Facebook filed a federal lawsuit in California against OneAudience, saying it improperly harvested its user data.
The social media company claims that OneAudience harvested users’ data by getting app developers to install a malicious software development kit, or SDK, in their apps. SDKs are packages of basic tools that make it easier and faster for developers to build their apps.
Oddly, Facebook isn’t suing itself.
Airbnb uses a secret algorithm to figure out how trustworthy you are, and it mines your social media for sex work, porn, drugs, and more.
Two long-serving Apple execs, Nick Forlenza and Duco Pasmooij, are leaving the company’s operations division.
Ndemic Creations, the creator of the popular game Plague Inc. received a warning from China that the game contained illegal content.
Apple has announced that game developers selling in the China App Store have until June 30 to get a license from the state’s censors.
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it will miss its revenue guidance for the second quarter of 2020 as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, The Verge reported. Apple made the same announcement just over a week ago.
“Although we see strong Windows demand in line with our expectations, the supply chain is returning to normal operations at a slower pace than anticipated at the time of our Q2 earnings call,” Microsoft said in a press release. The company did not give a specific revenue range for the segment; instead, it said it does “not expect to meet our More Personal Computing segment guidance as Windows OEM and Surface are more negatively impacted than previously anticipated.” During its earnings call last month, Microsoft issued quarterly revenue guidance for the personal computing segment between $10.75 billion and $11.15 billion.
Neural Cam promises to give you Night Mode photos even if you don’t have the latest iPhones. It costs US$4.99 up front and recently moved to a subscription of US$4.99/month or US$35.99/year.
I’ve never used the app but people are saying the app is taking away features that people had paid for and locking it behind a subscription, a clear violation of App Store Review Guidelines, section 3.1.2(a).
Update: NeuralCam reached out to me to clarify: The Pro Pack is optional and only adds features for Pro users who subscribe. There’s also an additional 12-month introductory price at US$2.99/month. Finally, no features will be taken away from existing users.
The Apple Watch is a Class II medical device which puts it in the same category as condoms. Here’s why you shouldn’t worry about its AFib detection.
Parents using an iBaby Monitor M6S should be aware it has multiple security problems that open it up to hackers.
That means any ne’er-do-well can purchase an iBaby monitor and use it to access files from every iBaby monitor. Unbelievable? Believe it. For legal reasons, the Bitdefender researchers did not access data belonging to other real-world users. Instead, they set up a second test device and verified access.
It turns out the Reddit CEO is not a big fan of TikTok. Steve Huffman called the video-sharing app “fundamentally parasitic” and “spyware” at a recent event, TechCrunch reported.
The comments from Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman were some of the more controversial offered up during a panel discussion with former public policy exec Elliot Schrage and former Facebook VP of Product Sam Lessin. During a brief conversation about the feature innovations of TikTok, Huffman pushed back hard on the notion that Silicon Valley startups had something to learn from the app. “Maybe I’m going to regret this, but I can’t even get to that level of thinking with them,” Huffman said. “Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone.” “I actively tell people, ‘Don’t install that spyware on your phone,’” he later added.
Amazon Transcribe has made a good step forward in protecting users’ privacy. It now allows personally identifiable information (PII) – social security numbers, credit card details and the like – to be automatically redacted, VentureBeat reported.
Amazon Transcribe is part of Amazon’s AWS cloud unit and was launched in general availability in 2018. An automatic speech recognition (ASR) service, Transcribe enables enterprise customers to convert speech into text, which can help make audio content searchable from a database, for example. Contact centers can also use the tool to mine call data for insights and sentiment analysis. However, privacy issues have cast a spotlight on how technology companies store and manage consumers’ data. Text-to-speech services can be used to search for keywords and sentiment at a later date, but phone calls often feature significant private data that may be transcribed by Amazon and stored in a searchable database — even if that information is not necessary for analysis. Meanwhile, regulations are springing up around the world to protect consumer data — including the recently implemented California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
John writes about the origin and evolution of The Mac Observer’s Background Mode Podcast. And how he’s come to feel about it.
Form 2015 to 2019 the National Security Agency (NSA) collected Americans’ domestic phone calls and texts. The program cost US$100 million but only one investigation was able to make use of that data.
Moreover, only twice during that four-year period did the program generate unique information that the F.B.I. did not already possess, said the study, which was produced by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and briefed to Congress on Tuesday.
“Based on one report, F.B.I. vetted an individual, but, after vetting, determined that no further action was warranted,” the report said. “The second report provided unique information about a telephone number, previously known to U.S. authorities, which led to the opening of a foreign intelligence investigation.”
Amazon’s eero mesh routers now support Apple’s HomeKit, AppleInsider reported. They are the first mesh routers to Apple’s smart home platform.
After appearing recently appearing imminent, Eero has finally made the update available to users of its eero, eero Pro, and eero Beacon models which add additional security for smart home devices. With HomeKit support, users are able to restrict communication for smart home devices to only communicate in the home, to the default connections recommended by the manufacturer, or no restriction whatsoever. With smart home devices controlling everything from our lights to our locks, knowing that they are prevented from sending data outside your abode can offer a great deal of peace of mind. The update is installed by heading to the “Discover” tab within the eero app.
As well as using the hardware buttons to take a screenshot on your iPad you can use the Apple Pencil or an alternative stylus.
Clearview AI gained notoriety for partnering with law enforcement on facial recognition, using its database of billions of scraped images from the web. But someone just stole its list of clients.
…Clearview AI disclosed to its customers that an intruder “gained unauthorized access” to its list of customers, to the number of user accounts those customers had set up, and to the number of searches its customers have conducted. The notification said the company’s servers were not breached and that there was “no compromise of Clearview’s systems or network.”
Meanwhile, law enforcement on end-to-end encryption: “Who needs that kind of encryption, other than maybe the military? We don’t even — in law enforcement — use encryption like that.”
We’ve found five Mint alternatives if you want an app to manage your finances, or you’re a Mint user and you’re looking for something new.
Macworld’s The Macalope is not known for pulling punches. This week the anonymous columnist joined the debate on iOS ads in typically robust fashion.
While The Macalope is not a fan of exaggeration, he’s even less a fan of junking up the iOS user experience. And that’s what ads do, even when they’re ads for Apple stuff. The Macalope has railed against Microsoft doing this on Windows so he can’t very well not rail against Apple doing the same. And there’s a problem with not complaining about it. Often if you don’t complain about bad behaviors, they never get fixed. It took five years of complaining to get Netflix to stop auto-playing previews of shows that we weren’t going to watch, but the complaining system worked eventually.
If you’re using your iPad with keyboard, you can easily see all the shortcuts available to you with a click of one button.
Kelly sits down (on a sunny day) to chat with Brent Simmons about the history of NetNewsWire, his approach to the design of the app, and why he *really* writes software.
The iPhone 12 is rumored to get support for 802.11ay, a high speed and low latency Wi-Fi standard. Jason Cross posits that it could be used for Apple’s AR glasses.
The alternative is to make the headset a relatively dumb set of displays and cameras, with all the processing happening on some sort of base station—like your new iPhone 12. An ultra-high speed, super low-latency connection like that provided by 802.11ay is a necessity to make that work.
A popular thought is that Apple Glasses will be an iPhone accessory like Apple Watch is (or, started out) with most or all of the processing happening on the iPhone.
Apple plunged Facebook into chaos when it pulled enterprise certificate, taking its internal apps offline for a period.
Cable company Altice USA announced the launch of Altice One on Apple TV 4K. Customers get it as part of their subscription plan.
Former Apple board member Bob Iger has announced that he is stepping down as CEO of Disney with immediate effect and becoming Executive Chairman, CNN reported. Tuesday’s move followed the successful launch of Disney+.
Iger has assumed the role of executive chairman and will direct the company’s creative endeavors, the company said. Iger will stay on at Disney through the end of this contract on December 31, 2021. “With the successful launch of Disney’s direct-to-consumer businesses and the integration of Twenty-First Century Fox well underway, I believe this is the optimal time to transition to a new CEO,” Iger said in statement.
