Category:

Technology

Govt plans chat bot like Alexa, Google Voice to deliver public services

“The platform should be able to provide assistance with general tasks, including but not limited to availing services of government and available on the UMANG platform such as registration, login, reset password, department service relation information, event, (and) new launch…etc,” the request for proposal document said.

The chatbot should be able to turn speech into a textual input and turn text into speech.

read more

Aviation deaths rise worldwide in 2020 even as fatal incidents, flights fall

Large commercial airplanes had 0.27 fatal accidents per million flights in 2020, To70 said, or one fatal crash every 3.7 million flights — up from 0.18 fatal accidents per million flights in 2019.

The decline in crashes came amid a sharp decline in flights due to the coronavirus pandemic. Flightradar24 reported commercial flights it tracked worldwide in 2020 fell 42% to 24.4 million.

More than half of all deaths in the To70 review were the 176 people killed in January 2020 when a Ukrainian plane was shot down in Iranian airspace.

read more

RBI comes up with Digital Payments Index

The RBI-DPI comprises of five broad parameters that enable measurement of deepening and penetration of digital payments in the country over different time periods.

The parameters are payment enablers (weight 25 per cent), payment infrastructure–demand-side factors (10 per cent), payment infrastructure – supply-side factors (15 per cent), payment performance (45 per cent) and consumer centricity (5 per cent).

read more

Post Office Savings Bank likely to be interconnected with other banks by April

“Besides making services digitally accessible to people, we are focussing on doorstep delivery of services. This year we remitted Rs 900 crore money through around 85 lakh transactions and verified 3 lakh pensioners on their doorstep,” Department of Posts Secretary Pradipta Kumar Bisoi said.

read more

US court shuts down fraud scheme targeting elderly Americans via India-based call centers

The pop-up messages fraudulently claimed that the consumer’s computer was infected by a virus, purported to run a scan of the consumer’s computer, falsely confirmed the presence of a virus and malware, and then provided a toll-free number to call for assistance.

The Justice Department said that when victims called the toll-free number, they were connected to India-based call centers participating in the fraud scheme.

Call center workers asked victims to give them remote access to their computers and told victims that they detected viruses or other malware on their computers.

Eventually, the call center workers would falsely diagnose non-existent problems and ask victims to pay hundreds of dollars for unnecessary services and software.

read more

Chinese regulators reviewing Ant Group’s equity investments: Report

Reuters reported in early December that Ant was considering selling its 30% stake in Indian digital payment processor Paytm amid tensions between the two Asian neighbors and a toughening competitive landscape.

Paytm and Ant had at that time said the information was incorrect. Ant referred Reuters to its previous statement while Paytm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

read more

UK insurer sells price comparison unit to Zoopla in $685 million deal

Under the deal, a unit of ZPG Ltd. will acquire Admiral’s Penguin Portals Group, which operates online platforms that help consumers compare the cost of services such as insurance products, mortgages, energy supplies and Internet connections. ZPG, which was bought by U.S. private-equity firm Silver Lake in 2018, will add brands including Confused.com and Rastreator.com to its existing platforms including Zoopla and Uswitch.

read more

2021 will witness lot of regulatory efforts channelled towards virtual assets: SBI official

” The use of crowdfunding websites, although not entirely new, create an additional risk as these are specially designed to solicit funding and can be misused for terror financing,” he said.

Varma also noted that crypto currencies and its potential means to finance terrorism is a significant threat especially when is anonymous in nature.

read more