Remote work increasing online shopping

Online shopping is at an all-time high, accounting for about 26% of all retail sales, excluding purchases for automobiles and gasoline. And a significant portion of online sales appears to be driven by remote workers who are shopping — perhaps even while they should be working.

A new study from Northwestern and Stanford universities and Mastercard Economics Institute found the biggest increase in online shopping was occurring in areas with the largest share of remote and hybrid workers, noting “work from home likely makes it easier to shop online during work hours.”

The study concluded that with remote work, “The boundaries between work and personal time have shifted,” especially among financial-services workers, “where there are strong restrictions on internet use in the office.”

Missing links

About 25% of webpages created in the past 10 years are no longer accessible — although links to them still exist on many websites, according to the Pew Research Center. Pew says this “digital decay” is especially noticeable on links in local government sites and is also prominent on sites like Wikipedia, where 54% of links in the encyclopedia’s References section send browsers to pages that don’t exist.

SEC levies cyber fine

The Securities and Exchange Commission fined communications and marketing giant R.R. Donnelley & Sons $2.1 million for “internal control failure” relating to cybersecurity incidents in 2021. The SEC says Donnelley “failed to design effective disclosure controls and procedures” for relaying information about cyberattacks to management. The SEC has been cracking down on companies that fail to disclose cyberattacks or lack sufficient cybersecurity.

Microsoft delays controversial A.I. feature

Microsoft said it was delaying a preview of an artificial intelligence feature called Recall that was supposed to be included with new PCs. Recall works by taking snapshots of a computer screen to give Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot a “photographic memory” of a person’s virtual activity, ostensibly to help someone remember what they did earlier. The feature was widely criticized over privacy and security concerns. — AP