dan Hendrycks, the director of the Center for AI Safety, told me he thinks similarly about these risks. He also added that the public needs to end the current “AI arms race between these corporations, where they’re basically prioritizing the development of AI technologies over their safety.” That leaders from Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Deepmind, Anthropic, and Stability AI signed his center’s warning, Hendrycks said, could be a sign of genuine concern. Altman wrote about this threat even before the founding of OpenAI. Yet “even under that charitable interpretation,” Bender told me, “you have to wonder: If you think this is so dangerous, why are you still building it?” ...Doomsday prognostications and calls for a new AI agency amount to “an attempt at regulatory sabotage,” Whittaker said, because the very people selling and profiting from this technology would “shape, hollow out, and effectively sabotage” the agency and its powers. Just look at Altman testifying before Congress, or the recent “responsible”-AI meeting between various CEOs and President Joe Biden: The people developing and profiting from the software are the ones telling the government how to approach it—an early glimpse of regulatory capture. “There’s decades worth of very specific kinds of regulations people are calling for about equity, fairness, and justice,” Safiya Noble, an internet-studies scholar at UCLA and the author of Algorithms of Oppression, told me. “And the kinds of regulations I see [AI companies] talking about are ones that are favorable to their interests.” These companies also spent many millions of dollars lobbying Congress in just the first three months of this year.

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mariacallous · 9 months

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Kremlin Ties

The Trickbot and Conti leaks have shaken up the ransomware industry. In June 2022, after attacking Costa Rica, members of the Conti ransomware group disbanded. And in February of this year, the UK and US governments sanctioned seven people for their alleged involvement with Trickbot.

One of those sanctioned was Vitaly Nikolayevich Kovalev who, confusingly, uses the online handles “Ben” as well as “Bentley.” Alongside the sanctions, the US unsealed a 2012 indictment accusing Kovalev of conducting bank fraud between 2009 and 2010. Multiple sources tell WIRED that Kovalev’s use of the Bentley handle isn’t connected to what they believe to be Galochkin’s use of the same moniker.

Though cybercrime groups like Trickbot aim to be efficient and professionalized, two individuals using the same handle, even years apart, illustrates the disorder and fluidity within these organizations. And as gangs in Russia’s cybercriminal world clash or disband to evade international law enforcement, new combinations of the same familiar faces often emerge under the banner of a new group.

Tracing the real identities and relationships of Trickbot members also underscores the gang’s prominence within Russia’s flourishing cybercrime scene. “We know that ransomware actors value their anonymity, so exposing their identities via sanctions designations affects their reputation and relationships within the cybercriminal ecosystem,” says Will Lyne, head of cyber intelligence at the UK’s National Crime Agency, the country’s equivalent to the FBI. Lyne says the sanctions against Trickbot members puts them under more scrutiny and blocks them from accessing UK, US, and global financial systems.

The FBI declined to comment on Trickleaks or recent Trickbot activity. A US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official, who would only speak to WIRED on the condition of anonymity, says it has been alerting “international partners” about Trickbot malware since August 2021 and has sent out 55 alerts in the past year.

“Over the past 12 to 18 months, we have seen a shift in power within the cybercriminal ecosystem from the ransomware operators, who control the malware behind the schemes, and the affiliates,” Lyne says. “This has resulted in some affiliates working much more loosely with multiple ransomware variants simultaneously.”

Microsoft’s corporate vice president of customer security and trust, Tom Burt, wrote of Trickbot in October 2020 that “research suggests they serve both nation-states and criminal networks.”

Digital crime syndicates operate globally, and particular types of scams often evolve in different regions as a result of lax enforcement that criminals use to their advantage. In Russia, the Kremlin has broadly allowed ransomware actors and other cybercriminal groups to operate with impunity—as long as they don’t victimize Russian targets. As the global law enforcement community has scrambled to address high-profile ransomware attacks, the question of how deeply Russian cybercriminal groups are tied to their government has taken on increased significance.

In January 2022, amid a series of particularly ruthless attacks on US and UK targets, Russian law enforcement arrested more than a dozen alleged members of the ransomware gang REvil, though the suspects were reportedly only charged with credit card forgery. This enforcement action was an isolated event and seemed to further underscore that the Russian government has a vested interest in managing optics and ultimately protecting its criminal hackers.

Speaking about Russia’s war against Ukraine at the RSA security conference in San Francisco in April, US National Security Agency cybersecurity director Rob Joyce said that criminal and “hacktivist” attackers are a “natural resource” for the Kremlin. He added that Russian intelligence “is able to maintain relationships and use all the coercive power of the Russian government” and that such a relationship was “pretty disturbing.”

As the war in Ukraine drags on, Russia’s inability to break through has become both embarrassing and destabilizing for Putin’s regime. But researchers say that the more geopolitically isolated Russia becomes, the more likely it is that the relationship between cybercriminals and Russian intelligence services will endure and even deepen.

“The Russian criminal problem isn’t going anywhere. In fact, now it’s probably closer with the security services than it’s ever been,” says John Hultquist, Google Cloud’s chief analyst for Mandiant Intelligence. “They’re actually carrying out attacks and doing things that benefit the security services, so the security services have every interest in protecting them.”

Analysts have repeatedly concluded that cybercriminals working in Russia have connections to the Kremlin. And these connections have become increasingly clear. When the UK and US sanctioned Trickbot and Conti members in February, both countries said members were associated with “Russian intelligence services.” They added that it was “likely” some of their actions were directed by the Russian government and that the criminals choose at least some of their victims based on “targeting previously conducted by Russian intelligence services.”

Chat logs included in the Trickleaks data offer rare insight into the nature of these connections. In 2021, two alleged Trickbot members, Alla Witte and Vladimir Dunaev, appeared in US courts charged with cybercrime offenses. In November 2021, according to Nisos’ analysis, the Trickleaks chats show members were worried about their safety and panicked when their own cryptocurrency wallets were no longer accessible. But someone using the handle Silver—allegedly a senior Trickbot member—offered reassurance. While the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs was “against” them, they said, the intelligence agencies were “for us or neutral.” They added: “The boss has the right connections.”

The same month, the Manuel handle, which is linked to Galochkin, said he believed Trickbot leader Stern had been involved in cybercrime “since 2000,” according to the Nisos analysis. Another member, known as Angelo, responded that Stern was “the link between us and the ranks/head of department type at FSB.” The previous Conti leaks also indicated some links to Russia’s intelligence and security services.

Unmasking Trickbot, One of the World’s Top Cybercrime Gangs

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