Many of the world's most popular apps have dubious terms of service, and exploit private data to make money, according to a cybersecurity expert. He says that by allowing data to be monitored by'big tech' companies, they can decide what we see online, and we become'defined by what computer algorithms decide for us.' Digital voice assistants such as Alexa are serious privacy risks, Gaffney says. The devices listen for'wake words' before operating but are listening to them all the time - and take snippets of your voice and process them in data centers far from your home. Gaffney says, 'I don't use them at all, but for those that do, I would not place them in the bathroom or bedroom. Though they wake on trigger words, they listen for a few seconds afterward.

Many of the world's most popular apps have dubious terms of service, and exploit private data to make money, according to a cybersecurity expert. He says that by allowing data to be monitored by'big tech' companies, they can decide what we see online, and we become'defined by what computer algorithms decide for us.' Below are Gaffney's three apps he would never use due to fears over privacy. Digital voice assistants such as Alexa are serious privacy risks, Gaffney says. The devices listen for'wake words' before operating but are listening to them all the time - and take snippets of your voice and process them in data centers far from your home. Gaffney says, 'I don't use them at all, but for those that do, I would not place them in the bathroom or bedroom.

Self-driving car spinoff Waymo says the technology behind its new autonomous vehicles is safe. Waymo's CEO says they will buy up to 20,000 electric vehicles from Jaguar Land Rover to help realize their vision for a robotic ride-hailing service. SAN FRANCISCO -- Later this year, Alphabet's self-driving car company, Waymo, plans an historic first: offering a self-driving, ride-hailing fleet to the general public in the city of Phoenix. After nearly a decade of building and testing its autonomous cars -- which just hit the 10 million-mile milestone -- the former Google Car Project is about to hit start on what eventually will be self-driving car services in a few of the 25 U.S. in which it currently tests. So what's it like to hand over your daily driving chores to a robot?

In 2005, retailers coined the term "Cyber Monday" to describe a surge in web purchases on the first work day after Thanksgiving by people who had spent the weekend browsing in stores. Now, increasing number of online shoppers, particularly those buying over their phones, are skipping the stores entirely. Shoppers didn't wait until Cyber Monday to do their online shopping with purchases setting retail records. Black Friday became the first day in retail history to drive over one billion dollars in mobile revenue and jumping 33% over last year according to Adobe. The digital solutions company based their findings on data from 22.6 billion visits to retail websites.

When the tech giant Microsoft unveiled its AI or artificial intelligence-powered bot on Twitter for a playful chat with the people in March, little did the tech giant realise that the twitterati would begin slamming the innocent bot with racist and offensive comments. Launched as an experiment in "conversational understanding" and to engage people through "casual and playful conversation", Tay was soon taken off Twitter by Microsoft engineers. This was a soft experiment. But what if you can interact with a "chatbot" and send the AI-powered machine your financial requirements like you would text to your banker or chartered accountant in the near future? Facebook wants this to happen and at its F8 global developer conference in April, the social networking giant unveiled AI bots right into its popular messaging app Messenger -- to allow 900 million monthly active users on Messenger to interact with businesses and get updates from them.