If you’d like to backup your ChatGPT chats, it’s possible to export them by email from within ChatGPT. Here’s how:

– In ChatGPT, click on the three dots (bottom left).

– Click on ‘Settings & Beta.’

– Click on ‘Data Controls.

– Click on the ‘Export Data’ button, read the information, and click on ‘Confirm export’ (if you agree).

– The data will be sent to your registered email in a downloadable file and will include account details and conversations.

In this article, we look at why Zoom found itself as the subject of a backlash over an online update to its terms related to AI, what its response has been, plus what this says about how businesses feel about AI.

What Happened? 

Communications app Zoom updated its terms of service in March but following the change only being publicised on a popular forum in recent weeks, Zoom has faced criticism because many tech commentators have expressed alarm that the change appeared to go against its policy to not use customer-data to train AI.

The Update In Question 

The update to Section 10 of is terms of service, which Zoom says was to explain “how we use and who owns the various forms of content across our platform” gave Zoom “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights” to use Customer Content, i.e. data, content, communications, messages, files, documents and more, for “machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing” (and other product development purposes).

The Reaction 

Following the details of the update being posted and discussed on the ‘Hacker News’ forum, there was a backlash against Zoom, with many commentators unhappy with the prospect of AI (e.g. generative AI chatbots, AI image generators and Zoom’s own AI models namely Zoom IQ) and more) being given access to what should be private Zoom calls and other communications.

What’s The Problem? 

There are several concerns that individuals, businesses and other organisations may have over their “Customer Content” being used to train AI. For example:

– Privacy Concerns – worries that personal or sensitive information in video calls could be used in ways the participants never intended.

– Potential security risks. For example, if Zoom stores video and audio data for AI training, it increases the chance of that data being exposed in a hack or breach. Also, it’s possible with generative AI models that private information could be revealed if a user of an AI chatbot asked the right questions.

– Ethical questions. This is because some users may simply not have given clear permission for their data to be used for AI training, raising issues of consent and fairness.

– Legal Issues. For example, depending on the country, using customer data in this manner might violate data protection laws like GDPR, which could get both the company and users into legal trouble. Also, Zoom users or admins for business accounts could click “OK” to the terms of service without fully realising what they’re agreeing, to and employees who use the business Zoom account may be unaware of the choice their employer has made on their behalf. It’s also been noted by some online commentators that Zoom’s terms of service still permit it to collect a lot of data without consent, e.g. what’s grouped under the term ‘Service Generated Data.’

Another Update Prompted 

The backlash, the criticism of Zoom and the doubtless fear of some users leaving the platform over this controversy appears to have prompted another update to the company’s terms of service which Zoom says was to “to reorganise Section 10 and make it easier to understand”. 

The second update was a sentence, in bold, added on the end of Section 10.2 saying: “Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or other communications-like Customer Content (such as poll results, whiteboard and reactions) to train Zoom or third-party artificial intelligence models.” 

On the company’s blog, Chief Product Officer, Smita Hashim, re-iterated that: “Following feedback received regarding Zoom’s recently updated terms of service Zoom has updated our terms of service and the below blog post to make it clear that Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train Zoom’s or third-party artificial intelligence models.” 

The Online Terms of Service Don’t Affect Large Paying Customers 

Smita Hashim explains in the blog post that the terms of service typically cover online customers, but “different contracts exist for customers that buy directly from us” such as “enterprises and customers in regulated verticals like education and healthcare.” Hashim states, therefore, that “updates to the online terms of service do not impact these customers.” 

What Zoom AI? 

Zoom has recently introduced two generative AI features to its platform – Zoom IQ Meeting Summary and Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose, available on free trial and offering automated meeting summaries and AI-powered chat composition.

To customers worried that these tools may be trained using ‘Customer Content’ Zoom says, “We inform you and your meeting participants when Zoom’s generative AI services are in use” and has specifically assured customers that Zoom does not use customer content (e.g. as poll results, whiteboard-content, or user-reactions) to train Zoom’s own (or third-party) AI models.

Criticism 

In 2020, Zoom faced criticism over only offering end-to-end encryption as a paid extra feature after saying paying users would have it anyway. Also, with Zoom being the company whose product enabled (and is all about) remote working, it was criticised after asking staff living within a “commutable distance” (i.e. 50 miles / 80km) of the company’s offices to come to the office twice a week when it was reported to have said (at one time) that all staff could work remotely indefinitely.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

This story shows how, at a time when data is now needed in vast quantities to train AI, a technology that’s growing at a frightening rate (and has been the subject of dire warnings about the threats it could cause), clear data protections in this area are lagging or are missing altogether.

Yes, there are data protection laws. Arguably however, with the lack of understanding of how AI models work and what they need, service terms may not give a clear picture of what’s being consented to (or not) when using AI. There’s a worry, therefore, that boundaries of data protection, privacy, security, ethics, legality, and other contraints may be overstepped without users knowing it in the rush for more data as clear regulation is left behind.

Zoom’s extra assurances may have gone some way toward calming the backlash down and assuring users, but the fact that there was such a backlash over the contents of an old update shows the level of confusion and mistrust around this relatively new technological development and how it could affect everyone.

Following the announcement that Microsoft is releasing a public preview of Python in Excel, we look at what this will mean for Excel users and how it could help businesses.

What Is Python? 

The initial version was created in the late 1980s by Guido van Rossum, with its first official release, Python 0.9.0, coming out in February 1991. It was named after the eponymous Monty Python Show, after having been developed as a successor to the ABC language and was intended to be easy to read and allow for concise code, among other goals.

It’s regarded as a good general-purpose programming language that’s relatively easy to learn due to its simple and straightforward syntax. Python is often used in creating web applications and artificial intelligence applications, and it is the language behind platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.

Added To Excel 

Last week, Microsoft announced that is releasing a Public Preview of Python in Excel, thereby enabling the combination of Python and Excel analytics within the same workbook, with no setup required. Microsoft says: “With Python in Excel, you can type Python directly into a cell, the Python calculations run in the Microsoft Cloud, and your results are returned to the worksheet, including plots and visualisations.”  In short, this means that Excel users will be able to carry out advanced data analysis in the familiar Excel environment, by accessing Python from the Excel ribbon.

Two other key benefits of the integration highlighted by Microsoft are that it runs securely on the Microsoft Cloud, thereby keeping data private, and it is built to work with Teams. This enables colleagues to (seamlessly) interact with and refresh Python in Excel based analytics without needing to worry about installing additional tools, Python runtimes, or managing libraries and dependencies.

What Sort Of Things Can Be Done With The Excel/Python Combination?

Python’s ability to manipulate Excel tables will be of particular help to businesses that frequently work with data because it offers many practical benefits and uses. For example:

– Saving time by automating repetitive tasks in excel, e.g. formatting, or reorganising data.

– Potentially getting better data insights because Python enables the handling of large data sets and can be more efficient in processing and analysing that data.

– Saving time and doing a better job of data cleaning, e.g. Python is better at locating missing values, standardising formats, removing duplicates, and using techniques like regular expressions for pattern-based transformations.

– Improved data analysis and analytics due to the use of Python’s powerful data analysis libraries, e.g. Pandas, Matplotlib, and scikit-learn and the fact that Python in Excel leverages Anaconda (a popular enterprise repository) Distribution for Python running in Azure. This can help with complex calculations, statistical analysis, and data transformations that might be cumbersome or inefficient in Excel.

– Advanced visualisation. I.e., Python charting libraries like Matplotlib and seaborn enabling the creation of a wide variety of charts, spanning from conventional bar graphs and line plots to more specialized visualisations such as heatmaps, violin plots, and swarm plots.

– Helping to focus collaborative work efforts, e.g. where multiple people or systems are providing data in different formats or structures, Python acts as an aggregator, harmonising and consolidating diverse data sources into a single Excel sheet or structure.

– Python scripts can be scheduled to run at specified intervals, thereby making it easier to update or analyse Excel data even when you’re not around.

– Using Python as a bridge to enable Excel data to interact with other web applications, databases, or other external systems.

– Python scripts can be used to create custom functions not natively available in Excel, thereby expanding the scope of what can be done with Excel.

– Python can be used to periodically back up Excel files and even maintain versions (if needed).

– Python libraries like scikit-learn and statsmodels can be leveraged to apply popular machine learning, predictive analytics, and forecasting techniques, e.g. regression analysis, time series modelling, and more.

Examples

Some everyday examples of how using the power of Python in Excel could help businesses include:

– Making monthly sales reports better as well as faster and easier to produce. For example, if a sales manager needs to compile monthly sales reports and receives sales data from multiple regions in different Excel files, a Python script can be written to automatically consolidate all these files into a master report.

– Helping to track the expenses of a small business by using Python to automatically categorise and summarise expenses from an Excel sheet, thereby helping to track where money is being spent most frequently.

– In retail, a store manager could use a Python script to alert them when inventory for a particular item goes below a certain threshold (based on the data in the Excel inventory list).

– Financial analysts could predict future revenue or costs by using Python apply complex forecasting models on past financial data in Excel.

– In accounts, if a business needs to generate bulk invoices, Python can be used to save time by pulling data from an Excel sheet (like client details and amounts) and produce individual invoice files for each client.

– A business with critical data in Excel can have Python scripts scheduled to automatically back up these files at regular intervals, thereby ensuring data safety.

Other examples of what businesses can use Python scripts in combination with Excel include employee scheduling, e.g. generating shift schedules, quickly analysing any customer feedback collected in Excel, automatically highlighting best prices collected in Excel from different vendors, calculating commission for sales staff from figures collected in Excel, and analysing supplier delivery performance, e.g. delivery date and time records held in Excel.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

In short, releasing Python in Excel enables businesses (that leverage the integration) to effectively ‘supercharge’ their data processing and analysis capabilities, thereby giving them the ability to handle more complex tasks, larger data sets, and integrate with a broader range of technologies.

This could improve productivity, competitiveness, give new insights and reveal new business opportunities, save time, and produce better quality reports and visualisations which can improve transparency and business decision making. The fact(s) that Python in Excel doesn’t require any setup, integrates seamlessly with Teams, plus works securely in the cloud must surely also be attractive to businesses, many of whom now have remote and flexible working (all Teams users have access and security worries are minimised). Most businesses must, however, wait a little longer to start using the power of Python in Excel because it’s currently only available to users running Beta Channel on Windows and Microsoft 365 Insider Program members, although it will start to roll out with build 16.0.16818.20000, and then to the other platforms at a later date.

With last-minute holidays on people’s minds (as well as current delays and disruption) Google has announced a new money-saving feature for Google Flights which shows users the cheapest time to book.

What Is Google Flights? 

Google Flights, introduced back in 2011, is Google’s online flight booking search service which allows users to search for airline fares, book flights, and compare different flight and ticketing options. The service works by aggregating data from multiple airlines, booking agencies, and other online flight services and redirects customers to the airline’s website or a third-party booking site to complete the purchase.

New Feature 

Google says the new feature offers users an upgraded insight to help answer the question “Is it better to book now or wait for lower prices to come along?” As a supplement to Google Travel’s existing price tracking alerts and price guarantee option, the new feature can show users when prices have typically been lowest to book their chosen dates and destination (for searches with reliable trend data).

For example, the new insights feature can tell users that the cheapest time to book similar trips is usually two months before departure, and if they’re currently in that “sweet spot.” Also, for example, the new feature could show users that prices for a particular destination usually drop closer to take-off, which means users can see that that they could benefit by waiting before booking.

In short, the insights offered by the new feature could help Google Travel users save money and can make a decision with a greater sense of confidence, based on information they didn’t have before. This could also save users time in shopping around and hassle in deliberating.

Adds To The Other Money-Saving Features 

The new money saving insights supplement the existing ones on Google Travel, including:

– The ‘Price Tracking’ feature, introduced in 2017, which enables users to set up tracking for flights on specific dates so they can be automatically notified if flight prices drop significantly. Also, users can set price tracking for “Any dates” to receive emails about deals anytime in the next three to six months.

– The ‘Price Guarantee’ badge feature, introduced in April this year, and part of a US pilot, which marks some flight results with a price guarantee badge, indicating that Google Travel is “especially confident” that the price shown won’t get any lower before departure. When users book a flight marked with the guarantee badge, Google Travel monitors the price every day before take-off, and if the price does go down, users are paid the difference via Google Pay.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Flight prices in the UK have increased a massive18 per cent (Kayak) from last year, partly due to rising oil prices, rising fuel import prices due to the war in Ukraine, rising maintenance costs and more, making it much more difficult to find cheap flights. Coupled with a cost of living crisis, this has made it more important than ever for consumers to shop around. However, people now have access to more price comparison services to help. For example, Google Travel has many flight comparison competitors in the UK, arguably better known than Google’s service, such as Expedia, TravelSupermarket, Opodo, Lastminute.com, Booking.com, Sky Scanner, Kayak, Cheapflights, and more. The existing price-related features and new price insight feature for Google Travel are, therefore, both likely to be helpful to consumers and companies offering lower flights as well as helping Google to compete in a busy market where Google has many strong competitors in different countries.

Insights like these are a way to add value and tie-in with the Google Travel’s existing advantages, e.g. a clean/easy interface, integration with its other services (the globally popular Google Maps app), speed, no booking fees and reliability, and give Google a leg-up. Google also has the advantage of having access to a lot of data about what travel customers are searching for and trends, and being major player in the AI world, so these new features (and likely more to come), can draw upon Google’s existing assets and strengths to keep Google Travel competitive.

The EU’s new Digital Services Act allows social media users to opt out of AI personalised content feeds based on relevance.

What Is The DSA? 

The Digital Services Act is a new EU Law designed to protect users. It applies to any digital company operating and serving the EU with “very large online platforms” (those with over 45 million EU users) and very large search engines subject to the toughest rules.

The DSA focuses on five key areas of user protection which are:

1. Illegal products. I.e. platforms will need to stop the sale of illegal products.

2. Illegal content. This means that platforms (e.g. social media platforms) need to take measures stop hate speech, child abuse and harassment, electoral interference and more, whilst safeguarding free speech and data protection.

3. Protection of children. This includes large online platforms and search engines having to take a wide range of measures to protect children, such as protection from being targeted with advertising based on their personal data or cookies, protecting their privacy, redesigning content “recommender systems” to reduce risks to children, and much more.

4. Racial and gender diversity. This means that companies (e.g. the large social media platforms) can’t target users with adverts based on personal date such as race, gender, and religion.

5. Banning so-called “dark patterns.” This means protecting consumers from manipulative practices designed to exploit their vulnerabilities or trick/manipulate them into buying things they don’t need or want and making it difficult for them to cancel. For example, this includes fake timers on deals, hiding information about signing up to a subscription and making subscription cancellation steps too complicated for users.

User Empowerment 

More on the matter of user empowerment, the DSA means that users (e.g. users of social media platforms) now need to be given clear information on why they are recommended certain information and have the right (and a clear way) to opt-out from recommendation systems based on profiling (tracking). This has led to the large social media platforms making changes. For example:

– Meta’s Facebook launching a chronological news Feeds tab (last July) to whereby users can see posts from their friends, groups, pages and more in chronological order, and no longer showing any “Suggested For You” posts. Also, since February, Meta’s apps, including Facebook, have stopped showing ads to users aged 13-17 based on their activity to the apps.

– Google’s YouTube stopping next video recommendations based on profiling for logged in users with the ‘watch history’ feature turned off.

– Instagram introducing a “Not Personalised” option instead of just an ‘Explore’ tab based on algorithmic content selections (personalised – “For you”).

– TikTok rolling out the option for users in Europe opt out from its personalised algorithm-based feed, i.e. as TikTok says, if users opt out of “For You” and “LIVE” feeds, it will instead show “popular videos from both the places where they live and around the world, rather than recommending content to them based on their personal interests”. Also, from July, TikTok stopped showing users in Europe aged 13-17 from being shown personalised ads based on their online activity.

– Snapchat has announced four new measures that it’s taking in the EU to comply with the DSA, including giving users “the ability to better understand why content is being shown to them and have the ability to opt out of a personalised Discover and Spotlight content experience.”

Amazon and Google

With the DSA also affecting very large search engines and companies like Amazon, a couple of examples of how they are complying include:

– Amazon creating a new channel for submitting notices against suspected illegal products and content.

– Google promising to increase data access to increase transparency, helping users to understand more about how Google Search, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Play, and Shopping work.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Tech companies have known about the basic requirements of the DSA for three years and have had four months to comply with the act’s rules. Given the size of the “very large” social media companies and search engines, however, it has required some considerable work (some claiming thousands of staff had been involved), costs, and rethinking and re-organising. The DSA’s rules are far-reaching, while compliance means increased operational costs, e.g. due to necessary investment in technical infrastructure, legal fees, human resources for content moderation, and data governance systems. Also, the stricter regulations on data collection, content, and restrictions on targeting could limit ad-revenues and user-engagement. There’s also the added challenge of a greater workload for social media companies – e.g., with the need for more effective and continuous monitoring, user outreach, and updates.

That said, users may welcome the chance to essentially opt-out of being targeted and many may say that giving greater protection to users, especially children, is long overdue and that legislation appears to have been necessary to make change happen. For the very large tech companies, although they may not be happy with parts of the DSA, they have recognised that compliance is now crucial for sustained market access and legal operation within the EU and the fines for non-compliance are very steep and something (along with the bad publicity) they’d like to avoid (6% of turnover and potential costly suspension of the service).

The new rules have only just come into force, so it remains to be seen how the large tech companies fare going forward in a fast-evolving tech landscape that now has the added complications of AI.

China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) has announced the launch of world’s first 4C superfast charging LFP battery.

The ‘Shenxing’ EV Battery 

CATL says the ‘Shenxing’ battery can deliver 400 km of driving range from a 10-minute charge as well as a range of over 700 km on a single full charge, which is around 60 per cent further than the average electric vehicle (EV) on full charge in 2023.

The company says the Shenxing battery will “considerably alleviate fast charging anxiety for EV users” and “opens up an era of EV superfast charging”. 

How It Beats “Fast Charging Anxiety” 

The company, which manufactured more lithium-ion batteries than any of its competitors last year, says that fast charging anxiety is the top factor that stops consumers from shifting to EVs.  CATL says that its Shenxing battery “redefines” Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries and alleviates “fast charging anxiety” because:

– It leverages super electronic network cathode technology and fully nano-crystallised LFP cathode materials to create a super-electronic network, which facilitates the fast extraction of lithium ions and the rapid response to charging signals.

– CATL’s latest second-generation fast ion ring technology has been used to modify the properties of the battery’s graphite surface, thereby increasing intercalation channels (improving energy density) and shortens the intercalation distance for lithium ions. This creates a kind of “expressway” for current conduction.

– Its multi-gradient layered electrode design has been developed to strike a perfect balance between fast charging and long range.

– CATL’s new superconducting electrolyte formula effectively reduces the viscosity of the electrolyte, resulting in improved conductivity within the battery.

– The improved, ultra-thin SEI film (a passivation layer on the anode surface, inhibiting electrolyte decomposition) reduces resistance of lithium-ion movement, thereby improving the transmission rate of lithium ions and decreasing the resistance of lithium-ion movement.

Better Overall Battery Performance

CATL says that new Shenxing battery’s features, as listed above, improves its overall performance in addition to its super-fast charging, because the Shenxing battery also has a longer driving range, fast charging over a wide range of temperatures, and a high level of safety thanks to structure innovation and leveraging intelligent algorithms.  For example:

– The use of CATL’s “trailblazing all-in-one grouping technology,” is a key reason why the Shenxing battery can reach a range of over 700 km, pushing the limits of the performance of LFP chemistry.

– CATL’s cell temperature control technology means the Shenxing battery can charge as normal even at low temperatures. For example, Shenxing can charge to 80 per cent SOC in 10 minutes at room temperature, and from 0-80 per cent in just 30 minutes in temperature as low as -10°C.

– CATL say the Shenxing battery’s upgraded electrolyte and the separator with a highly safe coating, combined with its intelligent algorithms, provide it with a “real-time fault testing system” that can solve the problems brought about by fast refuelling, thereby giving the battery a high level of safety.

EV Batteries

Although CATL identifies “fast charging anxiety” as the biggest obstacle preventing more people from buying electric vehicles, battery technology has long been a real (physical) challenge to how far electric cars are able to travel on a charge. However, many buyers would also argue that there are many other ‘anxieties’ about EVs that are holding back EV sales such as the price of EVs (especially during a cost-of-living-crisis), and the availability of charging points (charging infrastructure).

There was some good news for the UK last month when Tata, the owner of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), confirmed it will be building a £4 billion EV battery factory (termed a ‘gigafactory’) at Bridgwater in Somerset. As well as providing jobs and giving the UK more of foothold in the EV industry, it will also help the UK by delivering half of the battery production needed by 2030 (in the UK, 2030 will see a ban on the sale of new cars using petrol or diesel).

Which Car Companies?

Although it was reported three years ago that CATL had developed a battery that could power an EV for 1.2 million miles over a 16-year lifespan and that deals may have been in place to supply Tesla, BMW, Daimler, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Volvo, it is not clear from its latest more detailed announcement about the Shenxing battery’ which car manufacturers will be the first to use the new battery.

Record Breaking EV Sales In Recent Times

Even with the battery challenges, EVs are two or three times more efficient than conventional petrol/diesel-powered vehicles, plus they have the added benefit of having zero emissions (during driving). Major carmakers have already committed to making EVs and phasing out cars with internal combustion engines entirely by 2040, and it’s predicted (IEA) that electric car sales could overtake fossil fuel-powered car sales within the next 15 years. However, the hope is that breakthroughs in battery technology could make this happen faster which is good news for governments looking to hit carbon emissions targets and deadlines for phasing out fossil fuel vehicles.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

EV battery technology development and how it affects factors like speed-of-charging, range, battery weight, cost (and more) are factors which affect the wider adoption of EVs. The superfast charging and long range (700 km on a full charge) of CATL’s Shenxing battery appear to tackle two of the major challenges, although there are still many more, including charging infrastructure and EV prices.

However, if deals are successfully made with major manufacturers to use the battery and are they’re able to communicate the benefits to the car buying public, this could be one element that could speed up the uptake of EV ownership and the many benefits that brings (e.g. environmental / climate) and giving a better chance of hitting carbon reduction targets.

As mentioned, there are number of challenges that need to be met to make conditions better to enable larger sales of EVs, but this new battery technology could be an important step in the right direction.

Ancient Data-Disasters

So far in 2023, Canada’s had wildfires devouring over 30 million acres, an expanse comparable to Kentucky. This has already surpassed Canada’s earlier record set in 1989, where flames ravaged more than 18 million acres.

As the wildfire-season isn’t over yet, using the 1989 figures (much less than 2023) 18 million acres could yield in the order of 18 billion trees, assuming a thousand trees per acre. A typical pine tree, measuring approximately 45 feet in usable trunk length and eight inches in diameter, is believed to yield about 10,000 sheets of A4 paper, i.e., the 1989 Canadian wildfires possibly burned around 180 trillion sheets of A4 paper – enough to cover up the whole of Europe or stock the ancient Library of Alexandria 30 billion times over! The exact number of scrolls the Library of Alexandria contained isn’t definitively known and varies across historical sources, so it was assumed the library held 500,000 scrolls (estimates can range anywhere from 40,000 to over a million). It was also assumed that one scroll is equivalent to 10 sheets of A4 paper, for simplicity.

When the ancient Library of Alexandria was burned down (the second time), it wasn’t due to climate change but because Julius Caesar fancied Cleopatra and when he became involved in the internal conflict between her and Ptolemy XIII, he ignited the ships at the port of Alexandria and it’s speculated that this blaze extended to the library, leading to its total devastation.

It wasn’t the only time a Roman leader burned down the library because another section of the library was housed within a temple devoted to the deity Serapis. In 391 CE, under the edict of Roman Emperor Theodosius, Christianity was proclaimed the sole permitted religion of Rome, leading to the demolition of all pagan temples. Consequently, the Serapis temple in Alexandria was razed, resulting in the loss of the library’s secondary branch (talk about single-minded).

It’s believed by historians that the Library of Alexandria once contained more than half a million documents sourced from regions like Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India, among others. While gauging the storage for images remains challenging, the textual contents of this vast library could feasibly fit on a 16Gb USB drive.

Whilst this ancient information-storage is impressive, it pales into insignificance when compared to the amount of worldwide information being produced daily. This amount of information is growing geometrically and inexorably as this page and image (c/o Statistica) shows : https://www.statista.com/statistics/871513/worldwide-data-created/

The next time you see a humble USB-stick, consider all the trees/wood/paper/books it could back-up and spare a thought for how the ancient librarians must have felt after the fires without an effective disaster-recovery policy!

It’s been reported (Emsisoft) that the hack of MOVEit software by the Russian Cl0p ransomware gang may have impacted nearly 1,000 organisations and 60 million individuals.

The supply chain attack ‘payroll hack,’ which exploited a vulnerability in Progress’s popular MOVEit software (used to move sensitive files like employee addresses or bank account details), is reported to have stolen and exposed the information of major companies including British Airways, Boots, the BBC, and almost 1000 others worldwide.

This highlights the importance of businesses having comprehensive cyber security in place including effective backup, and business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

If you’d like to see, or remind yourself of what Google’s search engine was like back in 1998 when it started, here’s a fun, instant way to do just that:

Type ‘Google in 1998’ into Google’s search bar.

Google will immediately adopt the old look, complete with the logo + exclamation mark.

To change it back, click on the “Take me back to the present,” or conduct a search using the old search box at the top.

Following the news that US Federal regulators have sued Amazon, alleging that people have been “tricked” into buying hard-to-cancel Prime memberships, we take a closer look at ‘inertia selling’.

What Happened With Amazon Prime Subscriptions? 

Back at the end of June, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it was taking action against Amazon.com Inc, for “enrolling consumers in Amazon Prime without consent and sabotaging their attempts to cancel”. The FTC, which alleged that Amazon had been involved in this kind of inertia selling for years, went so far to say in its complaint that Amazon had been using “manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs” which it describes as “dark patterns,” designed to “trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions.” 

The FTC Chair Lina M. Khan, said in the complaint: “These manipulative tactics harm consumers and law-abiding businesses alike.” 

Denial From Amazon

Amazon issued a statement in response, denying the TFC’s allegations, saying they were “false on the facts and the law” and that “The truth is that customers love Prime, and by design we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for or cancel their Prime membership.” 

Inertia Selling 

‘Inertia selling’ is a controversial sales technique which usually applies to a company sending unsolicited goods or services (or a subscription for services) to individuals with the expectation that they will buy or continue to buy the items. The idea is that the inertia of the consumer (i.e., the natural tendency of consumers to avoid taking action and stick with the default option) will mean that they either keep and pay for the item or to continue a subscription service, often without fully understanding the terms and conditions involved.

As the name suggests, this approach relies on the consumer’s inertia to drive sales, rather than obtaining explicit consent or agreement for the transaction.

Making Things Too Difficult 

In the recent complaint against Amazon by the FTC, it was alleged that making the option to purchase items on Amazon without subscribing to Prime was difficult for consumers to locate by not being clear in the transaction that in choosing that option consumers were also agreeing to join Prime for a recurring subscription. Also, the FTC alleged that when consumers tried to cancel Prime membership, they were faced with multiple steps, first having to locate the cancellation flow, and then being redirected to multiple pages that presented several offers to continue the subscription at a discounted price, turn off the auto-renew feature, or to decide not to cancel. The FTC said that only after clicking through these pages could consumers finally cancel the service. In other words, its alleged that consumers may have been tricked into consent in the first place and then the sheer complication of cancellation made consumers give up and opt for keeping the service.

Is It Illegal? 

Although these “dark patterns” (as described by the FTC) sound as though they must be illegal, it’s not quite as clear cut. Inertia selling is generally considered to be an unfair commercial practice under UK law, and it can be illegal. For example, UK consumer protection legislation like the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, is designed to prevent unfair or deceptive practices, including inertia selling. These laws require that businesses provide consumers with clear, truthful information so they can make informed choices.

If a consumer in the UK receives unsolicited goods or services, they generally are under no legal obligation to pay for them. The law typically considers these unsolicited items to be gifts, and the consumer may not be required to return them. Also, companies must not demand payment for items that were not explicitly ordered as doing so could be considered an unfair commercial practice and may result in legal consequences.

However, for the consumer, it’s essential to carefully read the terms and conditions of any contract or agreement entered into, as there can be instances where the business has a legal basis for providing additional goods or services and charging for them. It appears, therefore, these situations can sometimes be nuanced.

Change Is Coming 

Although some areas of these practices may be nuanced, in April in the UK, the government announced that a new Bill will give the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) new powers to clamp down on “subscription traps.” The changes will also require businesses to give consumers clearer information before they enter a subscription contract, issue a reminder when (for example) a free trial or low-cost introductory offer is coming to an end, and a reminder before a contract auto-renews onto a new term, and give consumers a straightforward way to exit a subscription contract.

In March this year, in the US, the FTC proposed a “click to cancel” provision requiring sellers to make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrolment as it was to sign up. This change looks likely to help tackle hard-to-stop free trials, and auto-renewals (subscription traps).

In the EU, The CPC Network (coordinated by the European Commission) recently asked Mastercard, VISA and American Express to introduce a series of changes in their rules to ensure that traders provide clear information to consumers on recurrent payments before they enter into a subscription.

Others 

Inertia selling is not new but arguably, with the kind of subscription economy we now have, it may be easier for companies to use those practices. It’s worth noting that it’s not just Amazon that allegations of inertia selling of subscriptions have been made about. Other examples (and there are many more than these) include:

– Way back in 2013, when Adobe transitioned to its Creative Cloud subscription service, it received criticism about its subscription-only model and its cancellation policies.

– In 2015, Sky faced an Ofcom investigation for allegedly making it difficult for customers to cancel, e.g. cancellation requests not being “verified” without a call by the customer.

– In 2019, a Guardian newspaper report highlighted many companies which let customers sign up online but required a phone call to leave, e.g. Weight Watchers (WW), Ocado Smart Pass, British Gas Homecare, Which?, and others. The point was that requiring cancellation via phone call could be something that consumers forget.

– In 2020, the CMA took action against Roland for not making it sufficiently easy for online customers to cancel their digital piano rental agreements.

– Three, Vodafone, and EE all came under scrutiny from the CMA in the UK for the terms of their mobile phone contracts, some of which allegedly made it difficult for customers to switch providers or cancel their services.

– As in the US, gym chains in the UK have faced scrutiny for their cancellation policies. The CMA has now taken steps to ensure that gyms are transparent about their terms and conditions.

– In 2021, while the primary concerns with Viagogo (the multinational ticket exchange and ticket resale brand) surrounded ticket reselling, some consumers also complained about subscriptions that were difficult to cancel. This led to investigations and enforcement action by the CMA.

– Last year, as part of its investigation into the online console video gaming sector, the CMA identified concerns about some features of Microsoft’s auto-renewing subscriptions. For example, the CMA was particularly concerned about whether it was clear upfront that contracts would automatically renew, how easy it was to turn off automatic renewal, and whether people may not have realised they were still paying for services they no longer used.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

As we have moved more into becoming a subscription society, regulating all the practices has become more complicated. One of the chief concerns is how to protect consumers from business practices that essentially make the barriers to entry of a subscription contact incredibly low (or virtually invisible) and the barriers to exit extremely high through means such as excessive complication – two key characteristics of inertia selling.

In the US, UK, and EU matters such as hard-to-stop free trials, auto-renewals (subscription traps), and making consumers work hard to cancel are all being addressed with new proposed laws and new powers being given to regulators. For businesses offering subscriptions and wanting to avoid penalties, this will mean a review of their subscription process paying particular attention to clarity and options in sign-up and providing an easy way to cancel (with enough reminders along the way). Although Amazon is the latest to come under the regulatory spotlight it is by no means the only company to have been warned or had action taken against it by regulators over how subscriptions are sold, handled, renewed, or cancelled.

Although more legislation is in the pipeline and scrutiny more intense than ever, there is still some way to go in successfully tackling the many practices and nuances related to inertia selling. In the meantime, in the UK, customers who believe they have been the victim of inertia selling can report the practice to the CMA or their local Trading Standards office for further investigation.