PSPINC Official Company Blog

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 186 “Extortion Fraud”

Sep

21

Online scams have been around for a long time, but over the last few years, they’ve gotten more popular. Specifically, extortion frauds have become popular as many of our customers have received them in their email inboxes. Extortion frauds usually occur over email and consist of cybercriminals sending threatening messages demanding payment in exchange for not releasing sensitive information. While they may seem threatening, these emails are scams where hackers are just trying to trick people into giving them money. They don’t actually have any sensitive or embarrassing information on you, as they claim.

Our advice is to just mark those messages as spam and delete them from your inbox. As great as spam filters can be, cybercrime continues to get more sophisticated, which makes it easier for emails like these to make it into your inbox. Our Dreamersi email hosting customers have the option of adjusting their spam filters to try to weed emails like these out. If you’d like any help to clean out your inbox or adjust your spam filter, reach out to our support team! They’re always happy to help!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstools #cybersecurity #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #marketing #marketingdigital #newsletter #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #website

Deepfakes: Explained

Aug

29

Deepfakes are images, videos, and/or audio that are digitally altered to convincingly appear to be something else using artificial intelligence (AI). AI development has been progressing rapidly over the last few years, and deepfakes are no exception. With how popular they’ve gotten over the last few years, it’s become much harder to detect what’s fake and what isn’t online. And with it, the concern about those using the technology to spread false information. But there are, thankfully, other non-malicious uses for deepfakes that more people are exploring today.

How It Works

an artist's illustration of artificial intelligence

There are two ways to create a deepfake. The first way is specific to creating deepfake images and videos through a face swap. With this method, developers use an encoder to run thousands of face shots of two people. The encoder then reduces them to their shared common features and compresses the images. Developers then add two decoders to the process, with one recovering one face and the second recovering the other face from the compressed images. The face swap occurs when the developer feeds the encoded images into the wrong decoder. This means that the decoder trained on person B’s face gets fed person A’s compressed image and vice versa. But for it to result in a convincing video, developers need to do this for every frame.

The other way developers can create deepfakes involves using a generative adversarial network (Gan). A Gan pits two AI algorithms, a generator and a discriminator, against each other. With the generator, developers feed it random noise and it turns into a synthetic image, which developers will then feed into the discriminator, made up of a stream of images of real things like celebrities’ faces. After repeating this process multiple times, the discriminator and generator will improve over time with performance feedback. Eventually, it’ll result in very realistic images of nonexistent people.

Deepfake Use Cases

While the technology initially caused concern for malicious uses like putting harmful words in important political figures’ mouths, there are other completely innocent uses for them. Some other examples include, but are not limited to:

Restoring people’s voices when they lose them to disease with voice-cloning deepfakes.

Enlivening museums and art exhibits.

Dubbing foreign-language films.

Providing personalized responses to caller requests for receptionist services and/or simple customer phone support services.

Manipulating actors’ voices for specific scenes in post-production.

The danger that more people are concerned about is how realistic deepfakes can be. There are a few telltale signs that it’s fake, but even those constantly change because of how fast developers fix it. Fortunately, the technology’s popularity has shifted from malicious intentions to those using it to entertain others. But as deepfakes progress, they will continue to improve quickly, as they already have. What we choose to do with it, however, will largely be up to those who know how to use it.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#ai #artificialintelligence #audio #blog #business #businesstools #customerservice #cybersecurity #deepfake #deepfakes #images #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #photos #security #tech #technology #video #web #webdevelopment #webtools

Data Collection: Privacy Concerns and Regulation

Aug

15

Collecting data has become standard today as marketers use it to better promote their products. Efforts to better personalize ads have proven to be immensely successful, to the point of it becoming an expectation. But many aren’t fully aware of how much data companies collect on users, or how much gets passed around between third parties. And there isn’t much regulation on how much they can collect or what they can or can’t do with that data, which is how we got to where we are today.

With cybercrime only increasing in recent years, users want to make sure their data is safe. Generally, the more data you collect, the more personalized the ads will be. For marketers, more data collection makes up for better ads. But the increase in hacks has been too much for people to ignore. And it’s only revealed how easy it has become for criminals to hack people and how vulnerable their information can be. So, it only makes sense that many are asking for lawmakers to add more regulations when it comes to data collection and consumer privacy.

Current State of Data Collection

Advertisers everywhere have been digitally collecting data from customers for years now. But there are two major concerns over the amount of data companies collect: privacy and potential leaks. Most users don’t know how much of their data gets collected, nor do they know what they’ll do with it. That’s for a reason; companies prefer keeping their data practices discreet, especially for data they have no immediate use for. While this data they’re not immediately using may not be valuable today, companies argue it could be someday. At the federal level, there is no specific legislation that protects users’ data. But the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the power to protect customers from unfair or deceptive data collection practices. And they do so by enforcing federal privacy and data protection regulations.

The lack of regulations at the national level hasn’t stopped individual states from enacting some privacy laws of their own. Specifically, California, Nevada, and Maine have more comprehensive laws compared to those from other states. These privacy laws include the right of consent for their personal information, the right to request companies and third parties to delete their information, and the right to opt out of companies collecting or selling their data to third parties. On the other side of things, companies have stricter guidelines because of these laws, which include disclosing the kinds of information they’re collecting, what they intend to use that data for, and publicizing the identity of third parties, among other restrictions.

What This Means Now

Data collection practices have improved over the years as people learn more about how to keep their information safe from cybercrime. And with users demanding more transparency, more companies are complying by sharing more about their data collection practice. But it hasn’t reached the point of creating federal privacy laws; they are still only at the state level. Because of that, companies can still use, share, or sell any data they collect from customers without notifying them in most states. There also aren’t any national laws about notifying users about breached data due to leaks or other data exposures, nor are there any about third parties further selling users’ data.

In the last few years, people have realized that they aren’t as protected online as they thought. And it has just strengthened the need and desire for privacy laws at the federal level. This is a growing attitude businesses should be aware of, and the hope is, is that it will inspire more companies to be more transparent about how they collect and use customer data.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cybersecurity #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #security #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #web

New Dreamersi FTP Feature Now Available!

Aug

14

Today, we’re happy to announce that our web hosting service, Dreamersi, has a new feature! With Dreamersi, more tech-savvy users can use the FTP features, which stands for File Transfer Protocol. Basically, what this means is that you can build your website by transferring files to a server. Web hosting like Dreamersi then hosts that server, making it much safer than hosting your site on a local computer, typically called the local host. But now, we’re adding even more security with a new FTP Access Security feature.
ftp feature screenshot

With this new feature, you can protect your site from potential hacks by blocking all FTP access or temporarily allowing access until midnight. When going back to editing your site, head over to the Dreamersi admin panel and scroll down until you reach the FTP Services section. Then, you’ll find the FTP Access Security icon. By default, Dreamersi has the “Permanently allow FTP access” option selected, but it isn’t something we recommend. With this new feature, you can either block all FTP access or only allow it temporarily until 12 AM PST. At midnight, your site will then block all FTP access to protect your site from unauthorized parties. So, just sign up for Dreamersi to take advantage of this new FTP feature to better protect your website. Only available for Dreamersi customers on the new V5 version (reach out to our support team for help migrating your Dreamersi site over to V5!) as well as new Dreamersi users.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #cyber #cybersecurity #dreamersi #ftp #pacificsoftwarepublishing #pspinc #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #update #web #webhosting #website #websites #webtools

The Dangers of Artificial Intelligence Technology

Aug

8

While artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for a long time, it’s become much more as large strides continue to advance AI technology. AI-generated chatbots like ChatGPT are the latest popular AI technology used by Bing's AI-generated search engine. But experts in the field, including the quote-unquote godfather of AI technology, Geoffrey Hinton, are concerned about the danger it poses as the technology progresses. So much so that more than 1,000 technology leaders, researchers, and all-around AI experts signed an open letter, warning others about the risks AI technology presents.

What started as an exciting and innovative technology has since become a question of how best to proceed with it. The ethical questions of how far it can go have become existential. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is developing so fast that it’s already surpassed human intelligence. And many are concerned it could mean AGI will eventually take over, which, admittedly, sounds more like a sci-fi movie rather than reality. But because of how fast AI technology is growing and how advanced it’s become; these concerns are only growing in validity. But aside from the existential risks that are potentially several years ahead, there are others that are more current. And even casual AI users have noticed a few of them.

3 Major Risks of AI

1. Lack of transparency

The way AI systems work, especially deep learning models, isn’t something users and most humans really understand. People can’t interpret where the information is coming from nor do they know how it came to its conclusions, which can lead to bias, discrimination, and misinformation. It’s easy for these systems to perpetuate biases in society inadvertently because of the algorithm it’s using to obtain information. And that can also lead to obtaining information that is also blatantly wrong. And these issues will only worsen if or when we rely on AI more and more.

2. Security risks

As great as AI technology can be to increase productivity, it also gives way for hackers and other malicious people to misuse the system to their advantage. Using it can lead to more sophisticated cyberattacks. And because of how much personal data AI technology collects and uses, it’ll also make that data more vulnerable to attacks.

3. Legal challenges

The legal challenges that come with using AI technology are more surrounding the fact that there is no set framework in place to regulate the use of it. Legal challenges arise when people use it to generate art or other types of content derived from another person’s work. Specifically, when people use their work to create something else. This just leads to fewer protections on intellectual properties for artists everywhere.

Where AI Will Go From Here

While there isn’t a clear and set solution in mind, one thing is clear: AI technology needs more regulation. As the technology progresses, it will only become smarter. It’s already surpassed human intelligence, and the outlook on how advanced it will be in just five years from now poses a real threat to society. While it is much more complicated than many of us can understand, it’s fair to say that it is growing rapidly at what many experts are saying is a dangerous pace. AI technology can be great at increasing productivity and processing data, but creating regulations and legal frameworks will be important moving forward to avoid the risks.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #agi #ai #aitechnology #art #artificialgeneralintelligence #artificialintelligence #bigdata #business #cybersecurity #data #intellectualproperty #law #privacy #security #tech #technology #web #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 175 “High-Quality Web Hosting”

Jul

6

Web hosting is about more than just getting your website online. Investing in a good web hosting service ensures better security, better customer service, and better maintenance support. A good web hosting service provides an SSL certificate for your site. That way, users won’t encounter an error page, warning them that their connection isn’t secure when entering a URL. And the service should also include frequent backup services. If something were to happen, like accidentally deleting an important file, you’ll still have your backups to rely on.

Dreamersi is our premiere web hosting service with email hosting, VPS packages, and more robust SSL certificate options, available as add-ons. In all our Dreamersi web hosting plans, our customers get a free domain, free access to WebdeXpress, our easy-to-use web builder, data backups, domain validation (DV) SSL certificates, and world-class support. We’ve had over 20 years of experience providing high-quality web hosting services to small businesses everywhere. Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #ecommerce #hosting #marketing #marketingdigital #newsletter #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #webdesign #webdevelopment #webhosting #website #websites #webtools

Contactless Payment Technology: Why It’s Risen in Popularity

Jun

13

Contactless payment, also referred to as tap-to-pay, refers to tapping your card, smartwatch, or smartphone to pay for something via a point-of-sale (POS) system. The most popular examples are contactless credit cards and e-wallets. Contactless credit cards have a radio wave or a Wi-Fi symbol turned on its side, either on the front or back of the card. E-wallets are apps that link your credit card to your phone or a smartwatch. Some popular examples include Apple Pay and Google Pay. To pay, customers hold their card, smartphone, or wearable close to the machine's payment symbol for contactless payment.

Over the last few years, the technology has only gotten more popular in part due to the Covid-19 pandemic. With many focused on cleanliness, contactless payments offer a way to limit physical interactions. Specifically, those between a consumer and a merchant. According to Statista, e-wallets, digital, and/or mobile wallets have become more common, as they grew from 3% in 2017 to 12% in 2022.

How It Works

person holding iphone over a payment terminal

Contactless payments use radio identification (RFID) technology and near-field communication (NFC). The technology bypasses the need for a PIN number, swipe, or signature for a purchase. It only works in proximity between objects. In this case, it’s the short distance between a credit card or device (smartphone, smartwatch, or other wearable technology) and a point-of-sale (POS) terminal.

Customers tap their card or device on the terminal and a beep, checkmark, or green light alerts both parties that the payment went through. With the physical card, it needs to be close by for the payment to go through. For e-wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay, many require users to enter a PIN, scan a fingerprint, or use facial recognition before tapping to pay. And some retailers, or even some Apple Pay users, require a signature if the transaction is over $50 to protect both parties from fraud.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Physically tapping the card or hovering the phone over the device is part of what makes contactless payments more secure than swiping a card. Equipped with RFID technology and NFC, criminals can’t clone information as easily as before with magnetic strips. NFC sends encrypted data, making it harder to steal, and your card or smart device sends a unique one-time token to the POS terminal during each transaction. Additionally, contactless payment is faster and more convenient for customers, as tapping a card or using Apple Pay only takes a few seconds.

The only real disadvantage is that it isn’t always readily available to everyone. People who don’t have a bank account or a smart device will still need to rely on cash. But, regardless, it has not stopped the growing adoption of contactless payment use. Not just among customers, but also among retailers and credit card issuers. And we expect to see this trend continue as people prioritize stronger security over their personal data like their finances.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#apple #applepay #contactless #contactlesscards #contactlesspayment #ewallet #finance #finances #google #googlepay #iphone #mobile #mobilewallet #neaarfieldcommunication #nfc #payment #radioidentification #rfid #security #smartwatch #tech #technology

Facial Recognition: How it Works and the TSA’s Pilot Project

May

23

Facial recognition technology identifies and confirms someone’s identity using their face. Along with fingerprint validation, DNA matching, eye recognition, hand geometry recognition, voice recognition, and signature recognition, facial recognition is a type of biometric identification. And it’s growing in popularity, as we see via the TSA’s new pilot program, where they use facial recognition technology to confirm people’s identities.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a rise in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, and with facial recognition technology becoming more popular, this is no exception. Additionally, the pandemic expedited contactless technology to minimize touch between merchants and customers. But the expansion of biometric identification and AI technology only raises concerns over data security among customers.

How it Works

photo of a woman in a coat using her cell phone

We can break the overall process of facial recognition down into three steps: detection, analysis, and recognition. Starting with detection, facial recognition finds a face in an image by using computer vision, which uses AI to identify people, places, and things in images quickly and accurately. With computer vision, machines can analyze image data in multiple different formats, including single images, video sequences, views from multiple cameras, and three-dimensional data.

In the analysis stage, the machine looks at facial geometry and facial expressions. It then converts that data into what’s called a faceprint, a unique data string of numbers or points. Lastly, there’s the recognition stage. This is where the machine will compare two or more images by looking at the faces to identify if it is, indeed, a face, or if it matches a face from a government-issued ID like a passport. And that’s exactly what the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) plans to use it for.

TSA’s Facial Recognition Pilot Project

Using facial recognition technology, the TSA has started a new pilot project to confirm a traveler’s identity. All people do is present their ID card into a slot, look into the camera, and the screen will flash “Photo Complete”, which allows travelers to walk right through. The overall project is still in the early testing stages, as only 16 airports use this technology. But there are already early concerns and critiques over the new project. With some even comparing it to government surveillance. An open letter to the TSA from five senators even goes as far as saying it “represents a risk to civil liberties and privacy rights”, as an open letter from five senators to the TSA states.

There’s also the question of storing that data. The TSA says they’re not currently storing travelers’ biometric data, but that could easily change. And when it does, there are concerns over hackers who will try to steal it for nefarious reasons. Travelers also currently have the choice to opt in or opt out of this pilot project, but David Pekoske, head of the TSA, said it’ll eventually be a requirement. When that will happen is still unclear, however. And lastly, the algorithm facial recognition technology uses often struggles to recognize the faces of minorities, raising concern over bias.

What This Means

While many believe facial recognition technology impedes their privacy, technologists, like those at the TSA, boast its accuracy and efficiency and say it enhances overall security. It’s also important to realize we already use facial recognition technology with our personal devices, like enabling face ID on our phones. So, despite concerns, it’s clear that technology is here to stay.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#ai #artificialintelligence #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #customerservice #customersupport #cybersecurity #facialrecognition #facialrecognitiontechnology #security #smallbusiness #tech #technology #transportationsecurityadministration #tsa

Why Google Analytics is Switching to Google Analytics 4 and How to Switch Over Manually

Apr

25

Released in 2005, Google Analytics is a free web analytics service where users can view statistics and have access to basic analytical tools for their websites. These tools help website owners optimize their sites for search engines and better market their sites and potential businesses. Since 2012, Universal Analytics (UA) became the default property type. In 2020, Google released Google Analytics 4 (GA4), giving users the option to use either.

Starting July 1st, Google Analytics will not only switch to GA4, but it’ll also stop its data collection for UA properties. And they'll solely support GA4 rather than giving users the choice to either GA4 or UA. Even though it’s almost two months away from now, it’s recommended you switch over sooner rather than later.

Why is Google Switching to Google Analytics 4?

Internet users today are becoming more aware of their privacy online in recent years. With that concern, many users have opted out of tracking cookies, which are text files that collect data about a user’s behavior on their browser. When you first go to a website, many times, it’ll ask if you agree to accept tracking cookies. As users learn more about internet safety, more and more people are opting out of tracking cookies. For Google Analytics, that changes things because UA captures data by relying on first-party cookies. With more people opting out, UA’s data set will become less helpful moving forward. GA4, however, uses event-based data modeling to gather data.

How to Switch Manually from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4

two people looking at google analytics and a tablet

To manually switch over to GA4:

Create a GA4 property and data stream

For a site that already has analytics, start by going to the Admin (lower left) in Google Analytics
Make sure the right account is selected in the Account column (if you only have one Google Analytics account, it’s already selected)
Select the Universal Analytics property that currently collects data for your website in the Property column
Click GA4 Setup Assistant in the Property column
Click Get started under I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 Property
In the Create a new Google Analytics 4 property pop-up, depending on how your site is currently tagged, you can either:

Create and continue
Create property

Select the option that best describes your situation on the Set up a Google tag page and follow the instructions to finish creating your new GA4 property
Collect website and app data
Turn on Google signals
Add users

Even though it’ll automatically switch over (if you haven’t opted out), Google still recommends you manually switch to GA4 before the deadline on July 1st. The reasoning behind this is simple: the sooner you switch, the more data you’ll collect in the new system. And that data collection will be vital to help determine trends and insights and how to improve your overall business and marketing plans. If you need help migrating your data from UA to GA4, we have experts ready to help you with your SEO and other marketing needs.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #customersupport #digitalmarketing #google #googleanalytics #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #security #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #website #websites #webtools

Everything You Need to Know About the Potential TikTok Ban

Mar

28

TikTok is a short-form video-sharing app geared mostly toward Gen-Z. Content on the platform ranges from cooking videos to funny animal clips to practically anything you could think of. According to Business of Apps, as of January 2023, TikTok had almost two billion monthly active users globally. And this doesn’t even include users from China since the app uses a different name there. As of just last week, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, boasted that TikTok now has 150 million active monthly users in the U.S. alone. But this claim also comes amongst talks over a potential ban of the app.

TikTok’s Data Security Concerns

close-up of the settings app in the iOS interface

The app, while popular, poses privacy and data security practices for one big reason: TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has ties to China. Other countries worldwide, including the U.S., have banned the app altogether or restricted its use in certain cases. For example, India placed a ban on not only TikTok but also other Chinese-owned apps like WeChat, and Pakistan banned the app at least four times. While the U.S., Canada, and Taiwan haven’t officially banned the app, government-issued devices only have restricted access to TikTok. However, there isn’t currently any hard proof of these privacy concerns; it’s more of a concern for what China could do with TikTok’s users’ data in the future.

To counteract this potential, the U.S. government created the RESTRICT Act. This bipartisan bill, in short, allows the secretary of Commerce to ban apps that pose a risk to U.S. national security. It doesn’t explicitly name TikTok, but it covers companies owned not only by China, but also by Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. Last week, Chew faced congress to answer questions they had over TikTok's data concerns. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to change the status quo as many representatives didn't seem to know much about how the app works. While this bill exists, U.S. lawmakers, including President Biden, aren’t pushing to ban the app. Instead, they’d much prefer it if a U.S.-owned company acquired ByteDance, removing its ties to China.

How Advertisers Are Responding

two women having a meeting in the office

Despite the uncertainty about the app’s future, advertisers are sticking with TikTok and are largely unfazed by it. Privacy and data security concerns on social media are nothing new to marketers. Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, is still a formidable force in the social media market today. Especially for marketers, as Facebook’s ad business has only gotten stronger since. So, it’s safe to say they were able to walk away mostly unscathed from the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2015. So, with this example in mind, marketers know the privacy issue concerns will eventually die down.

Marketers have experienced this wave of security concerns for social media in the past, only to see it ultimately pass. So, for now, advertisers are sticking with TikTok and keeping their ad spend on the platform. And for marketers who have employed a TikTok-first approach, they’re sticking with it, despite the threat of a ban. TikTok, for better or for worse, delivers droves of the Gen-Z audience, making it an attractive marketing platform. So, as far as advertisers are concerned, TikTok is here to stay.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertisers #advertising #app #branding #business #businesstips #cybersecurity #data #datasecurity #marketers #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingnews #marketingtips #security #smallbusiness #socialmedia #therestrictact #tiktok

PSPINC Official Company Blog

freespace

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 186 “Extortion Fraud”

Deepfakes: Explained

How It Works

Deepfake Use Cases

Data Collection: Privacy Concerns and Regulation

Current State of Data Collection

What This Means Now

New Dreamersi FTP Feature Now Available!

The Dangers of Artificial Intelligence Technology

3 Major Risks of AI

Where AI Will Go From Here

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 175 “High-Quality Web Hosting”

Contactless Payment Technology: Why It’s Risen in Popularity

How It Works

Advantages and Disadvantages

Facial Recognition: How it Works and the TSA’s Pilot Project

How it Works

TSA’s Facial Recognition Pilot Project

What This Means

Why Google Analytics is Switching to Google Analytics 4 and How to Switch Over Manually

Why is Google Switching to Google Analytics 4?

How to Switch Manually from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4

Everything You Need to Know About the Potential TikTok Ban

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