Author | Lightnews

অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 19h

When you book a flight through major travel sites, a data broker owned by USA airlines will sell details about your flight—your name, credit card, & travel destination etc to USA government.

Here's a guide on how to opt-out👇

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How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government

The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), owned by major U.S. airlines, collects billions of ticketing records and sells them to the government to be searched without a warrant. I managed to opt-out of that data selling.

www.404media.co

অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 19h

Journalists in Europe found it was "easy" to spy on top European Union officials using commercially obtained location data sold by data brokers, despite the continent having some of the strongest data protection laws in the world.

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Phone location data of top EU officials for sale, report finds | TechCrunch

Journalists in Europe found it was "easy" to spy on top European Union officials using commercially obtained location data sold by data brokers, despite the continent having some of the strongest data protection laws in the world.

techcrunch.com

অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

By partnering with telecom operators, players like Google and Perplexity now have a chance to reach nearly 80% of India’s internet users — and perhaps catch up with ChatGPT’s runaway growth in the country.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

OpenAI has also signed a deal with India’s Ministry of Education and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to distribute 5 lakh ChatGPT licenses to teachers and students nationwide.

Google, meanwhile, has been offering Gemini Pro free for a year to students in India.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

In July, Airtel partnered with San Francisco–based AI startup Perplexity to give its 360 million subscribers a free 18-month Pro subscription, typically priced at Rs 17,000 per year.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

For Jio, it’s a chance to add another layer of value to its massive user base, a digital continuation of what it began with cheap 4G and then 5G data.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

The rollout will start with 18-25-year-old users on the Jio Unlimited 5G plan and soon expand nationwide.

For Google, India is both a testing ground and a market-in-the-making.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

This time, with Google’s Gemini.

On October 30, Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio announced that it would offer a year of Google’s AI Pro plan with the latest version of Google Gemini to its 505 million users, a plan that otherwise costs Rs 35,100 ($399).
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

But the partnership set the tone for a deeper playbook, one where telecom operators became the distribution layer for global tech companies, giving them instant reach into hundreds of millions of users.

Fast forward to 2025, and Reliance is once again at the centre of a global tech alliance.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

A year later, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) banned differential pricing for data services, effectively killing Free Basics and reinforcing India’s commitment to net neutrality, the idea that telecom companies can’t privilege one service over another.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

In 2015, the social media giant (now Meta) partnered with Reliance Communications to launch Free Basics, a programme that offered free access to a limited set of internet services, most of which were owned or curated by Facebook.

It didn’t last long.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 3d

Global AI companies come for 900 million Indian mobile users. But what’s in it for telecom operators?
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 5d

Maj Gen Masudur Rahman will lead a Bangladesh Army team to Rawalpindi for four-day-long inaugural ‘staff talk’ days after Pakistan Army’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza’s Dhaka visit.

অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 5d

ISI is seeking to establish its presence in Cox's Bazar, Ukhia, Teknaf, Moulvibazar, Habiganj, and Sherpur areas of Bangladesh.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 5d

A recent visit from a military delegation, with ISI operatives onboard, marked high-level talks with Bangladeshi intelligence officials, aimed at expanding their collaborative network.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 5d

The ISI allegedly played a pivotal role in plotting a plan led by the students and backed by BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami to remove Hasina from power in August 2024.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 5d

In a strategic development, Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) is reportedly enhancing its footprint in Bangladesh, eyeing critical areas around India’s eastern & northeastern borders, as well as the Bay of Bengal.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 7d

The interaction covered the roles and responsibilities of CERT-In in crisis management, vulnerability assessment, information sharing, and coordinated response to cyber incidents.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 7d

The session was conducted by CERT-In, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, in collaboration with the Ministry of External Affairs.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 7d

reinforcing India’s commitment to a secure and resilient digital ecosystem. He further elaborated on how CERT-In leverages Artificial intelligence-driven analytics and automation to detect, prevent, and respond to cyber incidents in real time.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 7d

Chairing an interactive session with journalists visiting from the European Union countries in New Delhi, Dr Bahl noted that these innovators are building advanced solutions for threat detection, cyber forensics, and AI-based monitoring systems,
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 7d

Director General of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), Dr. Sanjay Bahl, has said India’s Cybersecurity Ecosystem scaled new heights with over 400 Startups and 6.5 Lakh Professionals powering a 20 Billion dollar Industry.
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অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 8d

Peter Williams, the former head of Western zero-day and spyware maker Trenchant, pleaded guilty to selling eight exploits to a Russian broker that resells to the Russian government.

🔗 techcrunch.com/2025/10/29/f...

Former L3Harris Trenchant boss pleads guilty to selling zero-day exploits to Russian broker | TechCrunch

Prosecutors confirmed Peter Williams, the former Trenchant boss, sold eight exploits to a Russian buyer. TechCrunch exclusively reported that the Trenchant division was investigating a leak of its hac...

techcrunch.com

অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 8d

As it turns out, sometimes attribution ain’t that hard.

After @kasperskylab.bsky.social researchers revealed that some government is using #MementoLabs’ #spyware called #Dante, the spyware maker’s CEO #PaoloLezzi accepted it was their outdated #Windows #malware."

🔗 techcrunch.com/2025/10/28/c...

Exclusive: CEO of spyware maker Memento Labs confirms one of its government customers was caught using its malware

Security researchers found a government hacking campaign that relies on Windows spyware developed by surveillance tech maker Memento Labs. When reached by TechCrunch, the spyware maker's chief executi...

techcrunch.com

অর্ঘ্য 🏏 📚 💻 @stringsvsatoms.bsky.social · 8d

Of the 1,544 APK files analyzed, 145 exposed sensitive data, 249 provided unprotected access to critical components, and 226 executed commands with elevated privileges.
This indicates a system vulnerability on these devices and additional risks to users.
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