FaceApp gets federal attention as Sen. Schumer raises alarm on data use
It’s been hard to get away from FaceApp over the last few days, whether it’s your friends posting weird selfies using the app’s aging and other filters, or the brief furore over its apparent (but not actual) circumvention of permissions on iPhones. Now even the...
Facebook’s regulation dodge: Let us, or China will
Facebook is leaning on fears of China exporting its authoritarian social values to counter arguments that it should be broken up or slowed down. Its top executives have each claimed that if the U.S. limits its size, blocks its acquisitions or bans its cryptocurrency, Chinese...
Highlights from Facebook’s Libra Senate hearing
Facebook will only build its own Calibra cryptocurrency wallet into Messenger and Whatsapp, and will refuse to embed competing wallets, the head of Calibra David Marcus told the Senate Banking Committee today. While some like Senator Brown blustered that “Facebook is dangerous!”, others surfaced poignant...
No technical reason to exclude Huawei as 5G supplier, says UK committee
A UK parliamentary committee has concluded there are no technical grounds for excluding Chinese network kit vendor Huawei from the country’s 5G networks. In a letter from the chair of the Science & Technology Committee to the UK’s digital minister Jeremy Wright, the committee says:...
Apple disables Walkie Talkie app due to vulnerability that could allow iPhone eavesdropping
Apple has disabled the Apple Watch Walkie Talkie app due to an unspecified vulnerability that could allow a person to listen to another customer’s iPhone without consent, the company told TechCrunch this evening. Apple has apologized for the bug and for the inconvenience of being...
UK law review eyes abusive trends like deepfaked porn and cyber flashing
The UK government has announced the next phase of a review of the law around the making and sharing of non-consensual intimate images, with ministers saying they want to ensure it keeps pace with evolving digital tech trends. The review is being initiated in response...
FTC, Justice Dept. takes coordinated action against robocallers
Federal authorities have announced its latest crackdown on illegal robocallers — taking close to a hundred actions against several companies and individuals blamed for the recent barrage of spam calls. In the so-called “Operation Call It Quits,” the Federal Trade Commission brought four cases —...
Apple attacks Facebook by becoming the asocial network
Sharing with everyone is passé and more than a little bit scary these days. We want to send photos to friends without posting them publicly. We want to reminisce without being permanently defined by our timelines. And we want the utility of apps without giving...
A year after outcry, carriers are finally stopping sale of location data, letters to FCC show
Reports emerged a year ago that all the major cellular carriers in the U.S. were selling location data to third-party companies, which in turn sold them to pretty much anyone willing to pay. New letters published by the FCC show that despite a year of...
Facebook talked privacy, Google actually built it
Mark Zuckerberg: “The future is private”. Sundar Pichai: ~The present is private~. While both CEO’s made protecting user data a central theme of their conference keynotes this month, Facebook’s product updates were mostly vague vaporware while Google’s were either ready to ship or ready to...
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