Weekly Tech Round-Up
This week: the true scale of the TfL cyber-attack emerges, a UK first in long-distance robotic surgery, Amazon recovers from a major outage, an e-reader app pick, and a reminder to stay careful when gaming online.
🚇 TfL Hack Affected Around 10 Million People
Around 10 million people had their data stolen when Transport for London (TfL) was hacked in 2024, making it one of the biggest hacks in British history.
At the time, the organisation only disclosed that “some” customers had been affected, but it has now confirmed that millions of people had their personal data taken.
The cyber-attack, carried out by hackers from the so-called Scattered Spider crime group, breached TfL’s internal computer systems, disrupted online services, and caused £39m in damages.
Source: BBC News
🤖 UK’s First Long-Distance Robotic Operation Performed from London
A surgeon in London says he has performed the UK’s first long-distance robotic operation on a patient located 1,500 miles (2,400km) away in Gibraltar.
Leading robotic urological surgeon Professor Prokar Dasgupta said it felt “almost as if I was there” as he carried out a prostate removal on Paul Buxton.
The 62-year-old cancer patient said it had been a “no-brainer” to take part and become “part of medical history”.
It is hoped remote robotic surgery could spare future patients the vast expense and inconvenience of travelling for treatment, while also helping deliver better healthcare in more remote locations.
Source: BBC News
🛒 Amazon Login and Checkout Issues Resolved
Amazon.com says issues affecting logging in and checking out have now been fixed.
For more than three hours, Downdetector showed a sizeable spike in reports from users experiencing problems with checkout, search, and login across both the website and mobile apps.
Users reported being repeatedly logged out of their accounts when trying to check out or load their cart, while even the parts of Amazon.com that remained accessible appeared to be loading slowly.
An Amazon spokesperson told The Verge that the issues are now resolved.
Source: The Verge
📚 App of the Week: Seriatim Reader
This week’s app of the week is Seriatim Reader.
It is an e-reader app that offers compatibility with many file formats, with a refined approach to EPUB and PDF management.
Seriatim Reader is free to download on iOS and Android devices:
🎮 Online Gaming Safety: Share Less, Protect More
Many people love playing games online. In fact, an estimated 1.2 billion people regularly log on, sign up, and play online.
Unfortunately, whenever money or personal data is changing hands online, criminals may be watching for ways to take advantage of the situation.
Try to keep the information you share online to a minimum. Apply privacy settings so your personal data is not visible to other players, and do not give out personal information to others in-game.
When disposing of old game consoles and other devices, make sure you remove all personal data and account details first.
Quick tip: before selling or recycling gaming hardware, sign out of your accounts, unlink payment methods, and perform a full factory reset.
