Exclusive: fake passes often promoted on mainstream social media platforms, study shows

Platform hopes personal verification will prevent near-£100m lost to scammers on dating apps last yearA new British dating app is promising to eradicate Tinder Swindler-style romance fraud, which cost duped daters almost £100m last year, by ensuring that all members complete biometric ID verification before they digitally mingle.Fluttr, which claims to be the first UK online dating app to use such technology to improve user safety, is launching on Valentine’s Day in the hope of getting a boost from singletons looking to change their relationship status. Continue reading...

Conspiracy theory songs claiming Covid-19 is fake and calling vaccine ‘poison’ are being actively promoted in Spotify playlistsSongs that claim Covid-19 is fake and describe the vaccines as “poison” are being actively promoted to Spotify users in playlists generated by its content recommendation engine.Tracks found on the world’s largest music streaming service explicitly encourage people not to get vaccinated and say those who do are “slaves”, “sheep”, and victims of Satan. Others call for an uprising, urging listeners to “fight for your life”. Continue reading...

The CEO has changed the world – but he faces regulatory, technological and branding troubles in his push to do it againIt would hardly be hyperbole to say that since its founding in 2004, Facebook has taken over the world – counting more than 50% of the global population as its user base. But after years of domination built on advertising revenue, the company has nearly overnight tried to knock down that empire and build anew.In October 2021, more than 15 years and 2.8 billion users after the then student Mark Zuckerberg launched the social media platform from his college dorm, Facebook announced it had become “Meta” and was refocusing on the company’s virtual reality endeavors. Continue reading...

Metaverse gamers crashing into furniture behind increase in home contents claims, says insurer AvivaA man landing an upper-cut on the ceiling fan, a woman slamming into furniture, a guy smashing through a lighting fixture: gamers are learning, virtual reality headsets can often cause havoc at home.The trend of crashing into furniture while in the metaverse provoked a 31% jump in home contents claims involving VR headsets last year, insurer Aviva said, marking a 68% overall increase since 2016. Continue reading...

On holiday in North Yorkshire, the photographer spotted a perfect surfer shot off Saltburn PierWith a newborn in a sling and a polystyrene tray of fish and chips in his hands, Fred MacGregor came across this scene at the end of North Yorkshire’s Saltburn Pier. The photographer was on holiday with his wife and children, so had “neither the space in the bag, nor the headspace” for his usual DSLR.“The photographer Chase Jarvis once said, ‘The best camera is the one you have with you’ and it was an iPhone 7 I had with me that day,” MacGregor says. “Sometimes shooting on a phone can have its limitations, but on this occasion it performed just fine. I only needed a few minor edits, like a bit of brightening, to really bring out the central line of the wave.” Continue reading...

Anthony Welch and partner try to woo cryptocurrency investors to regulation-free island on Vanuatu archipelagoFor the past 12 years Anthony Welch and his partner Theresa have been living a Robinson Crusoe life alone on a South Pacific island mostly untouched by humanity.Welch, a retired British property investor, hopes the tranquility will soon be shattered by 21,000 cryptocurrency investors he is trying to convince to move to his island and form a regulation-free “crypto utopia”. Continue reading...

In an internal survey, employees asked company to find ‘ways to connect’ which the 75-acre Trailblazer ranch will provide plenty ofSalesforce employees will soon be able to hold meetings in California’s redwood forests after the company announced plans to open its own luxury ranch to help staff “connect” after two years of remote working.The 75-acre property known as Trailblazer Ranch is located near Santa Cruz, California, and boasts an outdoor amphitheater, a communal kitchen, fitness and learning centers and conference rooms. The property also features sleeping pods and suites equipped with fireplaces and employees will be able to partake in guided nature walks, yoga sessions, garden tours, group cooking classes, art journaling and meditation. Continue reading...

Old drives often contain precious memories, but to keep them you have to maintain them. Here’s what the experts say about how to do it

Holland gives his all as rogueish treasure hunter Nathan Drake in a by-the-numbers PlayStation adaptation that’s heavy on spectacle but light on heartWith laser-guided precision, with the exactitude of a Nobel-winning rocket scientist or a world-class neurosurgeon, this film measures right up to what you’d expect from a movie based on a PlayStation video game. It’s a huge greenscreen action-adventure with a reasonable bang-buck ratio, but a box office algorithm where its heart is supposed to be. It’s all about a couple of ripped guys on the trail of some lost 16th-century gold belonging to legendary explorer Ferdinand Magellan; the film cheerfully rips off Indiana Jones, the National Treasure films with Nicolas Cage, and there’s a touch of The Goonies in there somewhere.Tom Holland has been doing some serious work with his personal trainer for his role as Nathan Drake, a tough kid with serious abs and a talent for parkour that looks like it is only partly faked with a stunt double. He is now making a few bucks as a cocktail waiter but he’s also a pickpocket, ripping off rich people in the bar – and dreaming of finding Magellan’s loot, which his adored older brother once told him about before mysteriously going missing. Continue reading...

S-Town’s Brian Reed unpicks The Trojan Horse Affair, which saw Midlands schools accused of Islamic extremism. Plus: Shaun Keaveny speaks with pals such as Vic Reeves and Nina Conti in his warming, nostalgic seriesThe Trojan Horse Affair

The new safety feature comes after reports of women discovering the devices in their personal belongingsApple will warn AirTag users when they are setting up the device that it is illegal to use it to track people, as the tech firm responds to concerns that the product is used by stalkers.AirTags can be attached to personal items such as car keys or backpacks so that people can find them when they are lost, via Apple’s Find My app. However, it has been reported that women have been tracked by the devices after they were placed, unbeknownst to them, in their coat or bag. Continue reading...

App says generation Z users want to sample what dating was like in pre-smartphone eraFrom low-rise jeans to reruns of the sitcom Friends, generation Z has a seemingly endless appetite for 90s and early 00s nostalgia.Now that extends to their romantic lives, as Tinder has introduced a blind date feature to boost its popularity among young people – by enabling them to meet partners in a way that resembles the pre-smartphone era.

Deal comes less than two years after Binance sued business publisher for defamationBinance, the cryptocurrency exchange, is making a $200m (£147m) investment in Forbes less than two years after it sued the business publisher for defamation.A Binance spokesperson said Forbes’s editorial independence would remain “sacrosanct” after the deal. Continue reading...

Programme about ‘self-made crypto-millionaire’ dropped amid questions over central claimsThe BBC has pulled a documentary about a cryptocurrency entrepreneur from television schedules at the last minute after the Guardian raised questions about some of its central claims.The programme, called The Crypto-Millionaire and due to be broadcast at 7.30pm on Wednesday night, was to tell the story of Hanad Hassan, a 20-year-old from Birmingham who said he had become incredibly wealthy by trading cryptocurrencies. The programme claimed he had turned a $50 (£37) investment at the start of 2021 into $8m (£5.9m) by the end of the year – suggesting he had made an astonishing investment return of almost 16,000,000% in just nine months. Continue reading...

The comedian is also a nightly radio presenter, which means he knows all about pointless countdowns. This one includes grape ladies, fake news and a literal high school musical

‘GT Sophy’ honed tactics and technique to beat 95% of human players of Playstation game after two daysHaving thrashed mortal champions at poker, chess, Go, and Starcraft, an artificial intelligence program has delivered another humiliation, leaving the world’s best video game racing drivers in the dust.Researchers at Sony trained an AI called GT Sophy to play the PlayStation game Gran Turismo and found that it could outrace 95% of human players after two days and continued to shave tenths of a second off its lap times over the following week. Continue reading...

Ultra leads top-end phone line with S22 and Plus models, part-made from recycled plastic and fishing netsSamsung’s latest Android combines its Galaxy S and Note into one stylus-equipped superphone, which leads a new line of top-end S22 smartphones part-made from recycled plastic and fishing nets.Announced on Wednesday as part of its Unpacked livestreaming event, the Galaxy S22 Ultra combines the superzoom camera of last year’s top S21 with the body, form and features of Samsung’s popular Note phablet series, which has not been updated since 2020. Continue reading...

Britain, the US and Australia point to growth in ‘sophisticated, high-impact ransomware incidents’There have been further increases in “sophisticated, high-impact ransomware incidents” coming from Russia and other former Soviet states during 2021, Britain, the US and Australia said in a joint review of cyber-extortion trends.Universities and schools were one of the top sectors targeted in the UK last year, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said, as well as businesses, charities, law firms, councils and the NHS. Hackers are increasingly offering services or exploits “for hire”. Continue reading...

Kryptovault’s operation is part of a fightback against criticism of the famously energy-intensive industryA line of large blue skips full of chopped wood sit at the back of a site belonging to Norway’s biggest bitcoin mining operation, a 5,000 sq metre warehouse on the outskirts of Hønefoss, a small town 40 miles west of Oslo.Hot air is being pumped into the 12 skips through bendy corrugated pipes curling out from the warehouse. Despite the snow, it will take a few days for the logs to be dried out, after which a local lumberjack, grateful for the free service, will take them away for sale. Continue reading...

Social network users may be asked to submit passport or credit card details under plans outlined by ministersReddit and Twitter users in the UK could be required to submit details of their passport or credit card as part of the government’s proposed age verification rules for pornography.The two sites are among the few mainstream social networks that continue to host large quantities of explicit adult material. Ministers said that social networks “where a considerable quantity of pornographic material is accessible” will have to conform to the same age verification rules as other commercial pornography websites. Continue reading...

A hashtag relating to the death of man employed at video platform Bilibili has been viewed hundreds of millions of times but company denies claims he was overworkedClaims that another Chinese tech worker has died after excessive overtime has reignited debate over the industry’s “996 culture”. The company denied that itoverworked the employee, but said it would pay more attention to the health of its employees.The 25-year-old reportedly died in hospital soon after he was taken to hospital from his home on Saturday afternoon. The video platform Bilibili, where the man was employed as a content auditor, said company representatives went to the hospital to assist and then notified his family. Continue reading...

Husband and wife, a rapper on TikTok, are accused in the US’s biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft caseThe US justice department has announced the unraveling of its biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft case, seizing a record-shattering $3.6bn in bitcoin in a saga that has captivated the internet.US officials said on Tuesday the recovered sum was linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached by hackers nearly six years ago. Continue reading...

Exclusive: support for pledge on congestion and pollution as company unveils plans to expand zero-emission servicesUber has swung its weight behind proposals from the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, for more road charges as it unveiled plans to expand zero-emission cab services.The ride-hailing firm said it had more than doubled the number of electric vehicles (EVs) on its app in London to 5,000 in the past year, which will allow it to widen out its Uber Green service – where users can request only EV drivers – from the city centre to cover the whole of greater London in the spring. Continue reading...

Oversight Board of Meta recommends exception to privacy rules should be removedFacebook and Instagram should tighten privacy rules to protect against the revealing of private residential addresses and images online, known as doxxing, according to the independent body that decides if content should be on the social media platforms.The Oversight Board of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has recommended that an exception to the company’s privacy rules that allows the sharing of private residential information when it is considered “publicly available” should be removed. Continue reading...

British company aims to seek stock market flotation after Japan’s SoftBank abandons saleNvidia’s $40bn (£29.6bn) takeover of the Cambridge-based Arm has collapsed due to insurmountable regulatory hurdles, leaving the British chip designer to seek a stock market flotation in the next year as an alternative.The deal, which would have been the largest in the semiconductor industry, had become mired in red tape on both sides of the Atlantic and in China and had also faced fierce opposition from players within the industry since it was announced in September 2020. Continue reading...

A reader bought the three-year card which is digital only but it won’t downloadI bought a three-year, £70 senior railcard from Trainline, but this has to be stored on my phone as an app, as there is now no paper option. But when I tried to download it on to my iPhone, an error message appeared saying that I couldn’t, as it needed an iOS operating system of 13.4 or above. The one on my phone is 12.5.As I had already booked some rail tickets with a senior railcard deduction I was forced to buy a one-year £30 paper senior railcard at the local station. Continue reading...

Thiel, a major donor to the Republican party, was seen by critics as part of the reason why Facebook did not censor TrumpPeter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, is stepping down from the board of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, after 17 years.Thiel, Facebook’s longest-serving board member and a major donor to the Republican party, plans to focus on backing Donald Trump’s allies in the November midterm elections, according to the New York Times. He recently donated $10m each to the Senate campaigns of Blake Masters, who is running for a seat in Arizona, and JD Vance, who is running in Ohio. Masters is the chief operating officer of Thiel’s family office and Vance used to work at one of Thiel’s venture funds. Continue reading...

Digital minister Chris Philp says it is too easy for children to access pornography onlineThe government has revived plans to make pornography websites carry out age checks, which would require British users to provide data such as their credit card or passport details to prove they are over 18.Ministers said the forthcoming online safety bill will be altered to ensure that commercial porn sites are brought within its scope, updating the draft legislation, which now applies to providers of user-generated pornography such as OnlyFans. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson’s new press chief believed to have been trying to stop Chinese firm from being dropped from UK’s 5G networkBoris Johnson’s new communications director lobbied a former chief of staff at Downing Street not to ban Chinese technology company Huawei over spying fears, leaked documents suggest.Guto Harri, who was appointed No 10’s press chief on Monday in the wake of the partygate resignations, reportedly asked Sir Eddie Lister which ministers he could “nudge” for help. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5; Sloclap

Full bench of the federal court confirms earlier ruling that tech giant collects personal information in Australia

Scammers are turning to an underhand new tactic to con the unsuspecting into parting with cash over the phoneAfter chatting on WhatsApp about the latest series of Ozark, Paula Leonard’s* daughter broached a difficult topic: she needed two bills paid, as she was locked out of her online bank account after getting a new phone.Leonard immediately moved to help her US-based daughter as she has done in the past.

As long as the number of users kept growing, Mark Zuckerberg felt able to ride out scandals and criticism. He can no longer rely on that defenceFacebook was much in the news last week, although you may not realise that because it has been renamed Meta in the hope the bad vibes associated with its maiden name would gradually fade from public memory. (Google tried the same stunt with Alphabet and that hasn’t worked either.)For a change, though, Facebook’s latest moment at the top of the news agenda had nothing to do with scandals and everything to do with its financial results, which were so unexpectedly bad that the shares dropped 25% at one point, taking $240bn (£177bn) off its market value, which in turn led to a 2% drop in the Nasdaq index. Continue reading...

Fears of poll meddling by Russia prompt new ‘psychological defence’A top official from Sweden’s new “psychological defence” agency said the country had decided to bring back the cold war-era government body amid fears over Russian aggression against Ukraine.Magnus Hjort, deputy director of the agency, which was re-established last month to combat foreign disinformation, said concerns were especially heightened ahead of Sweden’s general election in September, against the backdrop of Europe’s “deteriorating security situation”. Continue reading...

New owner the New York Times says the hit game will (initially) remain free, but we look at some back up options if it ends up behind a paywallThe New York Times acquisition of Wordle has left devotees of the mega-hit word guessing game fearful that it will – like the newspaper’s crossword and other puzzles – end up locked behind a paywall, despite the Times’ assurances to the contrary.While it’s unlikely that any other game will achieve the viral success of Wordle, there are free, browser-based alternatives out there to puzzle over as you sip your morning coffee. Continue reading...

Founder Daniel Ek’s bid to make the anti-vaxxer controversy go away ignores the fact that it is paying the US comedian to appear on its serviceTwo decades ago, the late and much-lamented David Bowie said something that was eerily prophetic. “Music itself,” he observed, “is going to become like running water or electricity.” His point was that in 2002 we were still carrying our music in little bottles called iPods, just as Victorian travellers in India carried bottles of drinking water because you couldn’t rely on their being a safe and sanitary public supply.Spool forward 20 years and Spotify, the Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, is, in Bowie’s terms, the global music authority, providing sanitised recorded music everywhere, on demand. At the moment, it has something like 406 million active monthly users, of whom more than 180 million pay for its “premium” (advertising-free) service. Continue reading...

Serpentine North Gallery, London

The Uruguayan photographer on snapping a sunbather in São Paulo, BrazilAfter moving from Uruguay to São Paulo, Brazil, during the pandemic, photographer Pablo Albarenga revelled in exploring his new home by bike. It felt like a safe, freeing way to familiarise himself with its vastness; the Brazilian city is the fourth largest in the world, and often referred to as a concrete jungle.

With KP Snacks the latest cyber-attack victim, firms must learn to defend themselves against a mounting menaceThe January snow lay thick on the Moscow ground, as masked officers of the FSB – Russia’s fearsome security agency – prepared to smash down the doors at one of 25 addresses they would raid that day.Their target was REvil, a shadowy conclave of hackers that claimed to have stolen more than $100m (£74m) a year through “ransomware” attacks, before suddenly disappearing. Continue reading...

Proposed laws require tech firms to prevent publication of harmful content or face substantial finesJoining digital pile-ons, sending threatening social media posts and deliberately posting hoax bomb threats are among the new criminal offences that could result in jail sentences under proposed online safety laws.Tech firms will also be required to prevent users from being exposed to content such as revenge porn, fraud and the sale of illegal drugs, or face the threat of substantial fines under the proposed changes. Previously, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter had to take such content down if it was flagged to them but now they would be legally required to prevent users from being exposed to them in the first place. Continue reading...

Zuckerberg blames ‘headwinds’ from Apple’s new iOS and changes in privacy for the record drop in valueMark Zuckerberg blamed “headwinds” this week after investors wiped about $220bn off Meta’s market value. One of the biggest blows came from longtime rival Apple.Apple has long marketed itself as a champion of privacy, explicitly positioning itself in opposition to Facebook. Tensions between the two giants escalated with the release of Apple’s new operating system, which Meta feared would hamper its revenue model. Continue reading...

Move follows warnings Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for metaverse could lead to increased online harassmentMark Zuckerberg’s virtual reality business is to introduce a mandatory distance between people’s digital avatars after warnings that the social media tycoon’s plans for a metaverse will lead to a new wave of online harassment.Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is making a multibillion-dollar bet on VR as the next source of growth for his empire but his strategy has already been dogged by warnings that virtual worlds are rife with abuse. Continue reading...

Paul Dowling, Janet Fraser, Rob Doran and Ian Elliott remember playing earlier versions of the game before Wordle’s viral explosionI was amused to read your editorial (2 February) about the internet game Wordle, created by Josh Wardle for his partner and subsequently sold to the New York Times.I used to play this game on paper in the 1990s with my wife at the time and have included a brief discussion of it in my book Sociology as Method. I describe the game as a recontextualisation of a board game called Mastermind, which was played with coloured pegs rather than words. One player placed an arrangement of pegs hidden at one end of the board, and the other had to try to deduce the arrangement before the board was filled with their incorrect attempts. Continue reading...

Analysis: shares in Meta fell by 25% after latest results revealed first-ever decline in daily users• Facebook’s first ever drop in daily users prompts Meta shares to tumble

KP Snacks also warns of supply problems for McCoy’s and Tyrrells crisps after ransomware attack hits IT systemsA cyber-attack targeting KP Snacks could lead to a shortage of some of Britain’s most popular snacks including Hula Hoops, McCoy’s and Tyrrells crisps, Butterkist, Skips, Nik Naks and KP Nuts.The company has sent a letter to stores saying the ransomware attack, which has crippled its IT and communications systems, could lead to supply issues until “the end of March at the earliest” as it “cannot safely process orders or dispatch goods”. Continue reading...

Subscriber outlook overshadowed fourth-quarter earnings as the company’s shares fell nearly 18% in late tradingSpotify on Wednesday forecast current-quarter subscribers lower than Wall Street expectations, but executives sought to reassure investors that growth had not cratered even as it deals with the fallout from the controversy around the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.The company’s shares fell as much as 18% in late trading after Spotify reported the subscriber outlook. Continue reading...

PC, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series X, Nintendo Switch (upcoming); Techland

Will the hit game imminently be locked behind a paywall or stay as it is? What about ads? The NYT’s head of games explains the planIn a month of spectacular video game industry buyouts, symbolised by Microsoft’s incredible $68bn swoop for Activision Blizzard, there is one purchase that has sent paroxysms of fear across the planet. On Monday, the New York Times revealed that it had bought the viral megahit Wordle for a “low seven figure sum”. The web-based word puzzle, which launched in October, was originally intended as a gift from software engineer Josh Wardle to his partner. But it has become a viral sensation, amassing an audience of millions – and key to its appeal is the fact that it’s free, with no ads.So what does a big newspaper like the New York Times want with a game like Wordle, and what happens next? Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: a radical rethink of how the company uses cookies seems at first to be a win for privacy advocates. Here’s what you need to know