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MTS-the Bank complained of the theft of money from the card :: Finance :: RBC

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What they say affected customers

RBC has communicated with clients, said about the thefts. Withdrawals from accounts without their knowledge occurred from late March to early June. Most accounts tied to credit cards, there are also cases of withdrawal from debit cards and savings accounts. RBC said 11 clients in total, with their words, they stole more than 1.8 million rubles.

How to tell clients MTS-Bank, the most thefts occurred on the same scheme: the scammers have blocked the mobile number of the customer (mobile operator most affected is the MTS, there are also cases of blocked customers of MegaFon, Beeline and Tele2), then changed to Bank customer number in your received account access and online banking and transferred money. “Watching their stories in the personal accounts of MTS and MTS Bank, I learned that the service “Voluntary lock room” I was hooked 4.06.2020 at 22:55. And all fraudulent transactions were carried out with 5.06.2020 02:20 and 02:50″, — says one of the victims, Yuri, who asked not to mention his name.

The representative of MTS said that complaints about the service in the last month from clients have been received (affected customers in conversation with RBC said that addressed to MTS). Representatives of “VimpelCom” (brand “Beeline”) and “MegaFon” reported that the company did not record complaints from clients in a similar situation. Tele2 did not respond to a request RBC.

The CPS reported types of fraud during a pandemic

How the crooks could steal the money

  • In these schemes, attackers can first call the call-center operator and ask to temporarily block the room (it is possible, for any operator, e.g. in case of theft of phone) — for this we need to know the passport details of the victim, says the employee of one of the operators. Then the scammer, knowing the passport data, can call the Bank’s call center and ask them to bind another phone number instead. This would allow him to get full access to one-time SMS passwords sent to the linked phone number to confirm the operation.
  • RBC appealed the call-center MTS-Bank question, how to change number linked to the account. The call centre operator said that now this can only be done in person at the office, although a couple of days ago, there existed an opportunity to change the room through the call center, knowing only the passport data and a code word. In a press-service of the Bank representatives explained that the room can be changed only inside the MTS, the Bank branch or at an ATM.
  • If the scammers were able to access phone number and then Bank account, knowing the passport data and a code word that could leak personal data of the customers, MTS-Bank, says founder and CTO of DeviceLock Oganesyan: “In the hands of fraudsters could get as a complete database with passport data and a code word, and just with the names of customers and their balance of the account. In the second case, the attackers could choose customers with the largest amounts in the accounts and order the service “punching” their data from the operator and the Bank. The cost of such services in banks can reach 15 thousand. cellular operators Have “piercing” room is 800 rubles. up to 4.5 thousand rubles, the lock number can be from 3.5 thousand rubles. and above (follows from the ads posted on the darknet. — RBC)”.
  • To seize the code word can only Bank employees with a certain level of access continues, the head of directions “Compliance” and “Audit” of the security Department of the Softline group Ilya Tikhonov. “I can assume that this situation occurred either inside (special people in the Bank provides the service “punching”. — RBC) or target a well-organized attack on the servers of the Bank”. Banal leak of personal data just did not give criminals the opportunity to organize such a scheme of plunder of means, as in one database is usually not stored and passport details, and a code word, said Tikhonov. According to experts, blocking a phone number in this case was necessary, rather, to ensure that potential victims have not received the notification about change of data tied to the account.
  • Forced change of passwords by the Bank (MTS Bank held it at the end of may), may indicate a strengthening of security measures in case of suspected compromise of client credentials that attackers are unable to use them, for example, go to the user’s personal account, says head of security analysis of web applications Positive Technologies Jaroslav Babin.

VTB warned about fraud via the job advertisement

In some cases, the Bank must return the money

The victims were applied in MTS-Bank, addressed to law enforcement and CPS. At the Bank they said that the review of the incident will take 60 days, said several interlocutors RBC. One of the victims, Mr Zonov, discovered the theft on March 31, a statement the Bank filed the next day, however, despite the fact that the period of examination of the appeal already happened, received no response. The term for consideration of such appeals established by the law “About national payment system” and is 30 days to verify the transactions made inside the country and 60 days for cross-border transactions: if the Bank has designated a period of 60 days, then the surgery could be performed abroad, explains partner of the bar Association Pen & Paper Anatoly Loginov.

The other victim, Valery Kokorin, applied to the Bank in early April. The answer from the credit institution (RBC got acquainted with him) came in early June, it says that the card was translated to the map individuals of another Bank through a third-party acquiring network using a Protocol processing online transactions 3D Secure (the SMS code to the phone number specified in the Bank). The Bank refused to return the money, as the operation was confirmed by the introduction of a one-time verification code sent to your Bank the phone number (client says that the number of scams).

This answer Bank looks questionable, said Loginov: “the Bank refers to the norm of the Federal law “On PS”, under which he is obliged to return the money or to prove to himself that the customer has violated the procedure for the use of electronic means of payment and that this violation led to the Commission of the disputed transaction. That is, the Bank in this case should return the money, but all the same writes that the reason for this is not.”

According to the lawyer, in this case, fraudsters gained access to the means of payment and monetary funds of the clients without their participation and, if the Bank can prove the contrary, the refusal to return funds to the customer is illegal.

“Analysis of incoming requests shows that users themselves often convey information about the card fraud, which in turn excludes the liability of the Bank”, — noted in Rospotrebnadzor. At the same time, the office believed that “the Bank is obliged to prove that on his part, in the provision of services had taken appropriate measures to ensure its security and prevent access to, for example, the one-time password by unauthorized persons, and controversial operation carried out solely because of the violation of consumer safety regulations when using the card”.

Authors:
Eugenia Chernyshova, Anastasia Skrynnikova

With participation of:
Yuliya Koshkina, Serhiy Sobolev, Alain Prokhorenko

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Facebook wants to be the better zoom – that could work

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San Francisco For Facebook it’s a little disgrace: the corona pandemic is forcing millions of people worldwide to stay in their homes. Contact with friends is only possible virtually. But the app of the hour is zoomUntil recently, a relatively obscure video conferencing service intended for business customers. Since the global outbreak, Zoom’s user base has grown from an average of 10 million to 300 million. At times, the app was No. 1 in the app stores. There are zoom school lessons, zoom weddings, zoom funerals.

Of course, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp are also used significantly more than before. Facebook sells ten times as many “portal” video telephones and can hardly keep up with production, says Mark Zuckerberg in a video message transmitted on Facebook on Friday afternoon.

But Zuckerberg wants to direct Zoom’s customer rush to its platforms and benefit from Zoom’s mistakes and omissions. He promises easy-to-use video conferencing with friends and family without all of the privacy and privacy issues that Zoom had and is now tackling – piquantly with the help of Alex Stamos, Facebook’s ex-cybersecurity director, who left the company in a clinch.

Facebook thus joins a group of tech companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft or Cisco who want to end zoom’s sudden rise and take its place. Thanks to its ease of use, Zoom has become a kind of social network in the weeks of global curfews – without the company really wanting to.

The fact that you initially only needed a meeting link to join was both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because it enabled growth and users are now also improving the app – for example by creating and exchanging optical backgrounds for video calls such as palm beaches. Curse because they made it possible for video raids to be attacked by strangers, known as “zoom bombing”.

Algorithms against zoom bombers

Zuckerberg seems to have set his developers on developing an improved “zoom” copy: users of the messenger app should be able to open “rooms” – virtual rooms for up to 50 users, which at the same time enable spontaneous encounters with friends, but “any Uncle ”, as Zuckerberg says, or other Facebook“ friends ”outside.

Facebook’s artificial intelligence and knowledge of the friendships and social ties of its users should help, and open spaces should only be offered to friends who have close ties to the organizer. The organizer can control the visibility of the rooms, guests who are not logged in to Facebook must enter a name to prevent “zoom bombing”.

Facebook wants to surpass the popular backgrounds, which are static at Zoom, with 360-degree backgrounds. Whoever turns in the “room” changes the panorama behind. Augmented reality elements, such as when a user has a birthday or light that changes with the mood, should make the surroundings more interesting than zooms digital photo wallpapers.

As of next week, video chats with eight instead of four participants at the same time should be possible on WhatsApp. WhatsApp’s 2018 end-to-end encryption, which guarantees special privacy, is to be maintained, which is becoming increasingly difficult technically with a growing number of participants.

Zoom once promised end-to-end encryption of its calls, but failed to do so. WhatsApp is the only end-to-end encrypted video phone service that is distributed around the world and available on both major smartphone operating systems, says Zuckerberg. A swipe against Apple’s “Facetime” and Google’s “Hangouts”, which couldn’t prevent Zoom’s rise. “Whom security is important and who wants end-to-end encryption will probably use WhatsApp,” says the 35-year-old.

Copying successful competitors has always been one of the strategies of the Facebook founder. After the competitor Snap invented the “Stories” format, which users can use to send their entire circle of friends a status update, gradually copied the idea, Instagram and WhatsApp and Facebook and slowed down Snap growth. Other copies brought less: The “Tiktok” copy “Lasso” has been a lonely app zombie practically without users since development.

But “Rooms” has several advantages that could help the feature to make a breakthrough: Facebook is building it on its existing app with 1.3 billion users, WhatsApp has even more users. While Zoom offers a freemium product that only allows free calls for up to 40 minutes, Facebook is free for end users anyway.

Even the best developers in the world cannot resolve the inherent contradiction between simple use and simple abuse. But while Zoom has to make a distinction between who is a desired guest and who is a potential “zoom bomber”, Facebook knows more than any other company about the social relationships of its users. Zoom now prescribes passwords for zoom meetings, which in turn makes it difficult to use.

And finally, Facebook’s opponent in this case does not even seem to be sure whether it wants to give up its new users without a fight. Zoom’s chief information officer Harry Moseley recently told Handelsblatt that it has not yet been determined whether the corona pandemic will again primarily be used as a service for companies or to develop additional features for private users.

“Our DNA is a product for companies,” said Moseley. By the end of June, Zoom does not want to develop any new features, but rather fix its security problems. Lots of time for Facebook to become the new zoom.

More: The corona crisis will make Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon even more powerful. Strict competition control is now more important than ever.

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US stock exchanges hardly change – Gilead Sciences weighed down

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Dusseldorf The US stock exchanges closed little changed on Thursday. Relief from US economic data initially supported Wall Street. A media report on disappointing test results with the remdesivir agent for the possible treatment of Covid-19 then depressed the mood in late trade.

The standard value index Dow Jones closed 0.2 percent higher at 23,515 points. The technology-heavy Nasdaq stagnated at 8494 points. The broad S&P 500 lost 0.1 percent to 2797 points.

Last week, 4.4 million Americans applied for US unemployment benefits. In the previous week, however, the number of initial applications had been around a million higher.

The markets rated this as positive, even if a recession could not be averted, said Steven Blitz, chief economist for the USA at the research house TS Lombard. Investors appear to be betting that the economy will recover quickly if the restrictions to curb the coronavirus pandemic are relaxed.

However, Peter Cardillo, chief economist at Spartan, advised against excessive expectations. “The worst of the pandemic is probably behind us,” said Peter Cardillo, chief economist at Spartan. “But with the oil price at the current level, there is a threat of a wave of layoffs in the US energy sector, which will nullify the effects of a restarting economy.”

The US crude oil grade WTI rose 23 percent to $ 16.95 a barrel (159 liters) after its price fell below zero for the first time at the beginning of the week. At the beginning of March – before the outbreak of the virus crisis in the USA and before the price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia – WTI had still cost twice as much.

This drop in price is a problem especially for shale oil producers. According to experts, because of the complex fracking process, they only work profitably at a price of around $ 50.

Focus on individual values

Nevertheless, investors also accessed these values. The shares of companies like marathon, Occidental or Apache won up to eleven percent. The papers of the oil multinationals Exxon and Chevron each advanced about three percent. The paper from the company active in health care was also among the top values UnitedHealth with plus 3.0 percent.

The titles of Las Vegas Sands, which rose by around twelve percent. The casino operator expects the important Asian business to recover quickly as soon as the travel restrictions there are lifted. Competitors’ shares Wynn and MGM won up to 8.6 percent.

Eli Lilly shares jumped to a record high at $ 162.56. With a smaller plus of 2.1 percent to $ 159.93, they finally went out of the day. Investors recognized the 40 percent year-over-year increase in sales of the blockbuster drug Trulicity for diabetes to a quarterly record of $ 1.2 billion.

By contrast, the shares of Target, even though the retailer’s online sales almost quadrupled in the past quarter, making up for lost business from closed stores. However, the company warned of shrinking profit margins due to wage increases for employees. Target shares lost 2.8 percent.

The titles of Crocs even slipped by more than 16 percent. Known for its rubber slippers, the shoe manufacturer fell short of market expectations with quarterly sales of $ 281.2 million and earnings of $ 0.16 per share. The company also warned of further losses in the current quarter due to virus restrictions.

Among the losers Gilead Sciences with a discount of 4.3 percent. The company denied a media report of disappointing test results with the remdesivir agent for the possible treatment of Covid-19.

The study in China was terminated prematurely due to a lack of participants and was therefore not statistically meaningful, the US pharmaceutical company explained. The Financial Times has presented the process inappropriately, the World Health Organization accidentally posted a draft clinical trial on the Internet. The UN organization confirmed the breakdown and said the document had been removed after the error became known.

Quarterly reports were also in view.

Air Products & Chemicals Withdrawn the 2019/20 financial year forecast for earnings per share from the figures. The industrial gases manufacturer’s paper then gave way by 1.5 percent.

The chip manufacturer’s quarterly report, which was announced after the market closed, was also eagerly awaited Intel, whose shares in the Dow lost 1.8 percent. Intel ultimately disappointed with its earnings outlook for the second quarter, whereupon the papers gave in even more after-hours.

The share certificates of Snap down. The makers of the photo app Snapchat want to get $ 750 million (695 million euros) of fresh money on the market in the face of the corona crisis via convertible bonds.

In the US bond market, trend-setting ten-year government bonds rose 5/32 points to 108 16/32 points and returned 0.603 percent. The euro exchange rate went up and down in US trade and ultimately slid below the $ 1.08 mark again. At the close on Wall Street, the common currency was $ 1.0771. The European Central Bank set the reference price at $ 1.0772 (Wednesday: 1.0867). The dollar thus cost 0.9283 (0.9202) euros.

More: Read here what moves the German stock market on Thursday.

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Corona Crisis Exposes US System Failure & Changes Country

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Only a folded cardboard card in the low conference room indicates who the place is for. “The President” is written on it. Behind it sits Donald Trump, leaning back, arms folded, his favorite pose. Here, in the headquarters of the US civil protection agency FEMA, Trump can be seen in his new role for the first time in mid-March: as crisis president. The governors of the 50 US states are switched on one after the other via loudspeakers.

Bravely they present their wishes to the President. Brian Kemp from Georgia hopes that the power of command over the National Guard will remain with the states even during the corona crisis, “because we know best what is going on in our country.” Trump replies: “I like your idea, Brian, consider that a decision.” And then: “The next governor, please!” Trump has found a new role. That of the leader in the “war against the virus”.

What else is there for him? Trump’s initial downplay of Covid-19 lung disease no longer fits the harsh reality. In Corona Hell New York, forklifts are now hauling the dead in refrigerated trucks. There are hospital tents in Central Park to accommodate the sick – the last time it happened in the civil war was over 160 years ago.

How bad the supply of protective masks and respirators is, can be seen on the night of Wednesday, when Trump accepted relief supplies and experts from Russia. “That cannot be true,” said Russian expert Andrew Weiss from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the United States.

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While the corona pandemic has abated in China and has presumably reached its peak in Europe, it is overwhelming the United States. No other country in the world has so many infections. In no other country in the world do so many people die. The Corona Task Force of the White House expects up to 240,000 deaths. The climax is expected with up to 3500 deaths per day around Easter – more than two people in the United States will lose their lives every minute.

With the term “China virus”, Trump not only started to upset China, but also suggested that this is a problem for others. The United States gave away valuable weeks in which they could have learned from the experiences in Asia and Europe. In which the rather ailing US health care system could have prepared for the onslaught of the corona patients and in which the economic consequences of the pandemic could have been mitigated.

“In the United States, we have had the worst of both worlds so far: an economic crash and a rapid spread of the virus,” says Maurice Obstfeld, former IMF chief economist.

The economic crisis comes to the health catastrophe. Compared to Europe, the less regulated US labor market responds more quickly to the situation. The unemployment curve is similar to an ECG of a heart attack, 3.3 million people registered without a job last week, twice as many this week.

Empty Broadway in New York

The city is the center of the US corona crisis.

(Photo: imago images / Bildbyran)

According to the investment bank Goldman Sachs The unemployment rate in the USA will skyrocket to 15 percent by the middle of the year, and the effects of the three Corona aid packages to date have already been included.

With unemployment, consumption collapses, with almost 70 percent a pillar of the gross domestic product (GDP). “The United States will plunge into a deep recession that is so unusual that statisticians may never agree on exactly what percentage production slumped,” warned Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff. “Our system for calculating GDP is simply not designed for this kind of sudden stop.” He assumes that the slump in the second quarter will be up to 25 percent.

The US economy is particularly hard hit by the low oil price. It would have been a welcome help in the past, given that Americans spend less on gasoline and heating oil. But the country blossomed into international oil power with fracking. Now the new industry is facing ruin – and pulling the economy down.

There is a lot of talk in the United States about the situation with which the situation is most comparable. With the financial crisis of 2008? With the Spanish flu of 1918? Or even with the Great Depression in the early 1930s? Nobel laureate in economics Robert Shiller sees this as a “worst case scenario” for the possible consequences of the corona pandemic in the USA.

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In fact, there is another parallel: Pearl Harbor. The surprise attack by the Japanese on the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1941 hit a nation that could have known better. But the war raging across the oceans in Europe and the Far East seemed far away. An illusion that only died with Pearl Harbor.

Even in the corona pandemic, the United States has long deluded itself: that the pandemic would miraculously remain confined to Europe and Asia. That she could be kept away from the United States with entry bans. On March 9, Trump still saw that Corona was no more serious than a flu wave.

Six days later, the White House recommended a nationwide shutdown. The pandemic strikes a superpower that is just as unprepared as the 1941 attack by the Japanese. With deadly brutality, the virus exposes the weaknesses of the economic and social system:

  • In the crisis, the US social system is more like a fire accelerator than a safety net. Anyone who falls ill or is released in the USA is quickly at risk of ruin. It is not only hard for those affected. It also intensifies the crash of the overall economy and there is a lack of so-called automatic stabilizers. With hasty economic stimulus packages, politicians are trying to compensate for this shortage and to provide social benefits that are a matter of course in other industrialized countries, such as continued wages in the event of illness.
  • The American groups are world leaders in their stock market valuation. But in the crisis it becomes clear that this is often based on the art of illusion. Many companies have used the low interest rates of the past decade to get into debt. However, this money was mostly not used for future-oriented investments, but to distribute high dividends and buy own shares from the market and thus drive the stock market price. Now that sales break down in the shutdown, companies lack financial reserves. The state has to bail out the corporations with aid loans.
  • The struggle against the disaster is aggravated by a political system in which distrust dominates: Democrats against Republicans, governors against Washington. And above all a president who for a long time was not guided by facts, but by emotions, survey values ​​and ratings.

1. The social system: Even in the crisis there is an up and a down

Corpse transportation in Brooklyn

The health system is overworked.

(Photo: Shutterstock)

“Hang Tough, South Slope!” The residents of the Brooklyn house posted in their windows. “Hold on!” That is the motto with which the hard-boiled New Yorkers are trying these days to brave themselves against the rapid spread of the corona virus.

New York has long since become the largest source of fire in the world. The number of people who test positive in the city increases by thousands every day. More than 45,000 people have contracted Covid-19 and nearly 1,400 have died. The silence in the streets is increasingly interrupted by the sirens of the ambulances.

In Central Park, a field hospital made of white tents welcomes the Covid 19 patients, the Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side is no longer up to the rush. “I have already set up field hospitals like this in war zones and after earthquakes. But I never expected to ever have to build one in Central Park, ”said Elliott Tenpenny, doctor and team leader of the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse.

New York doctors and nurses report that they have to wear their masks and suits for five layers, occasionally disinfected with spray. A doctor outraged spread the image of a rain poncho with “New York Yankees” on Twitter. The cloak, originally intended for spectators at baseball games, was given to her at the beginning of her shift in the hospital as protective clothing.

New York took the right measures, but too late. Rice Powell (CEO Fresenius Medical Care)

Rice Powell is optimistic that New York can cope with the situation thanks to the new makeshift hospitals. He has to be the boss of Fresenius Medical Care (FMC) know. The German company operates a total of 80 dialysis centers in the state of New York, many in New York City. Ten percent of these are isolation centers for corona-infected patients.

“We saw what happened in China, Italy and then Spain,” said FMC CEO Rice Powell. “That’s why we applied our pandemic protocol early and ordered protective clothing.”

The FMC boss is convinced that the US could have reacted earlier. “As a country and as a city of New York, we weren’t sufficiently prepared with the hospitals,” Powell says. “New York took the right measures, but too late.”

The catastrophe is now here, and anyone who can afford it leaves the city. Short-term rental prices for beach houses in the Hamptons have quintupled in recent weeks, brokers report.

Robin Mayer is a New York billionaire who prefers not to read his real name in the newspaper. He and his wife have retired to his luxury property in the US state of Wyoming. “So we can hold out for a while,” he says. The fridges are full, he got masks weeks ago.

“Now we just have to wait,” he says. “Sure, a few things will change permanently, but there will still be capital markets after Corona and it will continue. In two to three years, this will only be a small dent in a graphic. ”

Medical ship in New York

Aid is needed, as was the case in the 2001 terrorist attack.

(Photo: Brendan McDermid)

New York film producer David Geffen was less discreet than Mayer. Last week he caused a wave of outrage when he published photos of his super yacht “Rising Sun”. The billionaire in the Caribbean wants to sit out on the pandemic. “I hope you all stay safe,” his greeting ended on Instagram, which earned the billionaire so many angry reactions that he deleted his account.

Not all super-rich are as instinctual as Geffen. With his foundation, Bill Gates is providing $ 100 million to fight the virus. Michael Bloomberg donates $ 40 million to fight Corona in Africa.

But such benefits tend to go under. “More than half of the US stock is in the hands of the richest one percent,” criticizes Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton and now teaches at the University of California at Berkeley.

The super-rich would therefore not see the corona virus as a health and social crisis. “After all, you are not exposed to the risk of infection like nurses, doctors and delivery men every day.” In Reich’s eyes, the problem for super-rich people is reduced to the question: “How can we get share prices up again as quickly as possible?”

I have already set up such field hospitals in war zones. But I never expected to ever have to build one in Central Park. Elliott Tenpenny (doctor and team leader Samaritan’s Purse)

The further down one looks in the income and wealth scale, the more the pandemic raises another question: How can I survive Corona without ruining myself financially? “We cannot say that we have a functioning health system,” Reich said on Tuesday with an online reading. “We are the richest country on this planet. It’s a shame.”

Since the health care reform under President Barack Obama (“Obamacare”) ten years ago, all US citizens have the right to health insurance without a prior health check – a huge step forward for US standards. But not everyone has such insurance, and even if: What benefits are covered by the individual policies and what additional payments are incurred can hardly be overlooked by the insured.

This leads to extreme burdens even in normal times – around 60 percent of private bankruptcies in the USA are due to invaluable hospital bills. Some, but by no means all insurance companies have announced that they will waive the excess that would otherwise be due for corona treatments.

With their aid packages hurriedly put together, politicians are now rushing to introduce social benefits that are a matter of course in other industrialized countries. For the duration of the corona crisis, most US employees are now guaranteed 14 days’ wages in the event of illness or if quarantine threatens.

In addition to the unemployment benefits that individual states pay in the United States, unemployed people are to receive $ 600 a week from the federal government’s fund. But even that only for the next four months, the measure against the corona crisis should under no circumstances become a permanent social benefit.

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The United States now even has a kind of improvised short-time worker regulation. Smaller companies can apply for aid loans that they do not have to pay back if they keep their workforce on board during the crisis.

This does not help corporate employees. The Macy’s department store chain wants to put the majority of its 125,000 employees in front of the door, as does the Gap clothing chain with 129,000 employees. There is no statutory protection against dismissal that could delay such mass layoffs or make them more socially acceptable.

America remains a class society even in the Corona emergency. This is also shown by the fact that the health crisis in the world financial capital of New York is taking place under the eyes of the digital and media public, who mourn every missing protective cape and cheer every new field hospital – while 770 kilometers further west, people die much more quietly.

Detroit, the run-down auto metropolis, is on its way to becoming the new corona hotspot in the United States. The number of infected and dead people increases particularly rapidly here and in the neighboring communities. One third of Detroit’s 673,000 residents live in poverty. Many have pre-existing conditions that make the virus particularly dangerous for them.

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There is not enough advertising for everyone

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Dusseldorf, San Francisco The jogging pants for “cozy home outfits” are an example of many: Companies have adapted their marketing to the corona crisis. In times of exit restrictions, discounter Kik advertises on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger for trousers that many don’t wear on the street.

Customers find Kik and other retailers especially in digital media. For many people, Facebook or WhatsApp are currently the only way to keep in touch with friends. They read news online, play online games and watch films. Facebook has to fight so that its servers do not collapse.

But reach is one thing, converting it into sales is quite another. Despite the boom in use, the revenues of the tech companies are in danger of slumping. Because Facebook, Google and her daughters Instagram and Youtube are financed by advertising – and that is where many companies are pulling the emergency brake.

According to forecasts by the investment bank Cowen & Company, Google and Facebook alone will earn $ 44 billion less from advertising this year than previously expected. Other experts also expect this size.

According to Google, Google will only generate $ 127.5 billion this year, compared to Cowen’s previous estimate, it would be 18 percent less. On Facebook, the experts are correcting the expected advertising revenues down by 15.7 billion to $ 67.8 billion. A historic turning point for both companies: never before in their history did their advertising sales shrink compared to the previous year.

“It will not be business as usual,” Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg told Bloomberg in mid-March: “The advertising industry will be hit hard, and I don’t think anyone knows how hard.” Twitter already cashed in its forecast for the current quarter. For the digital giants, their flexible conditions are becoming a problem.

Common commercials seem to have fallen out of time

The companies would draw their budgets primarily from those media whose cancellation periods are particularly short, says Andrea Malgara, head of the Mediaplus agency. This included online media as well as social media. Campaigns on Facebook and Google platforms or competitors like Twitter and Snap can be played out or withdrawn almost immediately.

Added to this is the completely new situation: “Commercials that suggest an ideal world seem to have fallen out of time these days,” says Frank-Peter Lortz, CEO of the agency Publicis Germany. Lortz continues to see a need for communication, advertising companies should now show credibility and a sense of responsibility.

The bottom line is not enough: The advertising industry is on the retreat. One percent less economic output would mean five percent less advertising expenditure, Brandon Verblow from market researcher Forrester calls as a rule of thumb. The analyst had previously forecast eleven percent growth for the online advertising market in 2020, but now expects almost eight percent minus – which roughly corresponds to the Cowen forecast.

Nobody is currently suffering from one of the sorrow: Mediaplus boss Malgara sees no winners in the media landscape. There is not enough advertising for everyone. Across all media channels, Mediaplus anticipates a 35 percent drop in advertising sales in April.

Social and other online media would even get off relatively lightly with a 20 percent decline. Classic television, which accounts for the majority of advertising budgets in Germany, loses about 50 percent.

Experts also see black in other advertising media: “In the current situation, there is certainly less investment in cinema and outdoor advertising, including digitized advertising in public transport and at airports,” says Publicis manager Lortz. Hardly anyone sees posters in pedestrian zones at the moment.

Just Amazon continues to grow

Only Amazon’s media division is reasonably safe. Online trade is currently gaining market share, and advertising spaces related to product searches promise advertisers a more direct route to sales than spots for branding. For Amazon analysts calculate the German bank only with a decline in growth from 40 to 35 percent.

Google and Facebook, on the other hand, would have platform-specific problems in addition to the generally falling budgets: Google sectors such as flight and hotel search, which have been expanded considerably in recent years, have been practically dead since the pandemic broke out.

Facebook, on the other hand, is in a destiny community with locally operating companies. “The 140 million companies on our platforms are mostly small and medium-sized companies,” says Tino Krause, Facebook boss for the Germany, Austria and Switzerland region, the Handelsblatt. Many of these companies suffer particularly from exit restrictions because they do not have an online shop.

The network giant rarely gives insight into his figures. The Handelsblatt has data showing the behavior of Facebook’s advertisers in Italy while the situation in the country was worsening: advertisers already spent six percent less on ads during the first eight days of shutdown than before.

The Facebook data from Italy also show how the curfew affects the prices: The thousand contact was on average only about 1.35 euros – well below the 30-day average of 1.70 euros.

However, when the first curfews in ten cities in northern Italy were announced on February 21, the minimum bid was still over EUR 2.40. Despite lower budgets, advertisers can currently maintain or increase their reach online.

But, be careful: the price per thousand is the minimum price, so to speak. Those who offer too much will pay more than necessary these days. Lower bids are worthwhile. In addition, advertisers should be careful to limit their budgets. Otherwise it can happen that your advertisement is shown to a lot more people than usual. Possible consequence: significantly increasing costs.

While travel providers and automobile companies stopped their campaigns, providers of digital learning and entertainment, for example, massively increased their marketing activities and mitigated losses. The company did not want to comment on the data set on request.

Facebook, on the other hand, wants to talk a lot about its aid program. The group plans to provide $ 100 million to 30,000 small businesses in 30 countries, some of which are in coupons for ads. And health organizations can advertise free of charge in the corona crisis.

Crisis as an opportunity

Tino Krause rejects the question of his own economic interests: “I haven’t spent three minutes this week looking at how current our business figures are,” he told the Handelsblatt after the first few days of the crisis. “We want to be there for customers every day, primarily for small businesses that are struggling for their existence.”

In Germany, companies can apply for help at the Facebook locations in Hamburg and Berlin.

It is clear that Facebook can also show more users more advertising. The advertising spaces that the company is auctioning are therefore very cheap. The figures from Italy show that too. The more ads the company is currently giving away, the more the offer will be reduced and the price level will increase.

Google boss Sundar Pichai is now following Facebook’s example: on Friday he announced his own $ 340 million promotional voucher program for small businesses worldwide.

Drops in sales or not: The corona crisis gives the much-criticized Internet corporations the opportunity to make themselves more popular and to benefit in the long term. Smaller social media such as Twitter and Snap are at risk, experts like Andrew McLean from the media agency Inventus and Jasmine Enberg from the analyst eMarketer believe.

Experiments there would be discontinued quickly, while proven ads on Facebook would be deleted recently. For example, Cowen expects Snap to see a much stronger decline than Google and Facebook of almost 32 percent compared to the old forecast.

“Corona will lead to consolidation that the big ones could benefit from,” said Forrester analyst Verblow. “Google and Facebook will survive this crisis.”

More: Many companies have to drastically cut their advertising materials because of Corona. This also means that the communication industry is facing challenges.

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Seattle becomes the center of the corona crisis

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San Francisco You can still book rooms in the “Econo Lodge” in Kent half an hour south of Seattle. But the budget motel will soon no longer accept bookings due to the Corona outbreak in Washington State. The US district of King County, in which the city of Seattle is located, has bought it and plans to quarter Corona people there who are not yet so ill that they have to go to one of the hospitals in the county. Because these are already working at the stop.

Washington State is at the center of the corona crisis in the United States: Snohomish County, King County’s southern neighbor, was diagnosed with the first Corona case in the United States on January 20 – the 35-year-old, who was apparently on a trip to Chinese infected Wuhan is now considered healthy again. However, ten of the 11 deaths from the virus in the United States died in Washington, eight of them in a nursing home in a suburb of Seattle. The state currently has at least 45 infected people in the northwest of the United States, 31 in King County alone.

The district is also home to some of the largest corporations in the world: Microsoft sits in Redmond, Amazon, the travel portal Expedia and the cafe chain Starbucks in Seattle. To do this, other technology groups like Facebook and Google big offices there. In this way, the corona crisis is also seriously disrupting corporate work.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have asked their Seattle employees, wherever possible, to work from home by the end of March. When Google’s employees come to the office, they shouldn’t receive guests. Amazon is no longer offering tours in its distribution centers and is conducting more interviews via video calls rather than face-to-face.

Unnecessary trips are canceled, which hits the “South by Southwest” conference in Austin hard – one of the few tech conferences in the United States that, as of Thursday, is still taking place.

The precautions are already too late for at least five of the company’s employees: Two Amazon employees in Seattle were diagnosed with a corona virus infection after a trip to Italy. A service provider in the Facebook office, who last worked there on February 21, was also infected – Facebook has now completely closed the office until March 9.

Home office becomes the standard

On Thursday evening, Microsoft also said that two employees were infected. “Everyone in Seattle Tech is wfh,” writes a Snapchat employee in the anonymous scene forum Blind. “Wfh”, the abbreviation for “work from home”, is the vocabulary of the hour.

No one can estimate how long the state of emergency will last. An analysis by a professor at the University of Washington raises concerns that the virus has spread even more widely in the state than previously thought. Trevor Bedford has examined the genome of the pathogens of three patients who are said to have been out of contact and found that they had an incredibly high level of genetic similarity.

That means: The contagion of the three people is presumably related to one another via a series of other contagions that are not yet publicly known.

Mike Famulare, researcher at the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue near Seattle, estimates the number of those infected to be between 300 and 500 who are still infected or are already healthy. In his extreme scenario, there are even 1,500 people. The corona crisis in the northwest could therefore continue for a long time and infect many.

After all, some employees are trying to gain something positive from the current crisis. Like Dan Barker, a product manager at SAPSubsidiary Concur in Bellevue: “Working from home not only lowers the risk of corona,” Baker writes on Twitter. “I bet it also leads to significantly higher productivity and satisfaction. Long commuting times are also bad for your health. ”

More: The fear of the corona virus is hardly related to the real risk.

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US hedge fund Elliott joins Twitter

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Paul Singer

The head of the US hedge fund Elliott is known for his actionism.

(Photo: REUTERS)

new York Paul Singer struck again. The head of the US hedge fund Elliott Management is said to have a larger stake in Twitter-Buying stocks and pushing for change, US media reported over the weekend.

Accordingly, he nominated four candidates for the board of directors of the social network. At the Annual General Meeting in May, however, only three positions will become vacant. Observers therefore believe that the investor, known for his activism, will also push for the resignation of Twitter boss Jack Dorsey, who is also on the board of directors, but does not have to be re-elected as planned until 2022.

Dorsey is one of three co-founders of Twitter and has been under pressure for months. The short message service has played a central role in politics since the election of US President Donald Trump. The Republican uses the network like no other head of state to spread his views and criticize his opponents. Economically, however, Twitter is clearly behind other social networks such as Facebook and snap back.

Dorsey, who also runs the listed Fintech Square, which he also founded, was already CEO after Twitter was founded in 2006. Then he let others go first and returned in July 2015 as CEO. Since then, the stock has lost 6.2 percent, while Facebook’s paper has increased by 121 percent.

Twitter boss under pressure

At the end of October, the Twitter share dropped by more than 20 percent after weak quarterly figures. Critics complain that Twitter has focused too much on its core business, while other networks with stories, filters and other features have steadily expanded their offerings. Dorsey’s plan to spend three to six months in Africa in 2020 also caused concern.

Professor Scott Galloway from New York University then wrote an open letter to the board of directors Omid Kordestani entitled “Now it’s enough” in which he demanded Dorsey’s resignation. Galloway is a key opinion leader in the technology industry.
The short message service is particularly attractive for investors like Elliott. There is only one share class, which makes it easier for Singer to influence than on Facebook and Snap, where the founders control the majority of voting rights via a separate share class.

Singer is an influential donor to the Republican Party. The 75-year-old billionaire initially campaigned against the election of US President Trump, but then changed his mind. Singer is known for its strategy of putting pressure on companies. It was not until early February that it became known that he had his share in the Japanese technology group Softbank has increased.

He wants to urge management to take measures that drive up the company’s share price. Singer often tries to make a difference in the background. If this fails, he usually goes to the public with tough demands. His hedge fund is also active in Germany and rose, among other things Thyssen-Krupp and Bavarian on. The Twitter share rose by almost eight percent in after-hours trading.

More: Why Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz calls for a reform of capitalism in his new book.

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The new wealth test for immigrants will affect the US economy.

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What immigrants affect the public charge rule? 1:41

Editor’s Note: Steve Tobocman is a former representative of the House for the State of Michigan and executive president of Global Detroit, a nonprofit organization focused on inclusive economic development strategies for immigrants. The opinions expressed in this column belong exclusively to the author.

(CNN) – On January 27, the Supreme Court of U.S cleared the way for the implementation of the changes in the so-called rule of “public charge”, Which were driven by the Donald Trump government. It is a monumental modification in the politics Projected federal immigration can impact some 24 million Americans and millions more people who are looking to reach the United States.

Essentially, the new rule creates a wealth test for immigrants that is based on factors such as their age, health, education, income and resources. U.S. immigration officials They can use the results of this evaluation to deny applications from those seeking to be admitted to the country or from those trying to obtain legal permanent residence (commonly known as “green card”), under the probability that the person will become “Public charge” by needing government benefits.

LOOK: What is the public charge rule and how will it affect immigrants in the US?

Ironically, the change in Trump’s public charge rule promises devastating economic consequences. In a report published in November 2019, the Fiscal Policy Institute, an independent and nonpartisan research organization, predicted that the new measure would reduce the country’s economy by $ 24 billion a year, with a related loss of 164,000 jobs across the country and detriment of tax revenues in all states. When the United States closes its doors to those seeking economic opportunities and the “American dream”, as well as to those who wish to reunite with the family that is already here, we close the doors to future generations of our economy.

The new rule allows officials to reject applications for permanent residence or immigration from those who could one day use public benefits, even suggesting that only families earning more than 250% of the federal poverty level or $ 64,375 to A family of four must be favorably rated when making public charge decisions.

More than half a dozen legal appeals were filed when the measure was announced and five district courts granted temporary precautionary measures, which paused the implementation of the new public charge rule until those cases could be fully prosecuted. However, the Supreme Court decision leaves these precautionary measures in effect and allows the changes to take effect this week. Appeals will continue in federal courts, but now millions of US families. can face to the decision to choose between accessing food, housing and health care benefits – to which they legally qualify – or being able to look for future changes in their immigration status, such as requesting a “green card”.

Immigrant advocates repudiate public charge rule 2:45

Trump’s public charge rule restructures our national immigration policy. I am pretty sure that my grandfather would not have passed the test when he arrived in the United States fleeing anti-Semitism (just in time to avoid the Holocaust) and I suspect that tens of millions of Americans also track their lineage to immigrant relatives who could not have shown profits that will reach the type of thresholds implemented by the new measure.

Economists predict (and defenders claim who have already observed it) that the change in the rule will have a “crippling effect” on immigrant families – including those with children who are US citizens -, deterring them from accessing housing, food and nutrition programs, as well as medical care , including the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), to which they have a legal right. This “crippling effect” occurs because, even if the new rule does not apply to them, immigrant families may worry that access to these benefits will jeopardize their legal status.

The “crippling effect” also means that fewer immigrant families will access these programs and, therefore, there will be less expense in grocery stores where the benefits of the SNAP stamp are redeemed, as well as along the production chain of food, including delivery, storage, processing and even agriculture. There will be less spending on housing. Hospitals and other health care providers who serve Medicaid and CHIP clients will also pay significant costs. The policy will increase uncompensated and emergency care.

But the real economic costs are much higher. In fact, welcoming immigrants has been the engine of US prosperity for centuries. Closing that door to all those who cannot pass a fairly substantial income test changes our national character.

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France celebrates the title exuberantly

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Cheers after 4-2 victory – France is world champion

Moscow France celebrates the World Cup title: on the streets, in the bars, in the living rooms. Success goes to your head – so there are riots in the celebrations after the victory of their team over Croatia (4-2) in several French cities.

The celebrations of hundreds of thousands of fans were overshadowed by incidents, especially in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Ajaccio, on Monday night, as the AFP news agency reported. In the capital, a man was hospitalized after being seriously injured after a fight. Around 30 young people also ransacked a store on the Champs-Élysées boulevard, the police drove them away with tear gas.

Clashes of around 100 mostly young fans with the police also occurred in Lyon. Two policemen were injured in clashes in Marseille. Ten people were arrested. French and Croatian fans clashed in Ajaccio.

The celebrations in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium had long since ended. There, on Sunday evening – besides the team – nobody had as much fun as Emmanuel Macron. The French president cheered in a Snapchat video of midfielder Paul Pogba and learned the defense character “Dab” from defender Benjamin Mendy. After the French national team’s 4-2 win against Croatia, he kissed the country’s president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, on both cheeks for comfort.

Macron then took on the foreheads of top players Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann. The World Cup trophy also got a wet kiss – especially wet, perhaps, since Macron was soaking wet after a rain. While Russian President Vladimir Putin stayed dry under an umbrella, the rain did not seem to cloud Macron’s mood. He later wrote to the Équipe Tricolore via Twitter: “THANKS.”

And the prospects for further celebrations are good. Because the team of world champion coach Didier Deschamps is still young. In two or four years she will only reach her full strength, Deschamps repeated several times during the World Cup in Russia. “This team has a future for the next European Championship and the next World Cup,” agreed the former Équipe tricolore coach, Raymond Domenech.

Goal scorer Antoine Griezmann, perhaps the face of this World Cup generation, is 27 years old. And thus one of the older ones in the team. Kylian Mbappé is the youngest. He also scored in the final. And then said: “Being world champion is a message, but I want to get even better.”

Mbappé is not even 20 years old and was voted the best young professional of the tournament. There are also players like Benjamin Pavard from VfB Stuttgart, 22 years old, full-back colleague Lucas Hernandez 22 years, the 24 and 25-year-old central defenders Raphael Varane and Samuel Umtiti. Or Pogba, also only 25 years old.

The list could go on. Deschamps took the step and took 14 players who were not part of the European Championship squad two years ago. The coach emphasized that they went on a journey of discovery in Russia.

When they arrive at the legendary Champs-Élysées early Monday evening, the team is likely to be greeted with a lavish reception. That should also help to realize what the team has achieved. “At the moment my players don’t know what it means to be world champion,” said Deschamps.

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