All posts by Paul Stradling

News

Featured Article : Ofcom Investigates Whether 999 Calls Work (Via VoIP) During Emergencies

Communications regulator Ofcom has opened an investigation to make sure that telecoms providers are complying with rules to ensure that there is always uninterrupted access to 999 calls.

Investigation Into Compliance With General Condition A3.2(b) 

The new investigation will essentially decide whether providers are operating in a way that meets with General Condition A3.2(b), which relates to the General Conditions of Entitlement. These are the regulatory conditions that all providers of electronic communications networks and services must comply with if they want to provide services in the UK. General Condition A3.2(b) says that Regulated Providers “must take all necessary measures to ensure uninterrupted access to Emergency Organisations” (e.g. the relevant public police, fire, ambulance and coastguard services for a locality) as part of any voice Communications Services offered.

History 

As far back as 2007, Ofcom set out its regulations for providers of VoIP services to make sure that people can call ordinary fixed or mobile phones with the objective of contacting the emergency services and that a high level of emergency services access is maintained.

Storms Exposed VoIP Weakness 

Fast forward to storms Arwen and Eunice in the UK in February, where it became apparent that power outages meant that routers went offline, and calls weren’t possible with a broadband-only connection. This is the main weakness of VoIP compared to old-style analogue copper phone lines.

Rollout Paused As A Result 

At the time of the storms, the rollout of BT’s Digital Voice and the move to switch every home phone in the UK to an internet-based connection instead of a traditional copper-wire landline was under way, with the target of switching off the old PTSN by the end of December 2025. The result involved BT announcing in March that it was pausing the digital rollout of Digital Voice switch-overs for customers who didn’t want to move to the new technology straight away and BT setting out new plans for more resilient back-up options.

Consultation and Updated Rules 

In May 2018, Ofcom consulted on guidance on GCA3.2(b), which set out how providers could meet the obligation to ensure uninterrupted access to emergency organisations during a power outage for customers using VoIP technology. This led to the development of a set of principles that providers would need to abide by, which included:

– Being able to offer at least one solution to enable access to emergency organisations for a minimum of one hour in the event of a power outage in the premises. The solution should be suitable for customers’ needs and should be offered free of charge to those who are at risk as they are dependent on their landline.

– Also, providers were then required to take steps to identify at-risk customers and engage in effective communications to ensure that they understood the risk and the protection solution.

As far back as 2011, Ofcom had proposals relating to the provision of a battery back-up for customers to use to enable calls to emergency services in the event of power outages, with this being something that Ofcom has expected providers to supply since 2018.

The New Investigation 

The reason for Ofcom’s new investigation is to find out whether telecoms providers are complying with rules designed to ensure that people can contact the emergency services at all times. Ofcom is particularly interested in whether VoIP providers are, in fact, offering battery back-ups and whether they are identifying vulnerable customers who need more help. The regulator said that it had decided to launch the new investigation based on the results of consumer research and writing to regulated providers on an informal basis.

First Stage 

Ofcom says that in this first stage of its compliance monitoring programme, it will be gathering information from a range of alternative network providers and VoIP providers to understand what they are doing to ensure that they comply with their obligations. Ofcom says that it will also be engaging with industry to ensure that providers understand their obligations and how they apply to businesses providing Fibre to the Premises services.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

For all its benefits to businesses, VoIP needs a power supply to stay online and, as Ofcom has long emphasised with principles and guidelines, users should be able to at least be able to contact the emergency services when needed using VoIP. This is something that was highlighted by VoIP’s failure to provide emergency access for some customers during February’s storms. It is now a particularly pressing concern, given that the big switchover to digital was due to be completed by the end of 2025 (currently paused), climate change is causing more disruptive severe weather events, and Ofcom’s research has indicated that some providers may not be complying fully with the rules. Providers are now likely to be feeling under pressure which hopefully may galvanize those who may have been lagging to take the matter and their operator’s responsibilities more seriously, and to ensure compliance. There are times when businesses and home users need to contact the emergency services, so the investigation and pressure from Ofcom are in the interest of everyone.

News

Sustainability-In-Tech : All iPhones To Be Powered By Renewable Energy By 2030 Says Apple

Apple’s Vice President of the environment, Lisa Jackson, has announced that all iPhones will be powered by renewable energy by 2030.

Acquiring Renewable Energy From Wind Farm 

The announcement was made in Australia while celebrating the company’s 40th anniversary there. It is understood that, in line with this announcement, Apple will be acquiring renewable energy from a new Australian wind farm in Queensland, which could supply 80,000 homes with electricity.

Lisa Jackson said of this latest green target, “At Apple, we recognise the urgent need to address the climate crisis, and we’re accelerating our global work to ensure our products have a net-zero climate footprint across their entire lifecycle.” 

Entire Business Carbon Neutral By 2030 

The hope is that in addition to already achieving carbon neutrality two years ago for its corporate activities e.g., Retail Stores, Offices, and Travel, Apple now plans to make its entire business, including supply chain and customer products carbon neutral by 2030. This means that  iPads, Macs, and iPhones will need to run entirely on renewable energy by that date.

How? 

The reason why Apple can say this when you’re plugging your iPhone charger or Mac into your normal electric socket at home as usual is because it has it has examined usage patterns across its 1.8 billion devices and knows that this accounts for 22 per cent of the company’s overall carbon footprint. Therefore, if Apple can offset that percentage with renewable energy from projects like the massive Australian windfarm, it will be able to say that it has reached carbon neutral status for its users’ devices and is powering all iPhones with renewable energy.

Global Facilities Powered By Clean Energy Since 2018 

Apple has long been committed to reducing its carbon footprint. For example, as far back as April 2018, Apple announced that, as part of its commitment to combat climate change and create a healthier environment, its global facilities were powered with 100 percent clean energy. At the time, this included its retail stores, offices, data centres and co-located facilities in 43 countries, including the UK.

What Does This Mean For Your Organisation? 

Apple is one of the many big tech companies engaged in looking seriously at reducing the carbon footprint of their entire chain and making sure that this is widely communicated to customers. Critics could point to how most of an iPhone’s lifetime carbon emissions are made in the production phase and to news stories such as a lawsuit against a recycler that appeared to have instead diverted old phones to China (in 2020). Also, the company’s drive to sell new devices inevitably has green consequences and, as organisations like Greenpeace have said, offsetting projects don’t deliver what’s actually needed which is “a reduction in the carbon emissions entering the atmosphere.” That said Apple has been focusing for many years on how it can become a much greener company. It is which is good news for all users of their products and for wider society that a massive global business is setting itself some quite challenging environmental targets.

News

Security Stop-Press : New Trend : Multiple Ransomware Gangs Attacking Victims In Short Space Of Time

A security company task force Sophos X-Ops has reported to Black Hat USA 2022 in Las Vegas that ransomware gangs are competing for resources, leading to a trend of victims being attacked by multiple gangs over a short space of time. It even suggested that collaboration between ransomware gangs is possible. The advice to businesses is to patch early and often, monitor cyber security news and respond to alerts, practice segmentation and zero trust and used layered protection, use strong passwords and MFA, and take inventories of all assets and accounts.

News

Tech Tip – How To Backup Your WhatsApp Conversations

With so many of us using WhatsApp for important business matters, it makes sense to backup chats either on Google Drive or iCloud Drive. Here’s how:

To make a Google Drive backup:

– Open WhatsApp and Tap More options (the three dots).

– Select Settings > Chats > Chat backup > Back up to Google Drive.

– Select a backup frequency other than ‘Never.’

– Select the Google account you’d like to back up your chat history to.

– Tap ‘Back up over’ to choose the network you want to use for backups.

– To turn on end-to-end encryption for your Google Drive backup select > Settings > Chats > Chat backup > End-to-end encrypted backup.

– Tap ‘TURN ON’ and create a password or use a 64-digit encryption key instead.

– Tap ‘Create ‘to create your end-to-end encrypted backup.

To make an iCloud Drive backup:

– Make sure you’re signed in with the Apple ID and iCloud Drive is turned on.

– For a manual back up. Go to WhatsApp Settings > Chats > Chat Backup > Back Up Now.

– For an automatic backup, you can enable automatic, scheduled backups by tapping ‘Auto Backup’ and choosing your backup frequency.

News

Tech News : 60% Of Us Will Have Digital Wallets By 2026

While some people are busy asking whether we’re seeing the death of cryptocurrencies, a new report says 60 percent of us will be using digital wallets by 2026.

Digital Wallet Usage Driven By ‘Superapps’ 

A Juniper Research study says that the presence of ‘superapps’ will drive digital wallet use in developing countries that are currently considered cash heavy. Juniper describes superapps as “multipurpose apps able to integrate digital payments alongside other services, including wealth management and eCommerce.” Examples could be WeChat and AliPay (China). WeChat, for example, started as a messaging app, then widened its services to add gaming, shopping, and payments. WhatsApp looks likely to follow a similar road.

Digital Wallet Providers 

Examples of some of the leading digital wallet providers are PayPal, Alipay, WeChat Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Strong Growth 

The Juniper report says that the total number of digital wallet users will exceed 5.2 billion globally in 2026, up from 3.4 billion in 2022. If the prediction is correct, this will represent strong growth of over 53 percent.

Rapid Growth For Asia Pacific Region 

Juniper’s report also says that the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam are primed for rapid growth over the next four years due to the rising access to online and mobile commerce services driving an increase of digital wallets, notably through superapps. The report estimates that the adoption of digital wallets will near 75 percent of the population in each of these countries by 2026!

QR Code Payments  

QR code payments are predicted by Juniper’s report to be the most popular digital wallet transaction type in 2026; reaching 380 billion transactions globally, and accounting for over 40 percent of all transactions by volume.

However, the report recommends that QR code payment vendors need to innovate to remain competitive entering new geographic markets by integrating loyalty features and personalised marketing capabilities. These could incentivise merchant acceptance, which could be critical to driving adoption of digital wallets.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The pandemic gave a huge boost to digital payment technologies and using QR codes for in-store payment in Asia helped to kick-start the growth of digital wallets, whose users have realised how convenient they are. The Juniper report shows how the growth and popularity of superapps is also a huge driver in the growth of digital wallets, but another important factor in their growth is the fact that they are needed for many different types of digital payment systems, e.g. cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currencies (CBDC). As we move further into an open banking era, this is also facilitating the growth of digital wallets. For many people and businesses in the UK however, using digital wallets is a new and an unknown territory, the trust in which may have been hampered by their association with the apparently volatile world of cryptocurrencies. Some regions of the world, e.g. the Asia Pacific region, are probably more ready for widescale digital wallet adoption in the near future and at the moment for many UK businesses, how much things cost (i.e. rapidly rising prices) are more of an immediate concern than new payment systems.

News

Featured Article : Pros and Cons of Weakening Encryption

With the Online Safety Bill threatening to undermine end-to-end encryption, we look at the strengths and weaknesses of this security trade-off.

Encryption 

Encryption comes from the science of cryptography. In today’s digital world, encryption refers to using electronic devices to generate unique encryption algorithms which essentially scramble messages and data, making them unintelligible to anyone who tries to intercept them, whilst also providing an effective way to lock electronic devices. Encryption can be used for most things which have an internet connection, such as messaging apps, personal banking apps, websites, online payment methods, files and more.

Two Main Types 

There are two main encryption methods, symmetric and asymmetric, both of which are made up of encryption algorithms and use prime numbers. It is worth noting that there are many other encryption algorithms and methods including RSA, Triple DES, Blowfish, Twofish, and AES.

Symmetric encryption uses the same (identical) key for encrypting and decrypting data. With symmetric encryption, two or more parties have access to the same key. This means that although it is still secure, anyone who knows how to put the code in place can also reverse engineer it.

Asymmetric encryption uses a pair of keys, one for encrypting the data and the other for decrypting it. For the first key (used to encrypt data), ‘public key’ cryptography uses an algorithm to generate very complex keys, which is why asymmetric encryption is considered to be more secure than symmetric encryption – the process can’t be run backwards. With asymmetric encryption, the public key is shared with the servers to enable the message to be sent, however the private key, owned by the possessor of the public key, is kept secret. The message can only be decrypted by a person with the private key that matches the public one. Different public-key systems can use different algorithms.

The ‘key’ refers to a random but unique string of bits that are generated by an algorithm to scramble and unscramble data. The longer the key, the harder it is to break the encryption code.

Over The Internet – HTTPS 

Public key encryption is widely used and is useful for establishing secure communications over the Internet, e.g. for TLS/SSL, which enables HTTPS. For example, A website’s SSL/TLS certificate is shared publicly and contains the public key, but the private key is on the originating server, i.e. it is “owned” by the website.

End-To-End Encryption 

Some of the main criticism around the Online Safety Bill’s requirement that platform operators, such as WhatsApp, will have a “duty of care” to “moderate illegal and harmful content on their platforms” is that this will require weakening encryption, i.e. essentially not having end-to-end encryption, thereby creating a major security (and privacy) risk for users.

End-to-end encryption, which is an example of asymmetric encryption (i.e. more secure than symmetric), is used to encode and scramble information so only the sender and receiver can see it, thereby making it highly secure. WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption and although the messages go through a server, none of those messages can be read by anyone other than the sender and receiver. Allowing content (i.e. messages) to be ‘moderated’ would, therefore, mean that there would need to be a way in, e.g. a ‘back door’, or some other means to view messages between the sender and receiver.

Why Weaken Encryption? 

The arguments for weakening encryption (e.g. end-to-end encryption), usually come from governments saying that they need to monitor content for criminal activity and dangerous behaviour; e.g. terrorism, child sexual abuse and grooming, hate speech, criminal gang communications, and more. This could be considered a reason to support the idea of weakening encryption. Examples include:

– When it was revealed that the first London Bridge terror attackers used WhatsApp in 2017 to plan the attack and to communicate, there were calls from the government (Amber Rudd) for ‘back-doors’ to be built-in to WhatsApp and other end-to-end encrypted communications tools to allow government monitoring.

– In June 2021, Police secretly distributed phones with a supposed encrypted app called ANOM installed. The app, however, allowed police to monitor communications about crime including drugs, weapons, money laundering and murder. It led to the arrest of 800 people in a global sting operation.

– In July 2022, Home Secretary, Priti Patel, said “Things like end-to-end encryption significantly reduce the ability for platforms to detect child sexual abuse”. 

The Arguments For Not Weakening Encryption 

The arguments for not weakening encryption include:

– Consumer protection, e.g. banks protecting financial information and stopping it being accessed or misused when UK citizens bank or make purchases online.

– Many businesses use end-to-end encrypted apps such as WhatsApp and other encrypted communications and VPNs. Encryption, therefore, protects sensitive company data, data privacy, and can reduce cybercrime risks.

– Providing reliable and safe communications in war situations, e.g. secure communication channels in Ukraine allowing broadcasted appeals to the world and recruiting support. Also, encryption has helped Ukrainians to combat disinformation, organise relief efforts, and protect evacuees. The first thing many Russian soldiers are reported to be doing when capturing people is to look at their phones to study their communications and track down associates. This is a good argument for encryption and features like disappearing messages sent via WhatsApp.

– Protection for journalists who need to keep information channels open despite government censorship.

– Protection for activists (human rights) and commentators in oppressive and dangerous regimes.

What Is Being Proposed? 

The Online Safety Bill requires tech companies to be able to moderate their platforms or face fines. The government says, with the Bill, the “onus is on tech companies to develop or source technology to mitigate the risks, regardless of their design choices. If they fail to do so, Ofcom will be able to impose fines of up to £18 million or 10% of the company’s global annual turnover – depending on which is higher.” 

However, although the UK government says it “wholeheartedly supports the responsible use of encryption technologies” and that it does “not want to censor anyone or restrict free speech,” it is less clear how the government intends to replace protections such as end-to-end encryption with a robust but weaker alternative. For example, the government says “We, and other child safety and tech experts, believe that it is possible to implement end-to-end encryption in a way that preserves users’ right to privacy, while ensuring children remain safe online” and that “tech companies, working in partnership with governments, child protection organisations and law enforcement” appears to be the big idea. The responsibility, backed up with the threat of fines, to come up with a way to enable weakened encryption that is still somehow effective, is being placed on the shoulders of the tech companies who, according to Priti Patel, “now need to stand up and use their resources and engineering expertise” to create a solution.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Everyone recognises the need to find ways to stop cybercrime, child exploitation and sexual abuse, and other organised crime that could hide behind encryption to avoid detection. However, encryption also protects the interests and assets of those involved in legal and legitimate activities from criminals and, as Ukraine illustrates, can protect citizens, and provide vital communications in dire situations such as war. Encryption also plays an important role in protecting the sharing of significant news and information, freedom of speech and human rights where there are oppressive regimes. Some would say that the idea of weakening encryption and/or making back doors into apps and allowing monitoring defeats the object of encryption and creates not just a way to stop criminals, but also a way for criminals to get in and steal data. Tech businesses have faced calls from governments to be allowed access before but this time, in the UK, they not only face fines and legislation, but also appear to be under pressure to come up with solutions that could create their own risks. It remains to be seen how the Bill progresses and what the effects of weakened encryption in the UK could be both on those here and in other countries.

News

Tech News : Google Improves ‘Quoted Search’

Google has made it easier to do quoted searches by adding snippets to search results to help users save time in locating a phrase in a web page.

Quoted Searches 

Quoted Searches are searches where the search term is placed within quotation marks to find an exact match in the search engine results. However, although Google Search returns pages with the exact term therein, up until now it has been the case that users have to then search within that page to find whereabouts the exact term is located. Google’s explanation for this is that quoted material can appear in areas of a document that don’t lend themselves to creating helpful snippets, e.g. a word or phrase might appear within the menu item of a page.

Snippets To Show Where Exact Term Appears 

Google’s new change to quoted searches means that snippets will be displayed in the search results which show exactly where a quoted word or phrase occurs in a web document, thereby saving users time. For example, if a user searches for [“google search”], the snippet will show where that exact phrase appears. Google also says that on desktop, the quoted material will be shown in bold.

Other Information About Quoted Searches 

Although quoted searches have been improved, Google has offered some tips and caveats to accompany its announcement of the change. For example:

– Quoted search results may still match content not readily visible on a page, e.g. a meta description tag, ALT text that describes images, or material brought in through inline frames. Google says in these circumstances, users can try using a standard Find command in a browser or search from within Developer Tools to help find where the exact match phrase occurs.

– Where pages may have changed since Google last visited them, and the exact phrase no longer exists on the current page, users could try looking at the Google cached copy to see where the quoted content appeared on the previous version of the page.

– Quoted terms won’t appear in web page snippets if they only appear within title links or URLs of a web page.

– Google says that although punctuation is sometimes seen as spaces by its system, it will be able to match content where punctuation like commas or hyphens break up words, e.g. don’t, doesn’t, don’t / doesn’t, or don’t – doesn’t.

– If a search involves multiple quoted terms, the snippet may not show all of them if they are far apart from each other.

– Google will mainly show in bold quoted content for web page snippets on desktop.

– Quoted searches don’t work for local results.

– Using quotes may be a useful tool for “power users”, but Google will look for both the exact words and phrases by default anyway.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

After making the news for a couple of less than positive issues lately (i.e. the Google engineer who said that Google’s LaMDA chatbot was sentient which resulted in his sacking, plus news of a delay in banning third-party cookies), this is a bit of good news, particularly for “power users” of Search. This is essentially a long overdue improvement to one aspect of the search engine results and is timely, considering mobile device users may find it particularly awkward to search whole web pages easily for a phrase. Businesses may also be pleased to know that this is not a ranking change, i.e. it won’t affect ranking position of pages. However, the change may have an impact on click through rate, depending on how the snippets help a user decide how relevant a page could be to their query.

News

Tech Insight : What is GitHub, GitLab Etc?

In this insight, we take a look at what GitHub and GitLab are, and why they are important in the world of software development.

GitHub, from GitHub Inc., is a not-for-profit website and cloud-based hosting service for open-source development projects – it is the largest open-source host. It helps developers, working on software projects, to store and manage their code, as well as tracking and controlling changes to their code (using Version control), and collaborating on projects.

83 Million Developers Use It 

It has been reported that in June this year, GitHub had over 83 million developers using its service and more than 200 million repositories. These included 28 million public repositories. A repository contains all of a user’s project’s files and each file’s revision history.

There are two-connected elements to GitHub – Git and Version Control:

1. Git 

The name ‘Git’ refers to an open-source distributed version control system (VCS), created by Linus Torvalds in 2005, the entire codebase and history of which is available on every developer’s computer. Over 80 per cent of developers use Git which can be used to work on software projects of any size. This is why it is the most popular version control software and is often used across the scale of start-ups, enterprise, and others.

2. Version Control 

Version control / source control refers to software tools that allows developers to track and manage changes to a software project’s code over time. Version control also enhances communication and collaboration between team members, and facilitates a continuous, simple way to develop software. It also acts as a safety net to protect source code from irreparable harm, thereby giving the development team the freedom to experiment without fear of causing damage or creating code conflicts.

GitHub 

Users can access projects on GitHub.com using the standard Git command-line interface, where all standard Git commands work with it. GitHub.com also allows users to browse public repositories on the site, and the site has social networking-like functions including feeds, followers, wikis (using wiki software called Gollum) and a social network graph showing how developers work on their versions (“forks”) of a repository, and what fork (and branch within that fork) is newest.

What Is GitLab? 

GitLab is a third-party tool that is the official supported tool of GitHub. It automates the builds, integration, and verification of a developer’s code. It provides SAST, DAST, code quality analysis, and pipelines that enable concurrent testing and parallel execution of code. This means that developer teams can get fast insights about their code, thereby saving time.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

For developers and teams working on software development GitHub and tools like GitLab provide a vital platform for managing and storing code and for collaborative working. For developers, other great advantages of GitHub are its easy-to-find guides/documentation, plus developers can showcase their work to companies and the public. It also integrates with common platforms like Amazon and Google Cloud. For software developers and those looking for good developers, GitHub is an extremely important platform that has provided the tools that have enabled the development of all kinds of software in a joined-up way.

News

Sustainability : Graphene For Greener Business?

In this article, we look at how super-strong Graphene can, and is being used to make projects and products more environmentally friendly.

What is Graphene? 

Graphene is a one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb-style hexagonal lattice. Not only is it the building-block of Graphite, but it is also the thinnest material known to man and is around 200 times stronger than steel! Graphene can be combined with other elements, including gases and metals to produce different materials with superior properties. Graphene was first isolated in 2004 by Andre Geim, and Konstantin Novoselov who won the Nobel prize in physics for doing so.

What Is It Normally Used For? 

This super-material is produced by many different companies in different types and grades e.g., high quality single-layer graphene or graphene flakes produced from graphite in large volumes. It has found many uses. For example:

– Sports equipment such as graphene-enhanced tennis rackets, and cycle helmets.

– Paints, electronics, phone screen coatings, flexible displays, solar panels and more.

– As an anti-corrosion covering for some car components, and sensors.

How Graphene Could Help To Make More Projects Environmentally Friendly 

One of the main ways that Graphene could help to make projects more environmentally friendly is to be added to other materials to improve their mechanical properties. For example:

– Adding only 0.1 per cent graphene to cement and aggregate, could mean using less materials for same performance. In addition to providing similar strengthening qualities to the concrete as adding carbon fibre, this could reduce the amount of concrete used in construction by 30 per cent, thereby potentially lowering global CO2 emissions by 2-3 per cent. Another benefit of this use of Graphene, due to its strength, could be to remove the requirement for reinforcing steel bars within the concrete in some applications.

– Improving the durability of paints and coatings, keeping rust at bay.

– Being used as a coating for Ford car parts to improve their strength and durability, reducing noise and vibration, and improving heat resistance. The addition of graphene has also made the parts (and the cars) lighter, which translates into less fuel being used and lower CO2 emissions over their lifetime.

What Does This Mean For Your Organisation? 

Even though Graphene was isolated 18 years ago, it is still early days in terms of finding its true potential and the breadth of its potential uses. One limiting factor may be the still high cost of producing Graphene. However, we live in a time where green and sustainable solutions must be found to halt global warming and Graphene’s ability to be mixed with other materials to make them stronger, more durable, lighter, and more resistant to heat looks like being its big advantage in terms of making projects more environmentally friendly.

News

Security Stop-Press : GitHub Users Targeted With Malicious Copies Of Repositories

Cyber security researchers have warned that GitHub users are being targeted with similarly named but malicious copies (containing malicious code) of legitimate repositories. The copied repositories are designed to siphon user environment variables, steal API keys, tokens, crypto keys, and execute arbitrary code on affected endpoints. The advice to developers / GitHub users is to be especially careful when getting code from the platform, and to pay attention to potential typo squats (URL hijacking / cybersquatting), repository copies, clones, or forks (copies of a Git repositories).