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We spend so much of our lives online but have we thought about what will happen to our digital trails and assets when we die?
It is a question that came up for husband-and-wife content creators Muhammad Alif Ramli and Liyana Syahirah Ismail Johari.
Content creators Liyana Syahirah Ismail Johari and Muhammad Alif Ramli documented their journey in seeking help to manage digital assets.
They realise, for example, if no clear instructions are left behind, not knowing the passwords or about dormant accounts on long-forgotten platforms can pose problems.
It is especially important, given Mr Alif’s medical history.
When Mr Alif was 10, he was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft tissue cancer. He underwent multiple chemotherapy cycles and nine surgical operations, which the 28-year-old described as a “close-to-death experience”, before he recovered.
In the fourth episode of The Straits Times’ docuseries Let’s Talk About Death, Mr Alif and Ms Liyana, 27, seek help from experts to consolidate their digital assets.
They speak to a cyber security expert to find out how to best manage their passwords. They also talk to a lawyer who specialises in digital assets to look into protecting their social media accounts, which may generate revenue in the future.
Finally, Mr Alif and Ms Liyana also attempt to write their wills with the help of artificial intelligence tools, with the key question being: Will they be valid under syariah law?
Let’s Talk About Death is a five-episode docuseries that follows several millennials and their loved ones as they navigate end-of-life planning, and it starts honest conversations about death and dying well.
MARYLAND – The director of the US National Security Agency on Nov 20 urged the private sector to take swift, collective action to share key details about breaches they have suffered at the hands of Chinese hackers who have infiltrated US telecommunications.
General Timothy Haugh, a four-star Air Force general who leads the NSA and Cyber Command, told Bloomberg News at the National Security Innovation Forum in Washington that public disclosure would help find and oust the hackers, as the US continues to try to understand a new spate of damaging mass breaches.
In calling for more disclosure, General Haugh didn’t identity specific companies.
General Haugh said he wants to provide a public “hunt guide” so cybersecurity professionals and companies can search out the hackers and eradicate them from telecommunications networks.
“The ultimate goal would be to be able to lay bare exactly what happened in ways that allow us to better posture as a nation and for our allies to be better postured,” he said, adding the US is reliant on industry to share insights into what happened on their own networks.
US authorities have confirmed Chinese hackers have infiltrated US telecommunications in what Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, this week described as a “sprawling and catastrophic” infiltration. AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc and T-Mobile are among those targeted.
Through those intrusions, the hackers targeted communications of a “limited number” of people in politics and government, US officials have said.
They include Vice-President Kamala Harris’ staff, president-elect Donald Trump and vice-president-elect JD Vance, as well as staffers for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, according to Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley.
Representatives of the Chinese government have denied the allegations.
China is “doing this on a scale en masse and as a national effort,” General Haugh said.
The US experience and response is more disjointed, given the limited reach of different law enforcement agencies and the dependence on information from the private sector. There are multiple investigations underway associated with the telecommunications breaches, he said.
“Everybody is in a slightly different place as it relates to Salt Typhoon,” General Haugh said, referring to Microsoft Corporation’s name for the group believed to be behind the telecommunications breaches.
Two cybersecurity experts who requested anonymity to speak freely have privately complained about the lack of information shared that could otherwise help them and others understand, find and tackle the hacks.
Detailed public disclosures would mean that even if some companies haven’t seen the intrusions yet, “they can begin to put countermeasures in place,” General Haugh said. It would also help other nations uncover and root it out too, General Haugh said.
“It’s going to take collective work,” he said, adding the “speed” with which everyone collaborates is a key step. BLOOMBERG
LONDON – Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) is facing 101 phone-hacking lawsuits from public figures including actors Kate Winslet, Sean Bean and Gillian Anderson and the estate of late Australian cricketer Shane Warne, London’s High Court heard on Nov 20.
The publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People tabloids – which is owned by Reach – has been entangled in litigation for more than a decade over alleged phone hacking and other unlawful information gathering.
MGN had accepted that some unlawful information gathering took place at its newspapers in the early 2000s, before Prince Harry and three others went to trial in 2023.
Harry, the younger son of King Charles, was awarded £140,600 (around S$238,000) after London’s High Court ruled the prince had been targeted by MGN journalists – the biggest win yet in his “mission” to purge the British press.
He accepted substantial damages from MGN to settle the remainder of his lawsuit, but vowed his mission would continue and a trial of his separate case against Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm is due to begin in January.
When Harry largely won his case in December 2023, Reach also claimed victory as two other claimants’ cases were rejected as having been brought too late.
The company said the ruling meant cases brought after October 2020 were “likely to be dismissed other than where exceptional circumstances apply”.
MGN is, however, currently facing a total of 101 lawsuits brought by a number of people, including Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, the claimants’ lawyers said at a hearing on Nov 20.
The publisher asked for a trial to be heard in late 2025 to decide whether a sample of the 101 cases were brought too late, arguing it would likely prompt a settlement of the cases.
Judge Timothy Fancourt ruled that such a trial would accelerate other cases being resolved and said it was likely to take place in November 2025. REUTERS
WASHINGTON – Chinese hackers who tapped into Verizon’s system targeted phones used by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, the New York Times reported on Oct 25, citing people familiar with the matter.
The newspaper said investigators were working to determine what communications, if any, were taken.
The Trump campaign was made aware this week that Trump and Mr Vance were among a number of people inside and outside of government whose phone numbers were targeted through the infiltration of Verizon phone systems, it added.
The campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump campaign was hacked earlier this year. The US Justice Department charged three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps with the hack and trying to disrupt the Nov 5 election. REUTERS
It is a sad but undeniable truth that some of the world’s most profitable products are terrible. That lightbulb realisation dawned on me when I worked on the Financial Times’ Lex column and learnt that the most successful pharmaceutical drugs – for manufacturers if not patients – were those that alleviated symptoms but did not cure the complaint. Eliminate the problem and you kill demand. Where is the financial incentive in that?
Lightbulbs, curiously enough, are another example of the same phenomenon. Why develop everlasting lightbulbs (the Centennial Bulb has been in continuous operation in a Californian fire station since 1901) when you can sell ones that blow periodically? Economic theory suggests that these inefficiencies should be competed away. Real life does not always work that way.
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