Technology - Google News

These 8 companies are offering special discounts for teachers and students right now - NJ.com
Apple already scans iCloud Mail for CSAM, but not iCloud Photos - 9to5Mac
Aliens: Fireteam Elite Review - IGN

These 8 companies are offering special discounts for teachers and students right now - NJ.com

Posted: 22 Aug 2021 04:05 PM PDT

Many popular companies are offering discounts across the board for teachers and students, just in time for the new school year to begin.

You can score discounts on everything from tech, clothing, shoes and even mattresses. One notable deal is 15% off a Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+, along with free earbuds included in the purchase.

Here's a roundup of retailers offering discounts to teachers and students:

The shoe brand known for its colorful clogs is offering teachers 15% off on all full-priced styles. Verify your teacher status with SheerID, then an instant coupon code will be applied at checkout.

Here are some styles to shop:

The sportswear brandis currently offering a 20% off discount on all purchases for teachers, first responders and military members.

To receive the discount, teachers, first responders and military members need to click the green "verify with ID.me" button after navigating to the checkout screen on Under Armour's website.

Under Armour also has ongoing deals at its online outlet store, which is filled with workout gear and the popular "Sportsmask."

The tech-giant is currently offering an extra 15% off on all purchases for teachers and students.

The offer runs through Oct. 3. It is valid on laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other tech and electronics.

To register for the Samsung Education Discount Program, students and teachers need to sign up for a Samsung account using a school email address or school ID verified by ID.me.

Samsung is also currently offering deals on the following items:

College students and teachers get 20% off through Aug. 29 with proof of a college ID at checkout. Verify your status here.

You can also find lounge styles for up to 40% off, along with kid's clothing for 30% off.

The sportswear brand is offering teachers, medical professionals, first responders, nurses and military members an exclusive 30% off discount. Verify your status here.

College students and teachers, along with military members, nurses and first responders get a 25% off discount. Verify your status using ID.me to receive the promo code.

You can also find plenty of recently reduced shoes on sale right now:

Teachers and students get 10% off with a school-issued ID at checkout that you can verify here.

The mattress brand is also in the middle of an early Labor Day sale. You can find mattress for up to $350 off.

The environmentally-friendly mattress brand is offering teachers a 5% discount. While checking out, click the green "verify with ID.me" button to log in or set up an account, which will confirm you're eligible.

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Nicolette Accardi can be reached at naccardi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter: @N_Accardi. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips

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Apple already scans iCloud Mail for CSAM, but not iCloud Photos - 9to5Mac

Posted: 23 Aug 2021 04:43 AM PDT

Apple has confirmed to me that it already scans iCloud Mail for CSAM, and has been doing so since 2019. It has not, however, been scanning iCloud Photos or iCloud backups.

The clarification followed me querying a rather odd statement by the company's anti-fraud chief: that Apple was "the greatest platform for distributing child porn." That immediately raised the question: If the company wasn't scanning iCloud photos, how could it know this?

There are also a couple of other clues that Apple had to have been doing some kind of CSAM scanning. An archived version of Apple's child safety page said this (emphasis ours):

Apple is dedicated to protecting children throughout our ecosystem wherever our products are used, and we continue to support innovation in this space. We have developed robust protections at all levels of our software platform and throughout our supply chain. As part of this commitment, Apple uses image matching technology to help find and report child exploitation. Much like spam filters in email, our systems use electronic signatures to find suspected child exploitation. We validate each match with individual review. Accounts with child exploitation content violate our terms and conditions of service, and any accounts we find with this material will be disabled.

Additionally, the company's chief privacy officer said the same thing back in January 2020:

Jane Horvath, Apple's chief privacy officer, said at a tech conference that the company uses screening technology to look for the illegal images. The company says it disables accounts if Apple finds evidence of child exploitation material, although it does not specify how it discovers it.

Apple wouldn't comment on Friedman's quote, but they did tell me that the company has never scanned iCloud Photos.

Apple scans iCloud Mail

However, Apple confirmed to me that it has been scanning outgoing and incoming iCloud Mail for CSAM attachments since 2019. Email is not encrypted, so scanning attachments as mail passes through Apple servers would be a trivial task.

Apple also indicated that it was doing some limited scanning of other data, but would not tell me what that was, except to suggest that it was on a tiny scale. It did tell me that the "other data" does not include iCloud backups.

Although Friedman's statement sounds definitive – like it's based on hard data – it's now looking likely that it wasn't. It's our understanding that the total number of reports Apple makes to CSAM each year is measured in the hundreds, meaning that email scanning would not provide any kind of evidence of a large-scale problem on Apple servers.

The explanation probably lays in the fact that other cloud services were scanning photos for CSAM, and Apple wasn't. If other services were disabling accounts for uploading CSAM, and iCloud Photos wasn't (because the company wasn't scanning there), then the logical inference would be that more CSAM exists on Apple's platform than anywhere else. Friedman was probably doing nothing more than reaching that conclusion.

The controversy over Apple's CSAM plans continues, with two Princeton academics stating that they prototyped a scanning system based on exactly the same approach as Apple, but abandoned the work due to the risk of governmental misuse.

HT to Jesse Hollington for the email discussion that led me to contact Apple

Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: