TecQ: Budget 2019, Amazon’s Data Secrets, Net Outages & More

TecQ is our weekly round up of the top technology stories relevant to India from across the world.

Not just Cloudflare, but even social media sites Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp faced issues this week.

(Photo: iStock)

TecQ is our weekly round-up of the top tech stories.

Budget 2019: You Don’t Have to Pay Extra for Mobile & Card Payment

Mobile payments get further boost from the Indian government.(Photo: iStockphoto)

While Budget 2019 wasn’t very encouraging for the upper middle class segment, it did promise better days with respect to paying for goods and services digitally. People have already been given big incentives (in the form of cashbacks) to pay via mobile apps, online banking or card payments.

But now, the government is hoping to convert more cash payers into digital savvy consumers. The government has said that no merchant discount rate (or that extra 2 percent levy for digital transactions) can be charged by companies valued over Rs 50 crore.

Click here for more announcements from the Budget 2019.

Amazon Confirms it Stores Alexa Data Even if Users Delete Them

Amazon has admitted that it stores Alexa voice data even after a user deletes them.(Photo: iStock)

Amazon on Thursday, 4 July, admitted that it doesn’t always delete the stored data that it has obtained through voice interactions with the company’s artificial assistant Alexa, even after the user wipes out audio files from their account.

The company admitted to it in its letter to Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), dated 28 June. In its letter, Amazon confirmed some of these allegations, saying that it does, in fact retain users’ voice recordings and transcripts until the customer chooses to delete them, according to a report in The Verge.

More details here.

FB, Instagram, WhatsApp Face Media-Download Issue

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users face outage issues.(Photo: AP)

Earlier this week, while the chat interface in case of WhatsApp and posts in case of Instagram and Facebook were working properly, features such as stories and the transfer and download of media files appeared to be hampered. Some users even reported posts on Instagram not working properly.

This problem was reported across India, Europe, the USA and Africa. Some users on Twitter and other platforms even reported Twitter direct messages not working.

Track how the entire episode unfolded here.

‘Millions’ of Websites Go Down As Cloudflare Suffers Outage

Major websites around the world are down due to Cloudflare outage.(Photo: iStock)

Cloud computing services company, Cloudflare suffered an outage which has resulted in millions of websites going down across the world.

The company provides computing and website security services to a lot of websites across the globe which is why millions of websites were showing the “502 Bad Gateway” error. Cloudflare later issued a statement saying that it was not an attack as being claimed by many.

For more details on why the outage occurred, click here.

The Best Smartphone Under Rs 30,000? Here Are A Few You Can Try

The Redmi Note 7 (left) against the LG W30 (middle) and the Realme 3 (right).(Photo: The Quint)

Flagship smartphone makers like Samsung and LG have been forced to switch focus toward the budget segment of the Indian market because even they sensed that the real action is there. LG too has launched a series of budget phones — particularly the LG W30 — which takes on the likes of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 and the Realme 3.

Though LG might be playing the price game right, does it also ace the spec game? And is it worth spending Rs 9,999 on an LG phone or should you take the conventional path of buying a Chinese phone?

Here’s a detailed comparison for you.