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Amazon Expands Grocery Service
October 28, 2014 by admin
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Amazon.com Inc is add more territory to its online grocery delivery program to Brooklyn’s well-heeled Park Slope neighborhood, giving the No. 1 U.S. online retailer a foothold in one of the wealthiest and densest markets in the United States.
The AmazonFresh program, which offers same-day or next-day delivery on more than 500,000 items including fresh and frozen groceries, will soon expand to other areas in Brooklyn.
The move is part of Amazon’s slow build-out of its “Fresh” program, targeting one of the largest retail sectors yet to be upended by online commerce. Amazon declined to say if it will expand to Manhattan or other parts of the New York metro area.
“Currently, we are offering AmazonFresh in Brooklyn and will continue being thoughtful and methodical in our expansion,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
Groceries have proven to be one of the toughest sectors for technology companies to manage, and Amazon faces competition from established companies like FreshDirect as well as fast-growing startups like Instacart.
But a successful foray in Park Slope could help Amazon cement customer loyalty and boost sales, especially among wealthy and middle-class families, analysts have said.
The top 10 to 20 percent of wealthiest Americans spend between 3 and 4 times more on food than the average American family, according to Bill Bishop, chief architect at Brick Meets Click, a consulting firm focused on retail technology.
“They are the sweetest of shoppers so anybody who attracts that business is taking the cream of the market,” Bishop said.
Amazon could also use its Fresh program to experiment with its own delivery service, analysts have said.
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Microsoft Seizes Botnet Servers
Microsoft Corp scored a win in efforts to fight online banking fraud, saying it had seized several servers used to steal login names and passwords, disrupting some of the world’s most sophisticated cybercrime rings.
The software giant said on Monday that its cybercrime investigation group also took legal and technical actions to fight notorious criminals who infect computers with a prevalent malicious software known as Zeus.
By recruiting computers into networks called botnets, Zeus logs the online activity of infected machines, providing criminals with credentials to access financial accounts.
“We’ve disrupted a critical source of money-making for digital fraudsters and cyber thieves, while gaining important information to help identify those responsible and better protect victims,” said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney for the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, which handled the investigation in collaboration with the financial industry.
Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit is worldwide team of investigators, lawyers, analysts and other specialists who fight cybercrime. A year ago they helped U.S. authorities take down a botnet known as Rustock that had been one of the biggest producers of spam e-mail. Some security experts estimated that in its heyday Rustock was responsible for half the spam in junk email bins.
New Exploit Exposed In Microsoft Windows
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It is being reported that hackers have been able to exploit holes in Windows and Microsoft new of the issue since January of 2011.The exploit deals with the Windows protocol handler in Windows for MHTML. Be advised the exploit can only be done if the user is running Internet Explorer. Apparently, hackers are using cross-site scripting attacks are intercepting and collecting peoples information, spoofing the content that is displayed to the browser, or interfering with the user’s browsing activities. Read More….