Tech giant behind Android corrals phone operators around the world to launch a unified SMS replacementGoogle has unveiled a new messaging system, Chat, an attempt to replace SMS, unify Android’s various messaging services and beat Apple’s iMessage and Facebook’s WhatsApp with the help of mobile phone operators.Unlike traditional texting, or SMS, most modern messaging services – such as Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Apple’s iMessage – are so-called over-the-top (OTT) services, which circumvent the mobile phone operator by sending messages over the internet. Continue reading...

Deborah O’Neill on the failings of automation at Tesla and elsewhere, and Matt Meyer and Nick Lynch on the House of Lords AI select committee reportElon Musk’s comment that humans are underrated (Humans replace robots at flagging Tesla plant, 17 April) doesn’t come as much of a surprise, even though his company is at the forefront of the technological revolution. Across industries, CEOs are wrestling with the balance between humans and increasingly cost-effective and advanced robots and artificial intelligence. However, as Mr Musk has discovered, the complexity of getting a machine to cover every possibility results in a large web of interconnected elements that can overcomplicate the underlying problem. This is why so many organisations fail when they try to automate everything they do. Three key mistakes I see time and again in these situations are missing the data basics, applying the wrong strategy, and losing the human touch.There are some clear cases where automation works well: low value, high repetition tasks or even complex ones where additional data will give a better outcome, for example, using medical-grade scanners on mechanical components to identify faults not visible to the human eye. But humans are better at reacting to unlikely, extreme, or unpredictable edge cases, for example being aware that a music festival has relocated and extra cider needs to go to stores near the new venue rather than the previous location. Continue reading...

Jim doesn’t want his emails scanned for targeted ads, but while there are ways to avoid it, surveillance-based advertising is rifeWhat’s the best free email service provider that does not scan or use the data in your emails for advertising? JimFree email services are usually paid for by showing you advertisements. Some email services scan your emails in order to show you personalised or targeted ads. You could argue that that’s a benefit, because you’ll see ads in which you might have some interest. You could also argue that your emails are private, so it’s an invasion of privacy. Either way, it’s different from scanning your emails to stop viruses and phishing attempts, which nobody wants to stop.

Users will be asked to review information about targeted advertising but some say opting out is deliberately difficultFacebook has started to seek explicit consent from users for targeted advertising, storage of sensitive information, and – for the first time in the EU – application of facial recognition technology as the European general data protection regulation (GDPR) is due to come into force in just over a month.The company is only required to seek the new permissions in the European Union, but it plans to roll them out to all Facebook users, no matter where they live. The move follows Mark Zuckerberg’s stated goal to apply the spirit of GDPR worldwide. Continue reading...

America’s founders didn’t envision the power of the corporation. We need a new structure for self-governance that can counter 21st-century monopoliesLast week, Senator Dick Durbin asked: “Mr Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?”The Facebook CEO froze and then answered: “No.” Continue reading...

A global conflict is taking place on the internet – and your router may be more attractive to a foreign operative than you thinkAnother day, another hacking attack – or, in Monday’s case, another few million hacking attacks. Russia has been blamed by the US and the UK for a global hacking campaign that involves breaking into millions of computers and other devices, including wifi routers.Tens or hundreds of thousands of the devices they have targeted are reportedly in the UK – so why is Vladimir Putin apparently so keen to break into your internet connection? Continue reading...

Statement comes as company faces US lawsuit over facial recognition feature launched in 2011 and planned to expand to EUFacebook has released more information on the social media platform’s tracking of users off-site, after its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, failed to answer questions about the process from US politicians and as the company prepares to fight a lawsuit over facial recognition in California.In a blog post, Facebook’s product management director, David Baser, wrote that the company tracked users and non-users across websites and apps for three main reasons: providing services directly, securing the company’s own site, and “improving our products and services”. Continue reading...

Corey Pein took his half-baked startup idea to America’s hottest billionaire factory – and found a wasteland of techie hustlers and con menThe most desirable career of the 21st century, with numerous advantages over other fast-growing occupations such as hospice carer and rickshaw driver, is being a billionaire. Prior to the incorporation of US Steel in 1901, the world didn’t have a single billion-dollar company, much less a billion-dollar individual. Today, more people than ever are becoming billionaires – 2,000 and counting have made the great leap upward, according to the “global wealth team” at Forbes. And the US’s hottest billionaire factory is located in the most hyped yet least understood swath of suburban sprawl in the world: Silicon Valley.Despite what you may have heard, hard work in your chosen trade is absolutely the stupidest way to join the billionaires club. In Silicon Valley, the world’s most brilliant MBAs and IT professionals discovered a shortcut to fabulous riches. Ambitious Ivy Leaguers who once flocked to Wall Street are now packing up and heading west. The Valley’s startup founders, investors, equity-holding executives and fee-taking middlemen have thrived above all. Inspired by their success, my idea was to move to Silicon Valley, pitch a startup and become obscenely rich. I left home with some homemade business cards showing my new email address, futurebillionaire@aol.com, and a bunch of half-baked ideas. Continue reading...

Ombudsman finds there were 22,827 complaints about service quality and connection delaysComplaints about the national broadband network soared more than 200% over the last six months of last year, according to a new report from the telecommunications industry ombudsman, with rising customer dissatisfaction about phone and internet services prompting a new government review.With the NBN Co chief executive, Bill Morrow, due to address the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday, the latest report from the TIO finds there were 22,827 complaints lodged between July and December 2017 about the broadband network – 14,055 about service quality and 8,757 about delays in establishing an NBN connection. Continue reading...

Christine Lagarde believes revisiting crypto-assets could ‘harness gains and avoid pitfalls’The advance of bitcoin and other digital currencies could make the global financial system safer despite the prospect of “inevitable” accidents waiting to happen, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said.Christine Lagarde said some tools built using the technology behind bitcoin, which are known collectively as crypto-assets, hold the potential to revolutionise the world of high finance by making it faster, cheaper and safer. Among them, there are “real threats and needless fears”, she said.

In all the company has spent about $20m on security and private planes for Zuckerberg since 2015. The security funds were required ‘due to specific threats to his safety’Facebook increased its spending on security for Mark Zuckerberg by 50% last year, the company has disclosed, paying more than $7.3m (£5.1m) to protect its top executive.The security funds were required “due to specific threats to his safety arising directly as a result of his position as our founder, chairman, and CEO”, the under-fire social media company said in a new filing to US regulators. Continue reading...

A theory denying the existence of the country is gaining ground. But the suggestion that countries and cities are mere figments of our imagination is a meme that dates back to the birth of the webAustralia doesn’t exist. The signs were there the whole time: in what country is the only thing more poisonous than the snakes the spiders? How did we ever believe that kangaroos were a thing?This discovery, believed by some to be a joke or a conspiracy theory, has been circulating on social media in recent weeks after being formulated on Reddit in early 2017. Except it turns out not to be the only theory of its kind: through the years, online sleuths have found that all sorts of places don’t exist. Continue reading...

What do we really know about the influence of the ‘voter button’?On the morning of 28 October last year, the day of Iceland’s parliamentary elections, Heiðdís Lilja Magnúsdóttir, a lawyer living in a small town in the north of the country, opened Facebook on her laptop. At the top of her newsfeed, where friends’ recent posts would usually appear, was a box highlighted in light blue. On the left of the box was a button, similar in style to the familiar thumb of the “like” button, but here it was a hand putting a ballot in a slot. “Today is Election Day!” was the accompanying exclamation, in English. And underneath: “Find out where to vote, and share that you voted.” Under that was smaller print saying that 61 people had already voted. Heiðdís took a screenshot and posted it on her own Facebook profile feed, asking: “I’m a little curious! Did everyone get this message in their newsfeed this morning?”In Reykjavik, 120 miles south, Elfa Ýr Gylfadóttir glanced at her phone and saw Heiðdís’s post. Elfa is director of the Icelandic Media Commission, and Heiðdís’s boss. The Media Commission regulates, for example, age ratings for movies and video games, and is a part of Iceland’s Ministry of Education. Elfa wondered why she hadn’t received the same voting message. She asked her husband to check his feed, and there was the button. Elfa was alarmed. Why wasn’t it being shown to everyone? Might it have something to do with different users’ political attitudes? Was everything right and proper with this election? Continue reading...

The creator of Bafta award winner Edith Finch is pushing the boundaries of storytellingWhat Remains of Edith Finch was a surprise best game winner at the Bafta Games awards on Thursday night. The indie release had been nominated in several other categories, but its top prize victory was such a shock that its creative director, Ian Dallas of Giant Sparrow, claimed not to have prepared a speech. “I wrote a speech for all the other awards, but this one I figured there would be something in Japanese,” Dallas told the BBC, a joke referring to Nintendo, which dominated elsewhere with Super Mario Odyssey and the stunning The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game so all-encompassing it seems to have the special ability of making time disappear.Edith Finch is a remarkable little game, though to call it little is, perhaps, to do it a disservice. It is short, at two to three hours (and as a result, relatively cheap), but it is vast in its imagination, scope and literary ambition. Dallas has spoken before of the influences behind this eerie and beautiful story of a girl returning home to explore the history of her cursed family, citing HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe and particularly Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as reference points. Continue reading...

Businessman wins legal action to force removal of search results about past convictionA businessman has won his legal action to remove search results about a criminal conviction in a landmark “right to be forgotten” case that could have wide-ranging repercussions.Related: Google cases are a battle between right to privacy and right to know Continue reading...

Arunima wonders if one external hard drive will keep cherished pictures safely available for decades, but it’s not that simpleI read your article from June 2016 on What’s the best way to organise and store my digital photos? Is it not sufficient to save my pictures on one external hard drive? Must I save them on two? Also, for how many years will an external hard drive keep the pictures safe?

Steve Huffman says communities can set own guidelines, but racism is permitted on wider site as people have ‘different beliefs’Racist slurs are permitted on Reddit, says the popular social news and discussion site’s chief executive, Steve Huffman.Within a discussion thread that followed the publishing of the site’s transparency report on Russian propaganda, Huffman, in reply to a question from a Reddit user about whether “open racism, including slurs” are allowed on the platform, said their use was not against Reddit’s rules. Continue reading...

Like you, I have no idea how to wean myself off the platform, but acknowledgement is the first step to recovery

The CEO’s privacy is as vulnerable as ours, and the social network faces a regulation battle

Facebook’s chief executive on the right to privacy, banning Cambridge Analytica and the things he is taking responsibility for

Case of New York company’s alleged information collection under guise of academic research echoes Cambridge Analytica scandalFacebook has suspended a company from its site while it investigates claims it harvested user information under the guise of academic research, in a case with echoes of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.Related: Facebook employs psychologist whose firm sold data to Cambridge Analytica Continue reading...

Kemi Badenoch, now an MP, admits altering site a decade ago to ‘say nice things about Tories’Harriet Harman has said she has accepted an apology from a Tory MP for hacking into her website and altering its contents.Kemi Badenoch, the MP for Saffron Walden and a rising star in the Conservative party, made the confession in a video interview unearthed this week. Continue reading...

New headset can listen to internal vocalisation and speak to the wearer while appearing silent to the outside worldResearchers have created a wearable device that can read people’s minds when they use an internal voice, allowing them to control devices and ask queries without speaking.The device, called AlterEgo, can transcribe words that wearers verbalise internally but do not say out loud, using electrodes attached to the skin. Continue reading...

Rejecting official information channels, Rio’s citizens are navigating their city using crowdsourced data on shootings and robberies as they happen“A red spot on the map means gunfire, so I avoid going there,” says Leonardo Duarte, who works on the streets for a rehabilitation clinic in Rio de Janeiro. Shootings and violence are routine in his neighbourhood of Vigário Geral, a slum in the grip of conflict between rival drug-trafficking gangs. To stay out of danger when navigating the city he has a strategy: never go anywhere without checking his phone for live crime data.An increasing number of Rio residents are subscribing to crowdsourcing apps and following the social network pages of crime-watch groups such as Basta de Violência (No More Violence) and Realidade do Rio de Janeiro (Reality of Rio de Janeiro). Continue reading...

Father of Nasim Najafi Aghdam says he reported his daughter missing before the attack, and warned police she may be heading to YouTubeThe woman who allegedly opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in a suburb of San Francisco, injuring three before killing herself, was apparently furious with the video website because it had stopped paying her for her clips.Police in California named the shooter as Nasim Najafi Aghdam. Continue reading...

From Twitter to Tumblr, swiping through your mobile’s apps is the new doing something while doing nothing at all. Is it simply a case of new technology, same old humans?Horizontal. Phone propped less than 10cm away from your face: minimum hand muscles engaged. Twitter: meme (it’s funny, but you don’t laugh). Instagram: cat picture (it’s cute, but you don’t smile). Facebook: acquaintance complaining (it’s sad, but you don’t frown). Tumblr. Snapchat. Back to Twitter. Repeat for an hour or two, until bodily functions force you to get up – and even then, wait until you are in actual physical pain before going to the loo, so deep are you in your trance-like state.No, this isn’t an extract from the diary of a depressive. This is how we members of Generation Z, the name given to those dull young things born between (roughly) 1998 and 2010, spend much of our free time, locked in “phone boredom”. The Daily Beast reports that this involves being on your phone, but largely just opening and closing up to 20-30 apps and finding nothing that interests you. Doing something, while doing nothing at all: technology has created a new way for Generation Z, to go out of their minds with boredom. Continue reading...

Overall, men are much more likely to commit murders than women are, according to FBI dataOne of the reasons that the shooting at YouTube’s California headquarters on Wednesday stood out was that the suspect, police said, was a woman. America’s high-profile gun attacks are rarely carried out by female shooters.An FBI study of 160 “active shooter” incidents between 2000 and 2013 found that only 6 incidents, or 3.8%, were perpetrated by a female shooter. All six of these female shooters used handguns, according to the FBI study. The deadliest of these shootings, at a post office in Santa Barbara, California, in 2006, left six victims dead. Five of the six incidents involved women opening fire on current or former coworkers at their workplaces, including at the University of Alabama, a supermarket in Florida, and a factory in Philadelphia, all in 2010. Continue reading...

The idea that people’s HIV status and physical location should be used by advertisers is unsurprising in the tech world and horrifying outside it. Outrage at this is justifiedThe gay hookup app Grindr, used by millions of people every day to find sexual partners, has been sharing its users’ HIV status with third parties. There could not be a more dramatic illustration of the pervasive nature of the data economy. The first thing to note is that no one was compelled to hand this information over to the people they hoped to meet through the app or the company that runs it, all of them complete strangers. It is most unlikely that users imagined that such potentially damaging and certainly deeply private information would be shared with further companies they had never heard of, and whose business is hard for any outsiders to understand.Whether the users were at fault for excessive trust, or lack of imagination, or even whether they were at fault at all for submitting information that would let their potential partners make a better informed choice, as liberal ethics would demand, the next thing to scrutinise is the role of the company itself. Grindr has now said that it will no longer hand over the information, which is an admission that it was wrong to do so in the first place. It also says that the information was always anonymised, and that its policy was perfectly standard practice among digital businesses. This last is perfectly true, and perhaps the most worrying part of the whole story. Continue reading...

Facebook says ‘bug’ resulted in videos being kept, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg hits back at Apple chief Tim Cook’s ‘extremely glib’ attackFacebook continues to deal with the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica files, announcing policy changes and bug fixes aimed at undoing some of the company’s more controversial data collection features.On Monday, Facebook apologised for storing draft videos which users had filmed and then deleted, saying a “bug” resulted in them being indefinitely stored instead. Continue reading...

A king recruits his subjects, and neighbouring rulers, to share in his quest for a fairer new worldOnce the obvious decrees have been made – free sweets, everlasting school holidays! – most children, if asked to reign for a day, would surely wish for peace and plenty for their kingdom. So it is with Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, a prince made, in sudden and bloody circumstances, an exiled king who, together with a growing band of friends, supporters and assorted strays, must build an empire and an alluring constitution to draw subjects to his freshly birthed nation.Rendered in the Studio Ghibli aesthetic – defined here by artist Yoshiyuki Momose and composer Joe Hisaishi, who both worked on the Japanese studio’s Oscar-winning Spirited Away – the newly released Ni no Kuni II’s non-threatening whimsy is stylish but childlike. And for the first few hours, while searching for a patch of unclaimed land on which to settle a capital, it’s a likable adventure. You bumble over hill and dale, slaying monsters, incrementally upgrading your swords and sandals, and sleeping off the effort at local inns. Continue reading...

Everything you need to know about the videos your children are watchingYou don’t need to attend a VidCon meet-and-greet to be across the fact that young people are watching a lot of online video content; a casual glance around any bus, tram, cafe or quadrangle will reveal smartphones, tablets and laptops glued to favourite channels. The international phenomenon of teen YouTube stars is, by now, well-trodden ground – but who are the young YouTube superstars in Australia, and what are they peddling?It happens to us all: one day, we wake up and realise that we’re no longer at the crest of the internet wave. For some of us, this can be shattering. Continue reading...

Trump is after Amazon, Congress is after Facebook, and Apple and Google have their problems too. Should the world’s top tech firms be worried?Trump is going after Amazon; Congress is after Facebook; Google is too big, and Apple is short of new products. Is it any surprise that sentiment toward the tech industry giants is turning sour? The consequences of such a readjustment, however, may be dire.Related: Trump lashes out at Amazon and sends stocks tumbling Continue reading...

Ready Player One takes gaming culture and represents it as male-dominated, elitist and not dissimilar to the ‘alt-right’Steven Spielberg’s new blockbuster, Ready Player One, is the most significant Hollywood depiction of gamer culture to date. For the first time in mainstream cinema, it presents video games not merely as the cliched subcultural world of geeks and nerds, but as a significant force shaping the future of entertainment, communication, love, and politics.In this way, it does justice to the importance of video games, which have an increasing role in social and cultural life. On the other hand, it’s fraught with gender problems, reverence for elitism, and a rightwing endorsement of the importance of culture over political and economic conditions. As such, the celebrated director is showing the worst side of gamer culture. Continue reading...

Steven Spielberg’s film mashes together Jessica Rabbit, Sonic the Hedgehog and the Iron Giant, without much thought to how they would all get alongOn paper, it sounds like a utopia. Steven Spielberg’s new film Ready Player One presents itself as a party to which everyone is invited, its fictional VR dimension playing host to familiar faces from every blessed corner of the pop-culture universe. In the virtual plane known as the Oasis, players can captain the Millennium Falcon or the fluffy beast Falcor. They can try to sweet-talk Jessica Rabbit or befriend Sonic the Hedgehog. Brave warriors may fight alongside Freddy Krueger or Solid Snake, Mecha-Godzilla or the Iron Giant.Except that the Iron Giant is a lover, not a fighter. Tricking out the character with death-lasers goes against everything that he’s about, directly contradicting his native film’s guiding theme of pacifism in the face of violence. The way Ready Player One deploys the character undermines everything we understand about him. But the film doesn’t get hung up on this, quickly cutting to the next big-ticket cameo. Was that Samus Aran from Metroid just now? Continue reading...

Scandals are rife in Silicon Valley and its greatest minds not as popular as when they first created some of the world’s most impressive technology. Jordan Erica Webber asks whySubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at podcasts@theguardian.comIn March 2018, a whistleblower called Christopher Wylie revealed to the Observer that a company called Cambridge Analytica had used personal information harvested from Facebook to target voters with personalised political advertisements. The story was so huge that it triggered a movement represented by the hashtag #DeleteFacebook, which garnered support from big names like WhatsApp’s co-founder Brian Acton, SpaceX and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, and even Playboy.

Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to testify in the UK shows us what we can expect as a small nation adrift on its own, says HD LewisWhy should MPs be surprised that the head of one of the world’s most powerful companies should ignore British appeals but agree to go before the US Congress (MPs ‘astonished’ by Facebook chief’s refusal of third call to testify, 28 March)?Britain is one small nation that will soon be on its own among other small nations, having chosen – well, at least a minority of its voting-age citizens chose – to leave one of the strongest political and economic units in the world. Continue reading...

The president escalated his attack on Amazon, alleging the company shortchanges taxpayers and puts traditional retailers out of businessPresident Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, alleging the retail and cloud-hosting behemoth shortchanges taxpayers and attacking its use of the US Postal Service and its impact on traditional retailers.“I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the election,” he wrote on Twitter. “Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our postal system as their delivery boy (causing tremendous loss to the US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” Continue reading...

Users complain of phone and text data collected by the company despite never having agreed to practiceFacebook began logging the text messages and phone calls of its users before it explicitly notified them of its practice, contradicting the company’s earlier claims that “uploading this information has always been opt-in only”.In at least one previous version of the Messenger app, Facebook only told users that the setting would enable them to “send and receive SMS in Messenger”, and presented the option to users without an obvious way to opt out: the prompt offered a big blue button reading “OK”, and a much smaller grey link to “settings”. Continue reading...

Company to shut down Partner Categories feature to ‘improve people’s privacy’ but analysts question potential impact of changeFacebook is shutting down a feature that allowed “data brokers” such as Experian and Oracle to use their own reams of consumer information to target social network users, the company has announced.The feature, known as “Partner Categories”, will be “winding down over the next six months”, Facebook announced in a terse blogpost. The company says the move “will help improve people’s privacy on Facebook.” Continue reading...

Companies like Uber and Citymapper are scrapping for a piece of the mass transit market – with or without the support of public bodiesThe sleek black van seemed a lot like a taxi. After summoning it to my location in central London using my smartphone, I walked a short distance to the pick-up point and clambered in. But then, just as I moved to close the door, a stranger climbed in after me.She introduced herself as Anna. It was Anna’s third time using Smart Ride, the new service from Citymapper, the route planning app that has branched out to offer its own transport services. Smart Ride uses a fleet of minivans that move around the city on a fixed network, matching up passengers based on pick-up points and destinations. Citymapper calls it “a solution for dynamic shared transportation in cities”. Essentially, it’s a cross between a taxi and a bus. Continue reading...

Suit alleges ‘egregious, shocking’ discrimination and says Facebook still allows housing advertisers to exclude certain kinds of people

John Rothenstein | Green getaway | Jennie Lee and Aneurin Bevan | Facebook | Memorable sick noteIt is to be hoped that John Rothenstein’s diary (Report, 26 March) will also tell how he persistently refused the gift to the Tate, from the German-Jewish art historian Rose Schapire in gratitude for her safety in Britain, of a collection of German Expressionist paintings, pre-eminently by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. He was said to have described her as “a conceited fool who no more understands art than a cow understands dancing”. This is why the Leicester City Art Gallery has such a fine German Expressionist collection.

Facebook could face huge fines as Federal Trade Commission confirms inquiry into whether the company engaged in ‘unfair acts’Facebook’s privacy practices are under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission following a week of scandals and public outrage over the company’s failure to protect the personal information of tens of millions of users.“The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook,” said Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection in a statement on Monday noting that the investigation would include whether the company engaged in “unfair acts that cause substantial injury to consumers”. Continue reading...

Rev Glayne Worgan wonders if different rules apply to the social media giantAs a church minister I am reading up on data protection as new laws come in May (The web was stolen from us. This is how we can take it back, 24 March). My understanding is that churches, along with all other organisations, businesses and charities, will have to look at any data we hold (for churches that is membership lists and luncheon club registers) and make sure that we have good reason to be holding that data. We can only hold it if we have either contractural obligation, legal obligation, legitimate purposes or consent. We will then need to send a privacy notice to each person whose data we hold, with a list of that data, so the person can ask for it to be corrected or deleted. If Facebook holds any data on me (my likes, dislikes and political views) am I to assume that it will check with me that it’s correct? Or do different rules apply here?

Leaving the social network after Cambridge Analytica scandal, users discover extent of data heldAs users continue to delete their Facebook accounts in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a number are discovering that the social network holds far more data about them than they expected, including complete logs of incoming and outgoing calls and SMS messages.The #deletefacebook movement took off after the revelations that Facebook had shared with a Cambridge psychologist the personal information of 50 million users, without their explicit consent, which later ended up in the hands of the election consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Continue reading...

In a jab against the embattled social network, Musk joked ‘What’s Facebook?’ before deactivating his companies’ official pages

Non-profit organisation behind Firefox browser announces move after Cambridge Analytica revelationsMozilla, which makes the popular Firefox web browser, has become the first major organisation to stop advertising on Facebook amid the controversy over the Cambridge Analytica files.Related: Mark Zuckerberg apologises for Facebook's 'mistakes' over Cambridge Analytica Continue reading...

Secunia’s recommended Personal Software Inspector is being discontinued and Laurence is looking for a replacementNow that Flexera has announced end-of-life on Secunia Personal Software Inspector, do you have any recommendations for a replacement? LaurenceIn 1999, David Lee Smith – who was later jailed – named his PC virus after a stripper called Melissa, and it swept the world, forcing some large companies to shut down their email gateways. That and some later malware successes forced Microsoft to spend two years rewriting Windows XP, and Windows XP Service Pack 2 was finally completed in 2004.