Revealed: AI is being used by benefits claimants to maximise handouts amid fears welfare budget could hit £1billion by 2030
Programmes such as OpenAI 's ChatGPT are being used to generate answers and write forms for claimants - contributing to a welfare budget which is predicted to hit £100 billion a year by 2030.
TALK OF THE TOWN: James Corden has a dust-up with neighbours over rubbish idea for bins
James Corden has laid down paving slabs outside his £11.5 million North London mansion so he has somewhere to store his bins, but neighbours slammed the work as 'unsightly'
Google Begins Aggresively Using the Law To Stop Text Message Scams
"Google is going to court to help put an end to, or at least limit, the prevalence of phishing scams over text message," reports BGR:
Google said it's bringing suit against Lighthouse, an impressively large operation that allegedly provides tools customers can buy to set up their own specialized phishing scams. All told, Google estimates that Lighthouse-affiliated scams in the U.S. have stolen anywhere between 12.7 million and 115 million credit cards. "Bad actors built Lighthouse as a phishing-as-a-service kit to generate and deploy massive SMS phishing attacks," Google notes. "These attacks exploit established brands like E-Z Pass to steal people's financial information."
Google's legal action is comprehensive and is intent on completely dismantling Lighthouse's operations. The search giant is bringing claims under RICO, the Lanham Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). RICO, which often comes up in movies and television shows, allows authorities to treat Lighthouse's phishing operation as a broad criminal enterprise as opposed to isolated scams. By using RICO, Google also expands the list of individuals who can be found liable, whether it be the people who started Lighthouse, the people who run it, or even unaffiliated customers who used the company's services. The Lanham Act, for those unaware, targets malicious actors who misappropriate well-known company trademarks in order to confuse consumers. This Lanham Act comes into play because many phishing scams masquerade as legitimate messages from companies like Amazon and FedEx. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, meanwhile, is relevant because scammers typically use stolen credentials to gain unauthorized access to financial systems, something the CFAA is designed to target...
The fact that Google is invoking all three of the acts above underscores how serious the company is about putting a stop to SMS-based scams. By using all three, Google's legal attack is more potent and also expands the range of available remedies to include civil damages and criminal penalties. In short, Google isn't merely trying to win a legal case; it's aiming to emphatically and permanently stop Lighthouse in its tracks.
Getting even more aggressive, Google says it's also working with the U.S. Congress to pass new anti-scammer legislation, and endorsed these three new bipartisan bills:
The Scam Compound Accountability and Mobilization (SCAM) Act "would develop a national strategy to counter scam compounds, enhance sanctions and support survivors of human trafficking within these compounds."
The Foreign Robocall Elimination Act "would establish a taskforce focused on how to best block foreign-originated illegal robocalls before they ever reach American consumers."
The Guarding Unprotected Aging Retirees from Deception (GUARD) Act "would empower state and local law enforcement by enabling them to utilize federal grant funding to investigate financial fraud and scams specifically targeting retirees. "
Thanks to Slashdot reader anderzole for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Lauryn Goodman 'left terrified after being harassed by stalker in late night phone calls as she calls in police and hires private security for her home'
Lauryn Goodman has been 'forced to call in police after being left terrified by a campaign of phone harassment'.
Could YOU get cancer from your supermarket shop? As a terrifying study links our diets to bowel cancer, the swaps you need to make to keep you and your family safe
An investigation into the contents of a weekly shopping basket has found that 61.5 per cent of what we're buying counts as ultra-processed food, or UPF.
Andrew is 'good fun', Jeffrey Epstein told friend in Davos emails as they discussed flirting with women
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was in Davos to promote British interests when the email exchange between Jeffrey Epstein and Boris Nikolic took place in January 2010
Lottery conman who used a fake ticket to steal £2.5million before being jailed pays back almost £1million - but the rest is still outstanding
Rapist conman Edward Putman, 59, was jailed for nine years for the scam he cooked up in 2009 with Lottery insider Giles Knibbs to steal £2.5million - but today £1.25m is still missing.
The cruellest twist of JFK's assassination revealed in new intimate account of his final days... and Jackie's eerie 3am premonition the night before he died
'They appeared to be such a loving couple with not a care in the world,' said Sancy Newman - all the more striking because of long-standing problems in the Kennedy marriage.
Mosque that blocked women over 12 from taking part in charity run forced to lift 'regressive' ban
The 5km event held in East London last month was billed as 'inclusive' and 'family-friendly' but organisers insisted that female teenagers and women were forbidden from joining in
King Charles donates 'over £50,000' to repair the roof of his late mother's favourite church
The Grade Two listed church is on the Royal Sandringham Estate, and the late Queen would often attend Sunday services at the chapel before her death in September 2022.
MATT GOODWIN: Don't be fooled ...the Danish immigration crackdown that Labour wants to emulate has already been foiled by human rights judges
MATT GOODWIN: Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will announce a suite of initiatives, which she will claim will drastically reduce illegal migration without requiring Britain to leave the ECHR
How a cockatoo who sings songs from Hamilton on TikTok is fuelling a cruel trade in stolen and smuggled exotic birds... as revealed by JANE FRYER
The thieves moved stealthily, under cover of darkness, well prepared and with a hit list: 40 budgies, 20 canaries, two cockatiels, three Bourke parakeets and two parrots.
A Quantum Error Correction Breakthrough?
The dream of quantum computers has been hampered by the challenge of error correction, writes the Harvard Gazette, since qubits "are inherently susceptible to slipping out of their quantum states and losing their encoded information."
But in a newly-published paper, a research team "combined various methods to create complex circuits with dozens of error correction layers" that "suppresses errors below a critical threshold — the point where adding qubits further reduces errors rather than increasing them."
"For the first time, we combined all essential elements for a scalable, error-corrected quantum computation in an integrated architecture," said Mikhail Lukin, co-director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative, Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor, and senior author of the new paper. "These experiments — by several measures the most advanced that have been done on any quantum platform to date — create the scientific foundation for practical large-scale quantum computation..."
"There are still a lot of technical challenges remaining to get to very large-scale computer with millions of qubits, but this is the first time we have an architecture that is conceptually scalable," said lead author Dolev Bluvstein, Ph.D. '25, who did the research during his graduate studies at Harvard and is now an assistant professor at Caltech. "It's going to take a lot of effort and technical development, but it's becoming clear that we can build fault-tolerant quantum computers...."
Hartmut Neven, vice president of engineering at the Google Quantum AI team, said the new paper came amid an "incredibly exciting" race between qubit platforms. "This work represents a significant advance toward our shared goal of building a large-scale, useful quantum computer," he said... With recent advances, Lukin believes the core elements for building quantum computers are falling into place. "This big dream that many of us had for several decades, for the first time, is really in direct sight," he said.
"In theory, a system of 300 quantum bits can store more information than the number of particles in the known universe..." the article points out.
"The new paper represents an important advance in a three-decade pursuit of quantum error correction."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The one that got away! Tiger Woods in deep conversation with ex-wife as they watch son Charlie take home trophy at golf tourney
The youngster clearly showed no sign of buckling under the pressure of having his iconic golfing dad walking around the course with him at the Mission Inn Resort in Howey-in-the Hills.
Sydney Sweeney steps out in a chic mini dress as she shrugs off criticism after disastrous Christy movie flop amid growing backlash
Sydney Sweeney shrugged off criticism surrounding her disastrous Christy movie flop, as she stepped out in a chic mini dress on Saturday.
The most sensational celebrity family feuds REVEALED as Holly Ramsay and Adam Peaty BAN his mother from their wedding
Away from the glitzy red carpets and flashing lights celebrities have their own personal lives with many feuding with their family members.
Pennies could be worth up to $5 million after final coins were minted this week
The US Mint struck the final batch of circulating pennies this week, marking the end of 232 years of production and triggering a collector frenzy over rare omega-marked coins expected to fetch millions.
Around 200 nurses back calls for independent review into Lucy Letby's case
Medical staff from across the UK met in Sheffield to discuss mounting fears that Lucy Letby is a victim of a grave miscarriage of justice.
Britain's police state unmasked: Map reveals shocking numbers clapped in handcuffs over 'offensive' social media posts
Britain's police state can today be unmasked as the Daily Mail can reveal which forces have made the most arrests for 'offensive' posts on social media.
Strictly's latest dance-off results 'leak online DURING secret filming despite strict security measures'
Strictly's latest dance-off results have been leaked online while cameras were still rolling at the BBC studios in Elstree on Saturday.