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Internet, no school: School closings in
the U.S. in response to the coronavirus pandemic are exposing the continuing
digital divide in the country, U.S. News and World Report says. The
Federal Communications Commission should step in to help poor students get
access, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told a Senate committee recently.
Testing the Internet’s capacity: Meanwhile, there are
some worries that millions of people potentially working from home in the
coming weeks could literally “break the Internet,” Slate
reports. Corporate VPNs, stock trading sites, and video gaming services
could be among the services impacted by people working from home.
Bad news in the U.K.: In Britain, broadband networks
aren’t ready for millions of people working from home, ABC14News.com
reports. Many home-based Internet services in the U.K. still use old
copper-based networks, and Internet users should expect congestion.
The downside of working from home: One Washington
Post writer worked from home for eight days and ran into several
difficulties, including Internet outages. “Video conferencing fails 50 percent
of the time. The online tools I’m using — Slack, Microsoft Office, Dropbox —
treat work as paramount, so it never really goes away.”
Hackers take advantage: Cybercriminals are
distributing a coronavirus map app that provides no useful information to
victims but may steal user names, passwords, credit card numbers, and other
sensitive information, Dark
Reading reports. The malware also acts as a downloader, bringing additional
malware onto an infected system. It is commonly sold in online malware markets
in Russia.
IoT insecurity: The security of the Internet of Things doesn’t seem to be getting any better, with 98 percent of traffic unencrypted, The Register reports. A recent study from Palo Alto Networks also found that 83 percent of medical imaging devices run on unsupported operating systems, due largely to the end of support for Windows 7.
Is the Internet resilient enough to withstand coronavirus? Read our take.
The post The Week in Internet News: Coronavirus Shutdowns Expose Digital Divide appeared first on Internet Society.