Blog
YouGov poll ahead of November Budget shows over half of the British public want complete abolition of IHT
James Ward
15 June 2018
Serious and organised crime threats to the UK: 2018 and beyond
Last month the National Crime Agency (‘NCA’) published its annual strategic assessment of Serious and Organised Crime (‘SOC’) in the UK. The data has come from a variety of law enforcement agencies and other sources including the National Cyber Security Centre (‘NCSC’).
5 February 2018
Cryptocurrencies - tread carefully before trading
Bitcoin, Ehtereum, Litecoin... cryptocurrencies are all over the press. Most of us are now broadly aware that cryptocurrencies are digital currencies which use blockchain technology. But how many people actually understand how the underlying technology works, what it means to ‘invest’ in a cryptocurrency, and appreciate the risks behind them? For anyone thinking about investing in cryptocurrencies, set out below is a summary of the main concerns, which should hopefully encourage you to stop and think before jumping on the crypto band wagon.
11 January 2018
Social Media Giants vs Children – the truth behind social media contracts
Increasingly, facts and figures about the negative effects of social media are being reported in the press. Recent statistics have shown that three-quarters of children aged 10-12 already have social media accounts, and that the amount of time children aged 12-15 spend online has more than doubled in a decade. Just last week, the Children’s Commissioner announced that schools should be playing a bigger role in preparing children for social media’s “emotional demands”. Such reports are understandably very concerning, and raise questions about the morality of social media giants benefiting at the expense of the emotional wellbeing of children. However, thought should also be given to the legal aspect of these relationships, and in particular, the terms and conditions that children are signing up to when creating social media accounts.
24 May 2017
Cyber-security, ransomware and the GDPR
One in five NHS Trusts were hit by a cyber-attack known as “Wannacry” on 12 May 2017 leading to PCs and data being locked up and held for ransom. The malicious ransomware known as WanaCrypt0r has hit companies and other organisations, from Russia to Australia, and Europol estimated there had been 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries. It was alleged that NHS networks were left vulnerable because they were using outdated Windows XP software, which is no longer supported by Microsoft, and therefore security upgrades had not been installed. The National Cyber Security Centre warned that more cases of the ransomware were expected to come to light beyond the NHS and “possibly at a significant scale”.
11 May 2017
Driverless Cars: is the law still playing catch-up?
We published a blog last year about Uber’s pilot and driverless cars and, at that point, it seemed straight out of the pages of a science fiction novel, but driverless cars are now well and truly amongst us, and it seems that everyone is jumping on the band wagon.