Facebook Takes A Step To Enter The Banking Business

Facebook has contacted JPMorgan, Citi and Wells Fargo to make game slot online offers to its customers, according to ‘The WallStreet Journal’.

Facebook’s entry into the banking business could approach. The social network, which four months ago suffered a scandal over the filtration of user data, has asked large US banks to share detailed financial information about their customers.

Among the information requested by the company headed by Mark Zuckerberg are data on credit card transactions and current account balances, according to the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

In what seems like another step towards the launch of banking services by Facebook, last year the social media giant contacted entities such as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and US Bancorp to discuss potential offers for customers of the entities available through Facebook Messenger. According to the aforementioned newspaper, one of the large banks contacted would have withdrawn from the talks due to privacy concerns.

“Facebook has talked about a function that would allow users to check the balance of their accounts,” the sources consulted told the newspaper. As part of the proposed agreements, Facebook asked the entities for information on where their users are buying outside of purchases made through Facebook Messenger.

Messenger has 1.3 billion active users per month, according to Facebook’s director of operations, Sheryl Sandberg, during the presentation of the second quarter accounts.

The social network would have indicated to the entities that this information about customers could be used to offer services that would lead them to spend more time using Messenger. The news pleased investors, and Facebook rose 3.5% yesterday mid-session.

Facebook assured banks that it would not use the data for advertising or for sharing. “We do not use purchasing data from banks or credit card companies for advertising,” said social network spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana, who added that Facebook “has no special relationships, or partnerships or contracts with banks or card companies. Credit to use customer data for advertising purposes. “

“Like many other companies, we routinely talk to financial institutions about how we can improve people’s business experiences,” Diana added, stressing that an essential part of these efforts is to keep people’s information secure.

Other technology companies such as Alphabet or Amazon have also asked banks to share this kind of data if they decide to collaborate with them to offer basic banking services through applications such as Google Assistant and Alexa.

In April this year, Facebook suffered the biggest crisis in its history by leaking data from thousands of users to Cambridge Analytics, a company linked to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and the campaign in favour of Brexit. This scandal forced Facebook to improve data protection.

Do not forget, in addition to the enormous advantages that Facebook has to join the world of finance, that just over four months ago the social network suffered the leak of data from thousands of users to a company linked to the campaign to in favour of Brexit and the presidential race of Donald Trump -Cambridge Analytics-, which was the biggest crisis in its history.

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Five Trends In The Use Of Technology In Education In Developing Countries

Much of what we read and hear about ‘emerging trends’ regarding the use of technology in education is mostly aimed at audiences in industrialized countries, or for richer urban areas in other parts of the world and is based on a measure important in observations about what is happening in those places.

  1. Tablets, tablets, tablets

While five years ago there was much (new) enthusiasm about low-cost laptops for students in so-called ‘developing countries’, in 2012 much of the interest that such programs used to be is being replaced by large-scale initiatives to put tablets (tablets) in the hands of the students. While in industrialized countries there are many iPads in educational projects, in developing nations most of the discussions focus on the use of lower-cost Android tablets or simple e-book readers.. There are large projects, such as those in Russia, Turkey and Thailand, where plans to buy hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions of low-cost tablets, are now underway and, we hope, represent the forefront of a great wave of activity in this sense.

  1. My learning network is a social network

One of the uses of ICTs whose use is very popular among students and teachers in developing countries is social networks (especially Facebook). We find few cases in which educational systems take advantage of this systematically (apart from isolated situations proposed by somewhat atypical educators) and, in fact, many educational systems filter the use of social networks in their schools.

  1. Lost and found in translation

It may be true, as an English author of nineteenth-century travel guides once said, that “translation is, at best, an echo.” Where silence is the rule, however, such sounds, no matter how weak, may be very welcome. Efforts to translate the content of the Khan Academy or make use of massive outsourcing of the translations of the popular TED Conferencesthey are representative of a trend that we see that has generated interest: translate the available digital learning materials into other languages.

  1. The big firewall (firewall) of … everything

While rhetoric may not harmonize with action in most cases, there seems to be an increasing recognition of those who formulate educational policies in developing countries of the important role schools play in digital security.and in matters of digital ethics. Where there is a lot of action is in the use of a variety of filter tools to help keep ‘bad content’ out of school networks (which sometimes complicate the work of teachers and students who have blocked access to content relevant educational because the filters are too wide).

  1. With the support of the school management

If you have spent tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars to put computers in schools, train teachers and digitize the content, spending a tiny part of that amount to do community promotion to school leaders can help remove many barriers for the productive realization of the potential advantages of such investments.

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