Shop online? Government wants to know all your shopping details

| Kirtika Suneja | ET Bureau | Jun 13, 2017, 14:41 IST

The national expenditure survey will cover almost 1.2 lakh househ... Read More

NEW DELHI: Shop online? The government of India (GoI) wants to know the details. Starting next month, government surveys on expenditure will, for the first time, ask questions on ecommerce spending habits.

The next consumer expenditure survey, an annual nationwide exercise carried out by the National Sample Survey Organisation, which comes under the statistics ministry, starts in July and will continue till June 2018. The survey provides household level data on spending patterns across commodity and service categories in both urban and rural areas.

8 free tools to protect yourself from ransomware that is crippling businesses worldwide

Antivirus software is a continually evolving market. It has to be both proactive and reactive to mitigate new and existing threats. That said, no antivirus is 100% secure and threats are getting increasingly malicious.

One of the biggest issues faced by home users, businesses and enterprises alike is ransomware. And while a ransomware infection is notoriously difficult to fight, it isn’t impossible to deal with.

Here are 8 tools you can use to beat ransomware.

You don’t always have to pay for antivirus software, as there are numerous good options available for free. They generally don’t have the same integrated anti-ransomware features like Bitdefender, but are still better than an unsecured system.

If you’re talking free antivirus, you need to take a look at Avast. It hits many important antivirus boxes including active malware scanning, behaviour-based detection, malicious URL-blocking, and much more.

Cybereason’s RansomFree is a free ransomware protection tool designed to work alongside your existing security solution. It uses heuristic detection to asses any unexpected or unusual behavioural patterns, then eliminates anything deemed malicious.

In addition, RansomFree deploys strategically-placed bait files in locations ransomware often begins its encryption process. RansomFree monitors the bait file for unusual interactions and stops ransomware before it can continue its encryption.

Malwarebytes has long been a trusted name in the security world. They bought-out the popular CryptoMonitor anti-ransomware tool and re-released it several months later. While it is considered a beta product, Malwarebytes Anti-Ransomware is a full-fledged behavioural-detection package that has performed well in multiple tests. It is lightweight, too.

You might be thinking, “I have Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, so why do I need this?” Well, the idea is to create a multi-layered defence, where each layer plays a specific role in keeping your computer safe.

Duplicati is a free and open-source tool that lets you create and store encrypted backups online. It works with standard protocols like FTP, SSH and WebDAV, as well as other cloud services like Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive.

Select individual files and folders to backup, or schedule a backup at a time suiting you. Duplicati features a web interface that can be configured to run almost anywhere, including your smartphone or a headless server.

Cobian Backup is now in its eleventh iteration. It remains a very popular offline backup tool with an easy-to-navigate UI. Cobian features file encryption, decryption, an encoder, a translator and more. The backups can be scheduled using a wide range of filters, as well as specific event triggers.

Having a long and somewhat weird name, Trend Micro Lock Screen Ransomware Screen Unlocker does exactly what it says. It works in two different scenarios.

In the first scenario, the tool is installed using a special keyboard sequence after booting into Safe Mode. The screen unlock tool also offers a system scan and clean, followed by a reboot.

In the second scenario, Safe Mode is impossible to access. The screen unlock tool can be loaded onto a USB drive using an uninfected computer. It is then loaded during the boot process.

The Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) provides an extra defence layer for Windows users. It protects against vulnerabilities found in software using a variety of mitigation tactics. It is no guarantee against software being exploited, but does offer an additional layer an exploit author must navigate.

That said, EMET isn’t a magic wand. It is designed to disrupt common exploits. Unfortunately, new exploits are found and used all the time. Furthermore, because EMET isn’t an integrated security product, a serious hacker is likely to be aware of ways to mitigate this extra security layer.

Kaspersky Anti-Ransomware Tool really focuses more on SMBs than home users. It is free and works like the other ransomware blockers mentioned earlier. The tool runs in the background of your system, monitoring behaviour and patterns, and blocking malicious activity when it arises.

(Credit: MakeUseOf)

Officials involved in the exercise, who spoke off record, said government data managers now reckon ecommerce spend is beginning to hit critical mass and should be part of the national economic data base.

India’s ecommerce sector was estimated to be $14.5 billion in 2016, according a study by Red-Seeer Consulting. This is small compared to India’s total retail spending of $750 billion. But online commerce is expected to grow rapidly.

US-based market research company Forrester expects around one-fifth of total retail sales to take place online by 2021 in Asia Pacific. China is currently the largest online retail market in Asia, but India is the fastestgrowing online retail market globally.

The national expenditure survey will cover almost 1.2 lakh households across 5,000 urban blocks and 7,000 villages. It will provide state level data as well.

Government data managers also want to see whether online prices can impact inflation.

Although the size and scope of online commerce in India is currently not big enough to influence price data economy-wide, a survey now will indicate how price indices may get impacted by online retail’s pricing policies in the future, officials said.

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