Latest news with #CoOp
Daily Mail
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Man abandoned as a baby in a Co-Op plastic bag inside a public toilet with placenta still attached to him finally meets his birth siblings after 40 years
A man who was abandoned by his birth mother just moments after being born was left near-speechless after meeting his half-siblings for the first time. 40-year-old Jon Scarlett-Phillips was found in the toilet of a leisure centre car park in Bletchley, Milton Keynes, in September, 1984. He was wrapped in a blanket and placed inside a Co-Op shopping bag with his placenta still attached. Luckily, three teenage girls found him and called for help to get him an ambulance and further medical support. 'I was found by three girls,' Jon said in ITV 's Long Lost Family: Born Without a Trace, adding, 'Finding something like that at that age is absolutely crazy. I'm grateful, very grateful that they heard me and found me. They're the ones that saved my life.' Jon, who now works as a chef in Wiltshire, was left without a note, and was later adopted by loving parents, John and Marilyn, and big sister, Debbie. For many years, he avoided thinking about his beginnings. 'I didn't want to search for a very long time,' he said on the show's upcoming episode, which airs on Wednesday at 9pm. Jon, while outside the public toilets where he was left, added, 'It's hard, it's hard to deal with,' adding, 'The question is still there: Why did she do it?' In his quest for answers, Jon contacted the Long Lost Family team, and in a whirlwind episode, he was finally able to solve some of the mysteries surrounding his life after meeting his birth siblings. Despite Jon having a positive childhood, he was prone to emotional outbursts throughout his adolescence. He explained, 'I had a really good childhood. I always knew I was a foundling. But when you're a kid, it messes with you and you rebel against everything and anyone.' 'I had a lot of anger issues, a lot of emptiness, and when you feel empty, you don't know how to fill that.' When Jon was 15, his adoptive mother sadly suffered a serious accident that left her with brain damage. In the aftermath of the accident, Jon 'went off the rails', and turned to substance abuse for a few years after. After a near overdose when he was 18, Jon never turned to drugs again. He later trained as a chef and now lives and works in Wiltshire with his wife Becky and their 17-year-old son. 'She's the one that stabilised me [and] stopped me from making silly decisions in life. I used to push people away, and then she decided to push through that barrier. He added, 'I have my own family, they fill my gap, they fill emptiness.' It was Becky who finally gave Jon enough encouragement for him to seek answers about his past. Because Jon had no paper trail leading him to any birth family, the Long Lost Family started their search by DNA. But before the team's search progressed any further, Jon received an update of his own. He had uploaded his DNA to an ancestry website before he came on the show, and during filming, he received a match from his biological father, who was on the website to seek information about his own past. 'I was at work and an email came through on my phone,' Jon told co-host Nicky Campbell, adding, 'It said you have a close match - father. I was a bit shell shocked.' His birth father and his wife gave him few details, including that he'd spent one weekend with a woman who he assumed was Jon's birth mother. Jon had no direct contact with his birth father, and instead spoke to him via his wife. The communication between them was brief and did not continue. He said, 'I've always felt that if people want a relationship with me, that's for them to approach me. I suppose that's because I'm a foundling, I've always handled rejection quite hard.' Meanwhile, Long Lost Family's Ariel Bruce made a series of discoveries about Jon's birth mother. Ariel learned that she was still alive, her location, and that she was not the woman his birth father assumed she would be. Jon's birth mother was 20 at the time she had him, her marriage had recently ended, and she had two very young daughters when she found herself pregnant again. 'I suspect she surprisingly found herself pregnant with Jon, and I think she couldn't cope. When she left him, she was mentally in a very bad place,' Ariel said. The birth mother's husband isn't Jon's birth father and she kept the pregnancy a secret from her family. When she left Jon, she was in a very bad place. She's not yet ready to meet him, but his two half-sisters, who are very supportive of their mother, wanted to meet him as soon as possible. In an emotional scene, Jon read out the letter that his birth sisters had given to him via Davina. The letter read, 'To our long lost brother Jon. We are writing this letter to express to you how delighted we are to learn that you have a brother. 'Finding out about you has been a complete rollercoaster of emotions. Initially, we were heartbroken and devastated to find out how many years we had missed together. However, as emotions settled, we were left with such happiness.' 'We realise that learning about us today will be a shock to you, but we want you to know that you have a family, and we will try and help you piece everything together as much as we can. 'We have 40 years to catch up on and a very long bucket list. We would like you to know you have two loving sisters wanting to be a part of your life. We are so looking forward to meeting you.' After reading the letter, a near-speechless Jon said, 'Wow, that's amazing. It's a whirl of emotions. It's like a tornado going off at the moment.' In a heartwarming final scene, Jon finally met his birth sisters for the first time. Their names and faces were hidden to protect their mother's identity. Jon and his birth siblings instantly connected, and despite not growing up together, they share multiple interests. His mother also sent a message for their meet-up, which read, 'Hi, I've sent this message to the girls so they can let you know the reasons why I'm not with them today. 'Unfortunately, I feel unable, both physically and mentally, to come today following a long period of illness.' She added that she's struggling with feelings of guilt and shame, and that she needs to process them before going any further. After reading the note, one of his birth sisters said, 'It's not a no Jon, it's just time.' The experience proved to be positive for Jon, who told his half-sisters that he holds no grudges. He said, 'I feel a lot lighter. I feel a bit more full, as well. That emptiness has disappeared completely now. I'm a happy man.'
Forbes
13-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How Crime-As-A-Service Turned Hacking Into A Subscription Business
Recent cyberattacks on major UK retailers like Marks and Spencer cost hundreds of millions, ... More revealing how criminals now bypass advanced security systems by targeting employees instead of technology. A number of devastating and widely reported cyber attacks against UK retailers in recent weeks have once again exposed the fact that the impact of cybercrime on our lives is growing. As of writing, Marks and Spencer hasn't processed online orders for several weeks, following an attack in April estimated to have cost it $400 million. And the Co-Op group of over 2,500 stores is recovering from an attack in which customer data was stolen, and shelves were left bare. There are a few reasons retailers are often easy prey for cybercriminals. They handle lots of sensitive customer data, and they're very sensitive to supply chain disruption, meaning their operations can be brought to a costly halt by disrupting suppliers. On top of that, their infrastructure sprawls across online retail, mobile apps, and the point-of-sale terminals, tills and tablets of bricks 'n' mortar, giving criminals lots of potential ways in. With politicians raising fears that the escalation of this activity could result in serious threats to the food supply chain, it's becoming urgent to understand the factors behind the rise in these attacks. One thing that's becoming increasingly clear is that cybersecurity is no longer simply about making sure IT departments keep our firewalls and anti-malware up-to-date. I believe that these attacks tell us that cybersecurity is becoming less about technology and more about people. And this means that the way we defend ourselves has to change, too. Not too long ago, at least a small amount of technical know-how was needed by anyone who wanted to launch a cyberattack and disrupt the operations of a business. Today, though, an underground economy exists where anyone with the funds can access tools and expertise that can bring businesses to the ground. Referred to by security experts as crime-as-a-service, this involves the developers of hacker tools and apps charging via a subscription model, like any other software developer. Effectively, this means that just about anyone sitting behind a VPN can carry out a crime anonymously anywhere in the world. It's a 'democratization' of cybercrime. The motivation is usually money. Two of the most common attacks are ransomware attacks, where data is encrypted and a ransom is paid to have it returned, and denial-of-service attacks, which flood systems with data, causing them to stop working properly. The increasing accessibility of these tools is a factor in the growing number of attacks. The hacker group suspected of carrying out the Marks and Spencer attack is reported to have used a CaaS platform known as DragonForce. But another factor is a change in strategy. Increasingly, rather than targeting technology, criminals are striking directly at the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain, which is usually us humans. Although the details haven't been released and investigations are still ongoing, it's strongly suspected that the Marks and Spencer cyber attack was carried out through social engineering. With modern cloud security infrastructure being relatively robust, humans, who can be lazy, forgetful and tired, are generally the weakest link. Why would a hacker spend the vast amount of computing power and resources it would take to brute-force into a system and steal or encrypt data when they can just trick or bribe a human into letting them in? Surveys suggest that email and social media phishing were a factor in more than half of 2024's ransomware attacks and that 67% of people believe the rise of generative AI has increased their fear of ransomware. As well as human incompetence and our trusting nature, cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting our greed. In fact, 53 percent of organizations reported cybercrime by insiders in 2024. One high-profile recent example is the $20 million attempted extortion of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, where support staff are accused of taking bribes in exchange for giving criminals access. Criminals believe that retailers are big, rich targets that move slowly to respond to threats and are likely to comply with ransom demands rather than suffer business disruption. By targeting people with permission to access their systems, then all that IT spending on cyber security infrastructure—firewalls, secure email gateways, network security, access control, security tools—becomes irrelevant, and their criminal activities become a lot simpler. So, how can businesses, and we as professionals, employees and individuals, most effectively respond to this change? The first step could be to think about adopting a more human-centric security strategy. This means developing a culture of cyber-awareness that's active at all levels, from the boardroom to the shop floor. By understanding what criminals look for, how they try to gain access, and what's at stake if they succeed, everyone's awareness increases. Particular attention should be paid to ensuring everyone understands the growing threat of generative AI-powered deepfake crime. When it comes to this, as well as understanding the wider picture of where threats might exist in an organization, it's human skills that will be most valuable. This means that effectively communicating the importance of cyber vigilance, achieving buy-in, and understanding what makes us vulnerable to bribery and corruption are critical skills in the cybersecurity toolbox. Critically, when implementing these changes, the focus should be on limiting opportunities for threat actors to cause damage rather than monitoring the activities of individuals in a way that damages trust. Balancing this also requires skilled human judgment. Make no mistake, with 43% of UK companies reporting an attempted cyber attack last year, the threat is greater than ever, and the penalties for making mistakes are severe. But by switching to understanding, predicting and improving the behavior of humans rather than just technology, all businesses can reduce their chances of becoming victims.
Times
12-06-2025
- Business
- Times
Tesco sent extra stocks to bail out M&S during cyberattack
Britain's biggest supermarket stepped in to supply extra stocks of Marmite and Coca-Cola to Marks & Spencer while it was hit by a crippling cyberattack, its boss has revealed. Ken Murphy, chief executive of Tesco, said that M&S and some of the Co-Op's independent societies asked Booker, Tesco's wholesale arm, for support sourcing products while their supply systems were down. 'Over the period when they've been impacted, Booker has supplied both M&S and Co-op with products and supported them in any way they could,' he said. 'They asked us to supply products and we said yes.' In M&S's case, Booker is understood to have increased deliveries of third-party branded items, such as the household staples Marmite and Coca-Cola, and shipped more items directly to shops. The main Co-op Group did not request assistance for its supermarkets but it is understood that some of its independent societies temporarily turned to Booker. Independent Co-op societies are consumer co-operatives that operate independently within the Co-operative Group while maintaining their own distinct ownership and governance. The support was short term and both companies have since restored their operations after the cyberattack. M&S was arguably the worst affected: its online business was knocked offline for nearly two months. It has warned that the attack was likely to dent its profits this year by at least £300 million. M&S relaunched its website this week and resumed online orders, prompting a surge of customer demand. Many shoppers had left items in their online baskets, ready to buy once the site came back online. The company declined to comment on which products had proved most popular since the relaunch. The request for support from Britain's largest supermarket highlights the severity of the disruption and also reflects a rare moment of collaboration in the competitive grocery sector. Tesco, which reported an increase in like-for-like sales over the past three months, insisted that this had not been because of the cyberattacks at M&S and Co-Op. 'We haven't seen any uptick in activity or attacks since some of our competitors were attacked,' Murphy said. 'We haven't seen any material changes.' He emphasised that cybersecurity was at the 'top of my inbox on a daily, weekly basis'. 'We stay on top of cyber all the time. We have invested continuously in upgrading our cyber-capabilities because this is a moving target all the time. As the sophistication of potential attackers improves, we have to keep investing behind it. 'We stay very vigilant. We invest substantially behind it. We seek to learn from what's going on in the industry,' Murphy said.
Times
12-06-2025
- Business
- Times
Tesco sent emergency stocks to bail out M&S during cyberattack
Britain's biggest supermarket stepped in to supply emergency stocks of Marmite and Coca-Cola to Marks & Spencer while it was hit by a crippling cyberattack, its boss has revealed. Ken Murphy, chief executive of Tesco, said that M&S and some of the Co-Op's independent societies asked Booker,Tesco's wholesale arm, for support sourcing products while their supply systems were down. 'Over the period when they've been impacted, Booker has supplied both M&S and Co-op with products and supported them in any way they could,' he said. 'They asked us to supply products and we said yes.' • Business live blog: All the latest news as it happens In M&S's case, Booker is understood to have increased deliveries of third-party branded items, such as the household staples Marmite and Coca-Cola, and shipped more items directly to shops. The main Co-op Group did not request assistance for its supermarkets but it is understood that some of its independent societies temporarily turned to Booker. Independent Co-op societies are consumer co-operatives that operate independently within the Co-operative Group while maintaining their own distinct ownership and governance. The support was short-term and both companies have since restored their operations following the cyberattack. M&S was arguably the worst affected: its online business was knocked offline for nearly two months. It has warned that the attack is likely to dent its profits this year by at least £300 million. M&S relaunched its website this week and resumed online orders, prompting a surge of customer demand. Many shoppers had left items in their online baskets, ready to buy once the site came back online. The company declined to comment on which products had proved most popular since the relaunch. The request for support from Britain's largest supermarket highlights the severity of the disruption and also reflects a rare moment of collaboration in the competitive grocery sector. Tesco, which reported an increase in like-for-like sales over the past three months, insisted that this had not been because of the cyberattacks at M&S and Co-Op. 'We haven't seen any uptick in activity or attacks since some of our competitors were attacked,' Murphy said. 'We haven't seen any material changes.' He emphasised that cybersecurity was at the 'top of my inbox on a daily, weekly basis. We stay on top of cyber all the time. We have invested continuously in upgrading our cyber capabilities because this is a moving target all the time. As the sophistication of potential attackers improves, we have to keep investing behind it.' 'We stay very vigilant. We invest substantially behind it. We seek to learn from what's going on in the industry.'
The Sun
25-05-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Spring Bank Holiday 2025 opening times LIVE: Shops reveal operating hours ahead of the May long weekend
Live Blog OPEN UP Updated : 8:06, 25 May 2025 RETAILERS across the country have revealed their opening hours ahead of the late May Bank holiday. Major supermarkets and high street shops may have differing operating times during the long weekend. Co-Op and Asda have confirmed that they will be working as usual during the Spring bank holiday. Most gyms such as The Gym Group – which operates 24/7 – have announced they will be open all day but it's still best to check with your local outlet. Those waiting on deliveries may be pleased to know that while there won't be traditional post on Monday, Amazon packages will still be delivered. Follow our live blog below for the latest news and updates...
